So check it out… I hope you all read this, and teach your kids this, and maybe even spread the word to everyone you know. I am a current sworn police officer, and for the first time in my life I am going to take to the internet and social media to spread one simple tip… Listen to what a police officer tells you to do and everyone will be fine. All too often I have a suspect tell me, "I know my rights." in the course of my daily business in dealing with people. Let's face it, you may have Googled your rights, you may have read a book or a newspaper article, you may have had a friend of a friend of a friend tell you your "rights" but you do not know them. Google does not automatically turn you into an expert in law and Constitutional rights. Police officers have a hard enough job, and we do not need so called Google law experts telling us what we can or cannot do as we try and conduct our business. Here is a perfect example of what I dealt with last night as I am one of three officers responding to a domestic. The conversation went like this:

Me: "Sir, please do me a favor and sit down, take a few breaths, calm down, and I'll be right with you."
Subject: "Are you detaining me?"
Me: "No, I am not. I have to make sense of what is going on here so just sit down, calm down, and I said I'll be right with you."
Subject: "Am I under arrest? If so, for what?"
Me: "No, you are not under arrest. I'm going to ask you one more time, everyone is angry and I get it. Just sit down, take a breath, calm down, and I'll be with you in a few minutes."
Subject: "Well if I'm not under arrest I don't have to do what you say so I'm going in my house."
Me: "Now, you are under arrest for failure to comply with a peace officer's orders."

If this gentleman would have just listened to me he would not have an arrest on his record like he does now. This is the case for every police shooting that has happened in recent times. Ferguson, South Carolina, Baltimore…and most likely all the other shootings we don't hear about.