Chapter 14: Civil Disobedience

Apparently, the officer took in the sights of me, the prone man on the ground, the knife blade in my hand, and where in the vicinity of the man on the ground— who I was holding down on the ground— that knife blade was, and decided that drawing his service weapon was the best course of action.

I couldn’t tell how tall he was, from the distance between us, but I could see that he was fair of skin, wearing the mostly white uniform of a college or university campus police officer, not the darker uniforms of the metropolitan police; I couldn’t tell about his hair color, but his mustache was a simple, dark smear across his upper lip, and his eyes were dark and focused. I could see that he also wasn’t wearing any visible body armor, despite the fact that he was armed. If I remembered correctly, that meant that he wasn’t supposed to have a weapon on him.

I didn’t remember the campus police officers being able to carry guns back when I was in college. But then again, it was a different college, and it wasn’t really too long ago; maybe I just hadn’t noticed.

“You! On top of that person! Put down your weapon, move two meters to your left, and get face down, on the ground, with your hands stretched out over your head!” Officer not-so-friendly ordered.

I so wanted to tell him no, to tell him where he could put that gun of his. But I could see the situation spiraling out of control, and becoming a real pain in the backside. So I tossed the knife blade away, making sure that it was flying fast enough, far enough that none of us here could get to it, including the officer.

“Now,” the officer called out, “remove yourself two meters to your left, and lay face down on the ground—”

“I’m not doing that part,” I said, “especially the laying face down on the ground; you have a weapon drawn on me—”

“I am ordering you to get down onto the ground, face down!—”

“And you are endangering too many other innocents with a drawn weapon, officer!” I interrupted him.

“I said, I am ordering you to get down, onto the ground—” he tried shouting again.

“And I said I’m not doing that, especially when you are endangering others!”

“If you do not comply with my orders—”

“If you finish that with ‘I will shoot you’ or anything like that, officer, I will be forced to defend myself and everyone here from your reckless actions,” I growled back at him.

“If you comply with my orders—”

Lamar took that moment, thinking that I was distracted, to try to struggle. “Hey!!” He screamed, trying to turn his head towards the officer, “He’s trying to—” That was as far as I let him get, before I rapped him across the temple, decently hard, to shut him up. I managed to get it right, causing him to stop speaking mid-sentence, and sag in a semi-conscious state, bringing his struggling to a halt.

I could hear when the officer cocked back the hammer on his weapon. That told me that he had a revolver, not a pistol, among other things.

“You will comply with my orders, or I will—” he began again.

“Officer, a drawn weapon for who you think is the bad guy, with innocent persons nearby, is still reckless,” I interrupted him again. “Put away the weapon, and I will surrender calmly.”

“That’s not how this works!” The officer returned.

“As I said to someone else tonight, officer,” I answered back, “You may not like what I’m going to do, but you are going to have to accept the reality of it.”

He seemed momentarily torn about what he was going to do, and to some extent, I understood; it wasn’t just me, here, standing over someone who was a bad guy only by my words; there were two other, able bodied people standing nearby, and he couldn’t immediately tell if they were accomplices of mine, hostages, or purely innocents who had anything to do with the situation whatsoever. Just because I named them as innocent, didn’t exactly mean that they were; the only obvious bad person here, was me.

“This woman,” I said as I slowly got to my feet, and gestured towards the young lady, who was still not fully covered from the waist down; I merely glanced at her, and then towards Powerline, and said, “Use your jacket to cover her modesty?” Before turning back to the officer, “this woman here was a victim of—” I began.

The officer had glanced at the woman, but then saw Powerline moving towards her, and began aiming his weapon in their direction. “Now see here—” he began, before I moved to block his line of aim.

“Powerline is trying to help,” I growled menacingly back at the officer, “or did you not see that that woman is almost naked below the waist?”

“Nobody moves!” The officer tried to order.

I turned my head back to Powerline. “Go ahead and give her your jacket,” I offered in a more quiet voice, but still loud enough for the officer to hear, “Then get down on your knees and put your hands behind your back, like Officer Friendly is saying; he seems like he wants to be trigger happy, and if he fires that weapon, this might his last night on earth.” I turned towards the officer as I was saying that.

“You can’t kill him just because he’s trying to do his job,” Powerline returned, sounding like she was trying to lecture me.

“But if he’s going to act without regard for others, I will end his law enforcement career, at the least,” I answered back.

Having the officer’s attention— and his momentary silence, I took advantage. I also put my arms up, casually, before I moved them behind my back, and began to turn around.

“As I was saying,” I tossed over my shoulder, “the young woman on the ground was the victim of sexual assault, perpetrated by the man laying down there.” I could hear the officer cautiously approaching from behind me. “I happened onto the scene, and broke up the situation. Powerline is a young teen, trying to be a hero, and was trying to convince me that I shouldn’t castrate the young man for his actions; and you can clearly see that his pants are still unzipped, and his bait and tackle are on display.”

By that point, Powerline had given the young woman her jacket, and the officer had moved up behind me; I hadn’t actually witnessed him putting away his weapon, but I was trying to offer some measure of something close to trust; also, I’d resolved that if he did still have his weapon in hand, or redrew his weapon, and threatened anyone else with it, I would make sure that he wasn’t a threat any further.