Sunday afternoon I heard the police sirens down on the highway.

I knew they were police sirens by the technique more than the sound itself; an ambulance will turn on the vehicle's emergency siren and leave it on until they stop, while the cops like to try to ‘YAP’ cars out of their way as they go using shrill bursts of noise, as if their siren is equipped with a fun little trigger, aggressively shooting individual vehicles with sound while lunging down the road with their presumed authority.

I wondered for a second who’s day these cops were about to ruin, when outside the window behind me I heard the garden gate crash open, and the sound of somebody running past the house.

I went out the front door just in time to see the person run between the neighbor’s cabins, but I didn’t get a good look at him before he disappeared from view. My gate was knocked off of it’s wooden hook and flattened in the dirt, so I walked up to see who and what in the world was going on in my little community.

Between those two cabins was where the neighbors were working on a septic system, and they had just seen the gate crasher run past them as well. They said he was barefooted, and that he’d had a crazed look in his eyes as he dashed past.

The guy was long out of sight now, so I wandered back to my house to fix the gate, which entailed picking it up and hanging it back onto it’s simple cedar hook.

Innocent Until Proven Guilty

I went down to the pond for a smoke, thinking about what had just happened. I was already presuming that the runner was innocent until proven guilty, and I wondered if I should stay quiet about having seen the guy headed north, even though he had flattened my gate. ‘Obstructing Justice’ would be one legalese term for remaining so silent, ‘Aiding and Abetting’ might be another, while I would probably call my right to remain silent ‘Freedom of Speech’, as if that was a magical phrase as well, as if it would actually be recognized in a court of law.

I thought about the circumstances that could have compelled this guy to take off on this mad run through this strange territory without his shoes. Maybe he was a passenger in a car that the cops had pulled over, and maybe he’d made a run for it when they stopped. Perhaps he was wanted for outstanding arrest warrants, or maybe he had a bag of weed in his pocket and couldn’t afford getting caught with it.

Do No Harm

I know of one good, clear law: Do No Harm. Aside from my flattened gate, I knew nothing about this passing stranger. I had already forgiven him for the gate, even though I’ll probably keep bringing it up.

As an American man, there was a time when I would have halfway been expected to take off after this guy on foot, to be Johnny Badass and to wrestle the poor bastard into a headlock with a ’citizen’s arrest’, and then go on to become a local celebrity hero for my bravery.

There I would be on the local news, bowed up next to my garden's violated gate, my jaw still flexed: ”Well, I see a feller a runnin’, and I always go affer ‘em with some violence in mind.” (spits on ground)

In the modern USA, it is presumed that the common citizenry will assist the police without a second thought-- to keep law and order, and to help catch the bad guys-- stopping crime and all. The trouble is that at the same time in this modern USA, discerning which ones are the bad guys is a legitimate concern when it comes to the police and their busy guns, while the word crime has become practically meaningless when we look at the criminality that has been attached to so many harmless things by the parasitic lawmakers of the land.

The Cops Are Here! With a Dog!

Thinking about cops and stupid laws made me realize; it had been over an hour since my gate had been criminally unhinged-- this place should be crawling with cops by now! I decided to put away my illegal pot pipe, and no sooner had I done that than I heard some voices in front of the house. It was the cops. Specifically, it was two cops and a police dog, here to sniff the tracks of the runaway man.

I met them out front, and showed them the gate that the guy came through. The darkly-coated German shepherd police dog eyed me suspiciously, but the deputy was cool, and as they approached my gate with the dog, I offered them a warning: If my cats hurt your dog, I don’t know what we’re going to do...”

The dog’s handler then decided to check with me before going through the gate with his animal, and he turned and asked coldly if there were 'any dogs or cats back there'. I said there were at least a couple, and that they could take care of themselves well enough. (These particular cats wouldn’t think twice about assaulting this canine officer, but I imagine they would receive the death penalty for such an act of self-defense against a large police dog.)

Cat's Law Over Man's Law

The cops passed through the gate, whereupon the poor police dog immediately sat, whimpered, and then scooted back into the patio border wall in near-puddling terror. He had seen a cat, and the manhunt paused momentarily while the quivering dog was calmed, and his handler made sure the leash was secure, while I muttered “Please, don’t let that dog near those cats.”

Back inside the house, I watched as they made their way down through the garden and around the pond. They were going the wrong direction, but I guessed they were looking for discarded evidence along his escape path.

The Crime is Revealed

According to the sheriff’s deputy, the guy who ran through my garden and who had carelessly flattened my gate had just previously stolen a truck, wrecking it minutes before up on the highway, then fleeing the scene. Soon after learning this, I saw the red lights of an ambulance up on the highway through the thinning trees-- an emergency vehicle that was apparently associated with the crash scene, and my sympathy for the perpetrator waned immediately.

There is one law: ’Do No Harm’ dude, how hard is that? And then run off into the woods after injuring someone? We all know that’s not right-- no lawman needs to tell anyone that such behavior is wrong.

If I had known all of these details before the guy ran through my garden, would I have reacted differently? I can say that if I had known all of that when he came through, I wouldn’t have reacted at all; I would have responded with force if necessary. I’m a defender of the innocent, and nobody has the right to harm another person, while we always retain the right to defend ourselves and others from harm.

Responding vs Reacting

A reaction is different than a response. To react is to be subject to another element, and like a chemical reaction, the act is dictated by other factors, while a response is dictated by will, and our will is the very foundation of responsibility.

To be knowingly responsible for the world around us is an attribute, since most of us are not bad-- the majority of people are not stealing trucks or doing harm to anyone else-- we rather care about others, and it’s just natural to be that way for most. It is because of this type of true human nature that the golden rule of Do No Harm is sometimes known as Natural Law, because love is our real human nature.

Doing what is right comes naturally for humanity, with compassion as the default setting. We really do seem to love each other, and it’s especially noticeable during disasters and emergencies-- we tend to take responsibility for one another when it counts the most.

Conspiracy Time

For the fun of it, I have a pyramid-shaped hedge in the back garden, and a pair of stone columns. After all of the excitement, I noticed that somebody had toppled the tower on the left as they passed through, and I had to re-stack the stones for the photo above.

• Was the column knocked down by the running man?
• Was it knocked over by the police dog's leash as the cops came through?
• Why is my lawn adorned with Masonic symbology?

Let the conspiracy theories fly in the comments section.

Update

We heard that the cops caught the guy later that day. I actually appreciate peacekeepers like the local County Sheriff's deputies-- they tend to deal with actual crimes instead of just hassling everyone else with "law enforcement" like a lot of cops get paid to do.

Looking back, it should be no surprise that the fugitive decided to cut through my garden during his panic-- look how inviting it is! (My violated gate can be seen in the shade next to the purple windows)

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all images here are mine, 2017

@therealpaul