[bigiain]

Ask anyone from any sort of minority community how often their members get charged with resisting arrest vs how often they _actually_ resist arrest. Even allowing for self reporting always making the comparison skewed I suspect most non-minority people won't even believe the difference.

Over here (Australia) they call it "the trifecta of charges" - offensive language, resist arrest, assault a police officer - and it's well known to be used as "Arrest as a method of oppression".

These regularly get thrown out by victims capable of fighting them in court (eg: https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/arrest-of-student-for-of... ) - but they're overwhelmingly used against groups who're least likely to be able to do that: "Indigenous Australians account for 15 times as many offensive language offences as would be expected for their population." http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AltLawJl/2004/53.html That's not because white folk are any less likely to tell a cop to fuck off, it's because there's systemic racism built into the police force here - they "know_ they'll get away with "the trifecta" against "people who look a certain way".