Misdemeanor + Felony = FELONY!

"You can't outrun paper." That is a common phrase we tell people after being on the run and then getting arrested. Some people just like to run and in their mind they have nothing to lose. Over the last few weeks, we have seen person after person making bad decisions and those bad decisions end up costing them in the long run.

There is a simple concept that works a little like basic mathematics. We all know that 1+1 = 2, so let's put it into terms of crime. A misdemeanor offense = a misdemeanor charge. So here is the part people just do not understand, if you are being stopped, arrested, or ticketed for a misdemeanor offense and you decide to commit a felony crime to get out of the misdemeanor crime, it will equal a felony charge!

Here are some examples from real cases; if you are being pulled over for a misdemeanor DWI and you run from law enforcement and hit one of their vehicles in the process, you have now committed a felony, and will be charged with a felony for trying to avoid a misdemeanor charge. If you have a misdemeanor amount of a controlled substance and you decide to run, hide, and then fight the police when being arrested, you have just changed your misdemeanor arrest to a felony arrest. And running will never work because you will always be caught some time, by someone; so why run in the first place?

We recently attempted to apprehend a wanted fugitive that was running on foot for several days and every time we would get reports of him, he would run off into the woods and hide in the thickest brush he could find and lay in silence until we had passed him by.

I mentioned in a previous column that we could be anyone including the pizza guy knocking at your door. Well this guy must not have heard that part because he climbed into a vehicle and asked for a ride because his car had "broken down" and he needed to get to a phone. The only problem was that the guy in the vehicle with the t-shirt and blue jeans was not the average citizen driving down the road for a scenic view, he was a Sheriff's Deputy who was actively looking for this wanted fugitive.

The guy proceeded to complain that every person he had asked for the assistance of a phone had turned him down. He told the deputy it must have been because of his tattoos. It was actually because everyone on that side of the county had been alerted to be on the lookout for him and was calling us every time he knocked on a door. Once the deputy explained to him that he was an undercover deputy with the Sheriff's Office, the fight began.

He did not win, and in the end he went to jail hot, hungry, dirty and tired. His goal was to get to the county line and he had lived outside in the woods with no food and little water, and after making this long and tiring journey he was arrested on the county line road just 12 feet from the county line. This guy already had warrants, but now because he decided to run, he has a whole new set of charges that he will have to answer to and he is even that much farther away from finding a path that does not take him to prison.

It is a sad thing to see so many people make such dumb decisions and get into so much trouble when they could have just faced their problems to begin with and moved on with their lives. But for those who do not want to make it that simple I remind you; you can run, but you will only go to jail tired!