When a couple of brawling children get yanked apart by their mother, and they both whine “Mom, he started it,” we all remember the universal mother response, which is that “it takes two to start a fight.”
For grownups, the penal code says pretty much the same thing in the form of a quaint-sounding criminal charge called “Public Affray.” You could think of it as disorderly conduct for two, or more.
A recent Ruidoso police incident report showed how it works.
Officers responded a couple of weeks ago to an address on Raymond Bruckner where witnesses had called to report a fight between two neighbors.
One of them said he had been attacked by a neighbor who was “driving by his residence and began yelling obscenities at him while he was sitting on his porch minding his own business.”
The driver got out of his car and “proceeded to batter him by throwing him on the ground in the driveway and began striking him and kicking him,” the police report said.
The man’s live-in girlfriend agreed that’s what happened.
But the neighbor’s version was quite different. He said he was driving by minding his own business when the other man shouted obscenities and threw a rock at his car. When he stopped the car to look for damage, the other man came toward him, still cursing.
When the driver asked why the man had thrown rocks at his car the other man grabbed his shirt, dragged him into the yard and tried to punch him. The pair ended up in a rolling, punching, obscenity-spewing heap on the ground until another neighbor pried them apart.
The officer found a witness who said she saw the whole thing. According to her, the man who said he was minding his own business on his porch really did toss a rock at the other guy’s car. When an argument ensued, the porch sitter struck the first blow.
Another thing mothers sometimes say to their squabbling offspring is “tell it to the judge.” The law does that too, the only difference being that an actual judge in a black robe really is waiting to hear what the brawlers have to say.
After listening to all the conflicting stories, the officer took pictures of their bruises and handed both men a summons to Magistrate Court for Public Affray, an offense in which the law says the real injured parties are the bystanders who were shocked and disturbed by the violence.
The court may dish up punishment just like mother used to make and send both miscreants to their own rooms.