Arrested for assaulting a police officer. I was pulled over by a local small town police officer. At the time, I was driving a beat up hippie van (complete w/Grateful Dead stickers) that was close to the description of a van that had been used in a couple of local bank robberies. The officer came up on the passenger side and asked me to step out of the van. Since the driver's door was damaged and couldn't open, without thinking I stepped into the interior of the van (where he couldn't clearly see me) and stepped out of the side door on the passenger side. At which point he tried to take me down with his nightstick. I was a corrections officer at the time and had the same training he did and without any conscious thought on my part, the two of us ended up wrestling in 6 inches of water in the drainage ditch on the side of the road, with him telling me I was dead meat as soon as he could reach a weapon. We ended up staying there, neither of us able to get an advantage, until his backup showed up, held me at gunpoint, and they arrested me. None too gently. Fortunately for me, the Assistant State's Attorney reviewed the officer's patrol camera and decided I had reacted without thinking and was not trying to harm the officer but protect myself. Plus there were several points where the officer had not followed proper procedure. I'm lucky nobody shot me, as my failure to think ahead put the officer in a position where he had to make fast decisions that could have gotten me hurt or dead. Gave me a little more appreciation for some of my conduct on the job.