I released Gavin completely, took my hands off him, stepped back, and raised my own open hands high where everyone could see them, making myself, deliberately and visibly, the calm and cooperative one.

Because I had understood from the first minute of this that the goal was never to win a fight on a porch.

The goal was to hand a clean situation to the law and let the law do what it exists to do.

A fight I could have won a dozen ways.

What actually mattered was that when the police arrived, they found a man who had forced his way onto a property and assaulted its owner, and an owner standing calmly with her hands up beside a running camera.

That picture was worth more than any blow I could have thrown.