What do I do after I've been arrested?

Transcript

00:00 The question is, what do I do after I've been arrested for an assault?
00:03 And it's a pretty darn good one.
00:05 The number one thing you do is don't panic, alright?
00:08 Now it goes without saying that an assault family violence arrest in San Antonio or Bexar County,
00:12 even though it's a misdemeanor, carries a heck of a lot of speed bumps and brick walls
00:18 if you should happen to plead to them or if the wrong thing happens in court.
00:22 And there's a lot to worry about.
00:23 But the reason I say don't panic is because a lot of times when you leave that jail,
00:28 you're going to have conditions such as no contact or a temporary protective order or
00:34 requirements to get a GPS. You need to make sure that you put all of that stuff and you listen to it.
00:40 Do not violate. Now, the next thing that you do is there's no no contact order that's in place
00:46 is if the complainant is trying to help or trying to work out, do not burn that bridge.
00:51 Okay, you will probably want to work with that person to try to see what you guys can do to help
00:55 each other to get these charges off. The next most important thing that you can do after not panicking
01:01 is call a lawyer, okay, and start looking for attorneys that have a lot of experience when it
01:07 comes to family violence cases. Now, to quickly toot my own horn, I have 27 years of experience
01:12 as a law enforcement officer who used to investigate these cases. As a family violence prosecutor at the
01:18 Bexar County DA's office, where I averaged about two to three thousand assault cases per month,
01:23 and I did that for over two years. So when you hear me say that I've literally handled tens
01:27 of thousands of these, it's not an exaggeration. Three, look for an attorney like me who has handled
01:34 countless assault family violence cases in trial. But here's the most important thing. You're not
01:40 looking for the attorney who's telling you that they're going to try it no matter what.
01:43 You're looking for the attorney who's going to come up with a strategy with you to hopefully avoid
01:47 that process ever going forward. So to keep it simple on a pretty difficult situation,
01:53 Number one, don't panic.
01:54 Number two, find a lawyer who knows what they're doing.
01:57 And number three, hire that person as soon as possible
02:00 so they can do their best to educate you going forward
02:03 and help you to get the ultimate outcome of a dismissal
02:07 that you can expunge later on down the line.