Roommate assaulted me and was not taken to jail for the night.
Location: California. Would love to get some insight and perspective from fellow officers here. Basically i got into an altercation with my roommate earlier today. We were arguing over the fridge space - he removes all my belongings out the fridge and replaces it with his stuff so I take the milk carton(that was his) and I chucked it at the floor, he advances towards me and starts pushing me back and looking like he wants to hit me so then i begin to push him off of me, then immediately he strikes me in the face and we get to a struggle where i wrestle him to the ground and assume mount position over him until i could control the situation - note: I did not strike him once ever during the contact.
It was an open fisted blow and so it left cuts all around my lips(since it was his fingernails which caught me in the face) and I was also bleeding. There is a live feed camera in the kitchen but the landlords husband couldn’t recover the footage due to “no memory card.” Anyways, at first when the cop got my side of the story and he sees the marks on my face, he asks if i would like to file charges for assault and battery and i agreed. But then when he went to go talk to my roommate he changed his mind and said we would both have to spend the night in jail if I wanted to press charges so I declined obviously since i am working the next day and can’t afford to have something like that in my name. I have a crystal clear background record with zero cases to my name whatsoever, not even a citation or traffic violation.
Tbh i feel it’s a bit unfair since he was the primary aggressor and there is marks on my lips + the bleeding as evidence while the roommate's face is clean without any damages at all not even redness, also he touched me first by pushing me (though yes i instigated by throwing his milk carton but he touched my belongings first so…). I did not get a police report, but the sheriff left me his personal number in case i can retrieve the footage or something else comes up. Anyways was hoping if you guys can let me know if i was wronged here, I 100% understand the sheriffs perspective since it’s a “my word vs his word” scenario and no video evidence. But now the roommate is gonna get the impression he can hit me and get away with it so that concerns me. Will I be able to get a restraining order at least? Should I got back to the station to get photo evidence and a police report to use it as evidence for the restraining order? Thx.