Tag Archives: Duty To Protect

Duty? What Duty?

As a child growing up, most of the TV shows tended to portray law enforcement as heroes. They always got there in the nick of time, and if they were called in after the unfortunate event happened? They always knew what to do about that as well. They could do a dandy chalk outline of the corpse and then find out who made that happen to the unfortunate victim. And the really superior thing about law-enforcement back then is they could always make it happen in an hour. Minus the time for commercials of course. That’s not like the modern day shows that have running story lines. Like soap operas did when I was growing up. This is back before the day of “Cops as the bad guys”. Oh of course there have always been bad cops, it’s just they weren’t really so much a part of the TV land experience back then. We were taught to respect them, and if we were in trouble, look for a cop. TV shows where the guys stealing cars were the good guys didn’t happen. Nor was there near the amount of realism that you see in shows today.

Hospitals probably weren’t target rich environments back then, aka “gun-free zones”. But to be honest, I doubt that many people carried while at work either. It’s just that now the signs make it clear unless the crew of “Third Watch” happens to be in the ER waiting room they can pretty much be assured everyone will be doing what the medical staff was doing. Ducking, hiding, running, praying. Because throwing chairs, rocks and baseball bats don’t look to be a viable option to me there. No one is going to be firing back at them.

So if the crew of “Third Watch” happens to be in the ER waiting room, and 1-Adam12 has been dispatched to assist in response to Cruz’s call in for back up, how long will it take for Malloy and Reed to arrive on the scene?

Average-Police-Response-Time to a 911 call?

“I would just call 911 for help.” There’s this false sense of security that we have created with the 911 system that has people believing that with a single call, a swat team will be dispatched immediately to save you and your family within moments of the call.

Unfortunately, this couldn’t be further from the truth. So what is the average-police-response-time to a 911 call?

According to American Police Beat, the average response time for an emergency call is 10 minutes. Atlanta has the worst response time with 11 to 12 minutes and Nashville comes in at a lightning speed of 9 minutes.

The Department of Justice, with their statistical prowess, reports that the best response time is 4 minutes and the worst over 1 hour. Interpretation? If you live in an upper income area you probably are privy to the 4 minute response time, while middle to rural areas will see a much longer response time.

Now here is where things get interesting. Even though the Department of Justice determined that the average police response time to a 911 call is 4 minutes, the average interaction time between a criminal and his victim is 90 seconds.

That translates to you being robbed/injured/maimed/raped/murdered and waiting for an additional 2 and a half minutes for the police to arrive. The truth of the matter is that the police will almost always arrive AFTER the crime has happened and the criminal has gone.

In rural areas the time can be even longer. A lot longer. Think 30 minutes, maybe more. It’s not that they are hanging out at donut shops, or trying to get someone at Taco Smell to take their order, there is a lot that goes into 9-1-1 calls, and a lot of calls can go into 9-1-1. The lady with the cat in the tree may have got a call in seconds before you were calling in about the guy fixin to come in through your back door.

Actually, school shootings seem to have an even worse set of numbers. Quicker Response to Active Shooters

There are four possible ways to mitigate the damage inflicted by an active shooter. You can harden the target, arm and train potential victims, strengthen prevention programs and suspect identification, and improve law enforcement response times. Each one of these steps is easier said than done because of the associated bureaucratic, political, and budgetary considerations.

Department of Homeland Security research reveals that the average duration of an active shooter incident at a school is 12.5 minutes. In contrast, the average response time for law enforcement is 18 minutes. That means it only makes sense for us to find ways to improve our response times. Working on our response times is about the only anti-active shooter measure that we can take at the operator level. We must find a way to shave off some time and in doing so, create some type of tactical advantage.

A little discouraging that political weighs into the mix making it harder. But when you consider two Buckets O’Chum in Florida were part of Barry’s social engineering project where by kids got a pass on criminal behavior to make statistics look better and law-enforcement agencies got money in return, I guess it’s the truth. Both of them had criminal actions in their backgrounds. Were they in jail? Juvenile court? Detention? Nope.

And law enforcement is trying to find creative ways to decrease the response time, coming up with an app they designed for cell phones. Embracing Technology to Decrease Law Enforcement Response Time.

But you know what the bottom line on all of this is? They don’t gotta. What do I mean? They police do not have a duty to protect you, yours, your kith or your kin. Or Barbie either for that matter. I know, I know that’s what it says on the side of the Police cars, “To Serve and Protect”. Look, everyone needs a goal, a mission statement if you will. So think of it like that, it’s a goal, it’s their mission. Mine is to lose 7 pounds. They have equal chances of succeeding. They can’t be everywhere at once and fried okra still exists in the world.

This has become an issue again the wake of the actions of the law enforcement of Coward County Florida. Scot Petersen, not the Scott Peterson who murdered his pregnant wife, he’s still on death row, but the deputy who cowered outside as a Bucket O’Chum shot students in a Parkland school after security monitor Andrew Medina failed to confront O’Chum when he saw him or call a “Code Red” in the school. So, because Parkland is a safe gun-free zone and had the crack Coward law-enforcement on hand you have a massive #GunControlFail.

It should be no surprise some of the parents sued.

A judge has rejected a deputy’s claim that he had no duty to confront the gunman during the school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

Refusing to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the parent of a victim, Broward Circuit Judge Patti Englander Henning found after a hearing Wednesday that ex-deputy Scot Peterson did have a duty to protect those inside the school where 17 people died and 17 were wounded on Feb. 14. Video and other evidence shows Peterson, the only armed officer at the school, remained outside while shots rang out.

The negligence lawsuit was filed by Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was killed. He said it made no sense for Peterson’s attorneys to argue that a sworn law enforcement officer with a badge and a gun had no requirement to go inside.

“Then what is he doing there?” Pollack said after the ruling. “He had a duty. I’m not going to let this go. My daughter, her death is not going to be in vain.”

That lasted a week. Cops and schools had no duty to shield students in Parkland shooting, says judge who tossed lawsuit

Bloom ruled that the two agencies had no constitutional duty to protect students who were not in custody.

“The claim arises from the actions of [shooter Nikolas] Cruz, a third party, and not a state actor,” she wrote in a ruling Dec. 12. “Thus, the critical question the Court analyzes is whether defendants had a constitutional duty to protect plaintiffs from the actions of Cruz.

“As previously stated, for such a duty to exist on the part of defendants, plaintiffs would have to be considered to be in custody” — for example, as prisoners or patients of a mental hospital, she wrote.

But this isn’t the first time such a case has come up. In an excellent book on Missouri Weapons and Self-Defense law the author talks about Warren vs. District of Columbia. This was such a horrible case it always stuck with me.

Police are not the only ones shielded from the consequences of the failure to protect. Another truly horrific case is that of DeShaney v. Winnebago County. That was a spectacular failure of a ‘child protection team,’ consisting of a pediatrician, a psychologist, a police detective, the county’s lawyer, several DSS caseworkers, and various hospital personnel, and the juvenile court. They returned a badly abused child to his custodial father. The father did not meet the requirements in the following year and the child protective services did______________nada, zip, zilch, zero, squat. Eventually the poor little four year old boy was beaten so badly he wound up in a institution for the rest of his life. His dad served less than 2 years in jail. And the child protection team? The department of social services that did nothing on their follow up visits? Nothing, nothing happened to any of them when the child’s mother attempted to sue. I’m thinking the court that awarded custody to the dad should be included in the list of shame there as well.

And what say the anti-gun, anti-self defense pink hatted faux feminists? Don’t get a gun, just go through the legal system. Get a restraining order and then sic the cops on him. And Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales will show you that works as well as the law enforcement team of Coward County. That resulted in 3 dead little girls at the hand of their loving father. The mother had begged police to go find the girls. Her ex walked right through the paper target.

The Mises Institute points out in terms of our money, it may or not, be a good investment of our dollars.

This reality does belie the often-made claim, however, that police agencies deserve the tax money and obedience of local citizens because the agencies “keep us safe.”

Nevertheless, we are told there is an agreement here — a “social contract” — between government agencies and the taxpayers and citizens.

And, by the very nature of being a contract, we are meant to believe this is a two-way street. The taxpayers are required to submit to a government monopoly on force, and to pay these agencies taxes.

In return, these government agents will provide services. In the case of police agencies, these services are summed up by the phrase “to protect and serve” — a motto that has in recent decades been adopted by numerous police agencies.

But what happens when those police agencies don’t protect and serve? That is, what happens when one party in this alleged social contract doesn’t keep up its end of the bargain.

The answer is: very little.

The Mises Institute also makes another excellent point.

The taxpayers will still have to pay their taxes and submit to police agencies as lawful authority. If the agencies or individual agents are forced to pay as a result of lawsuits, it’s the taxpayers who will pay for that too.

Oh sure, the senior leadership positions may change, but the enormous agency budgets will remain, the government agents themselves will continue to collect generous salaries and pensions, and no government will surrender its monopoly on the use of force.

No government will surrender it’s monopoly on power? Well what I ask, could go wrong with that??

Venezuelans regret gun ban, ‘a declaration of war against an unarmed population’

“Guns would have served as a vital pillar to remaining a free people, or at least able to put up a fight,” Javier Vanegas, 28, a Venezuelan teacher of English now exiled in Ecuador, told Fox News. “The government security forces, at the beginning of this debacle, knew they had no real opposition to their force. Once things were this bad, it was a clear declaration of war against an unarmed population.”

Under the direction of then-President Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan National Assembly in 2012 enacted the “Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law,” with the explicit aim to “disarm all citizens.” The law took effect in 2013, with only minimal pushback from some pro-democracy opposition figures, banned the legal commercial sale of guns and munitions to all – except government entities.

Dang, huh? I hope Bosco will be ok though.

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