“to serve and protect”
r. a. schultz
FOREWORD: The following brief article, appearing in the von Mises Institute publication several months ago, pretty much destroys the stupid contention advanced by morons like Bloomberg, Biden, and Buttergiggie that only the police should possess firearms.
Police Have No Duty to Protect You, Federal Court Affirms Yet Again
Police Have No Duty to Protect You, Federal Court Affirms Yet AgainComments for Police Have No Duty to Protect You, Federal Court Affirms Yet AgainPrint Police Have No Duty to Protect You, Federal Court Affirms Yet Again
Police Have No Duty to Protect You, Federal Court Affirms Yet Again
12/20/2018Ryan McMaken
Following last February's shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, some students claimed local government officials were at fault for failing to provide protection to students. The students filed suit, naming six defendants, including the Broward school district and the Broward Sheriff’s Office , as well as school deputy Scot Peterson and campus monitor Andrew Medina.
On Monday, though, a federal judge ruled that the government agencies " had no constitutional duty to protect students who were not in custody."
This latest decision adds to a growing body of case law establishing that government agencies — including police agencies — have no duty to provide protection to citizens in general:
“Neither the Constitution, nor state law, impose a general duty upon police officers or other governmental officials to protect individual persons from harm — even when they know the harm will occur,” said Darren L. Hutchinson, a professor and associate dean at the University of Florida School of Law. “Police can watch someone attack you, refuse to intervene and not violate the Constitution.”
The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the government has only a duty to protect persons who are “in custody,” he pointed out.
MY TAKE: My final assignment prior to retirement from the Suffolk County, NY, DA’s Office was the lead investigator of the DA’s Intake Unit, the catch-all for all of the bullsh*t complaints that anybody could dream up, or that nobody else would listen to!
One afternoon, a male citizen telephoned in a complaint and was quite affronted when I essentially told him that he had no criminal complaint. The following exchange occurred:
CITIZEN: I want to talk to a lawyer. You’re not a lawyer, are you?
SCHULTZ: No. I’m a detective lieutenant. I teach street law to lawyers.
CITIZEN: I DEMAND to talk to a lawyer.
SCHULTZ: That’s not the way it works. You’ll talk to an investigator. You lucked out. You got me.
CITIZEN: You aren’t doing your job. You have a duty to serve and protect.
SCHULTZ: You watch too much television.
CITIZEN: I want to talk to a supervisor.
SCHULTZ: I AM a supervisor.
It went on like that for about twenty minutes until the moron gave up. If he was legitimately reporting something that constituted a crime, I would have taken his complaint or referred him to the appropriate agency that could best assist him. Instead, he preferred to tell me what my job was.
“To Serve and Protect” is a high-sounding phrase that looks good painted on the side of a police car, but it has NOTHING to do with the functional job of everyday policing, which is necessarily much more RE-active than it is PRO-active.
Police, generally, RESPOND to calls for help, reports of criminal activity, and other emergencies. To the extent POSSIBLE, they aggressively patrol, to prevent crime, but they simply cannot be everywhere. So sh*t happens, and the police aren’t there! It’s become trite but it’s true: “When seconds count between life and death, the police are only minutes away!”
G-d gave us the right of self-defense, and the framers of our Constitution recognized this in the Second Amendment which guarantees that the government is proscribed from infringing upon that right in any way. It should be obvious to We the People, that ANYONE who wants to abridge or infringe our G-d-given right to self-defense is NOT worthy of our respect OR our vote!
Indeed, ask yourself why the leftists are so hell-bent on taking our right of self-defense away from us. It obviously won’t make us or society one smidgeon safer. Could it be that they really want to remove our last line of defense against a dictatorship? Hmmmm?
