Posted by Kromey at 9:44pm May 3 '10The general rule of law in the United States is that no law enforcement officer has any duty to aid or protect you from a crime.
If that statement upsets or disturbs you in any way, read on as I explain the reality of the situation.
According to the D.C. Court of Appeals, it is a "fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen." Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981). In layman's terms, that means that civil services such as police protection are to be provided to the public at large, but the government (whether federal, state, or local) is under no obligation to provide such services in any specific instance, including instances where a LEO may be directly aware of a situation but fails to act to prevent loss.
But it doesn't stop at D.C. The SCOTUS has weighed in on the issue as well, in DeShaney v. Winnebago County and Castle Rock v. Gonzales, among others I'm sure, and issued opinions very similar to the one in Warren: No government body, no LEO, is under any obligation to render aid or protection to any individual citizen from a criminal act.
There are, however, exceptions to this rule, specifically the special relationship and state-created danger theories. In a nutshell, since these apply in the overwhelming minority of cases and thus are not the typical case, a special relationship applies to a person in police custody or to whom an explicit statement or promise of protection from a specific identified threat is given; a state-created danger is a situation where the actions of one or more LEOs resulted in putting a person into a dangerous situation where no danger exist before, or increased the danger to a person. Specifically, a state-created danger can only exist if the harm is direct and foreseeable, and if the state's actions (as executed by the LEOs) created or increased the danger facing an individual -- but not merely the general public.
Now we've twice seen this distinction between individuals and the general public -- the government has a duty to protect the general public but not any individual, whereas a state-created danger can only apply to an individual and not the general public. Just what is the distinction? It's really quite simple, actually: An individual is, well, an individual, whereas the general public is the collection of statistics applicable to the population served by the government in question (e.g. a city, a county, a state, or the whole US). Thus the government's duty to protect the general public is measured by the area's crime rates, as well as other statistics such as arrests made, drunk drivers stopped, etc. It's a numbers game, really, and is completely divorced from any concept of the individual, despite the fact that the general public is, by definition, a collection of individuals.
So why does no duty to protect the individual citizens exist? Well, it's a quite practical matter, in fact:
Consider the case of three women who shared a house. In the early morning of March 16th, 1975, two men broke into the house and quickly discovered one of the women; they promptly began to sexually assault and rape her. Her screams woke her two roommates, who immediately dialed 911. Cops responded, but the most they did was knock on the front door and then leave when they got no answer. Repeated calls to 911 got no additional response.
At one point their roommate's screams stopped, and the other two women thought the cops had come in. They called out, which alerted the two intruders to their presence. All three women were abducted, robbed, sexually assaulted, raped, and beaten over the next 14 hours.
This is the heinous story behind the Warren case. At no point did any of the responding officers so much as walk around to the back of the house, where they would have seen the broken door and had reasonable cause to then enter the home and investigate. The first 911 call was received at 0623, but was not dispatched to the cops on the street for another three minutes -- at 0626. Cops arrived two minutes after that, but left the scene by 0633. A 5-minute response time is nothing to sneeze at, but a 5-minute investigation certainly is! The second 911 call was received 9 minutes after that, at 0642, but was never dispatched to officers. You can read all about this, and more, in the Warren case.
The DeShaney case is another shocking one, although this time involves the Department of Social Services instead of police. DSS failed to act when they had repeated reports of child abuse from hospital staff, with the end result being that Joshua DeShaney was beaten so badly by his father that he fell into a coma; life-saving brain surgery revealed evidence of repeated, long-term abuse, but despite the surgery young Joshua ended up with extensive brain damage and now requires the services of a facility for the "profoundly retarded" (actual language of court documents) for the remainder of his life. However, despite the clear fact that DSS knew or should have known that Joshua was suffering abuse at the hands of his father, the court ruling was that there is no duty to protect an individual.
Returning to LEOs, the Castle Rock case involved a restraining order against Jessica Gonzalez's husband during divorce proceedings, requiring him to stay 100 yards from her and their 3 daughters. In direct violation of the restraining order, he took the 3 daughters in the evening of June 22nd, 1999; Gonzalez frantically called the police several times throughout the night, but the police refused to so much as look for her husband to question him. Early the following morning, her husband entered the police station and opened fire; the resulting shoot-out left him dead, and a search of his vehicle afterward found their 3 daughters, murdered prior to his arrival.
As in the other cases, the SCOTUS ruled that the restraining order carried no implications of a special relationship nor any promise of protection, and therefore ruled in favor of Castle Rock -- there was no duty to protect Jessica or her 3 daughters, even though there was a restraining order against her husband.
I'll freely admit that these 3 examples, while each one heinous in the actions -- or lack thereof -- on the part of the government, are in and of themselves only anecdotal evidence, and on their own prove nothing.
The court decisions in these cases, especially those from the SCOTUS, however, are not anecdotal -- they are, for all intents and purposes, the law.
That means that it is already well-established that you, the individual citizen, have absolutely no guarantees that you will be protected should you ever be targeted for a crime. And in all practicality, how could you expect such? As already pointed out, there are far too few patrol cops to protect everyone, especially when the criminals have the luxury of deciding when and where they will strike.
Sources and further reading:
[Note: Not all of these were used directly in this post, but are nonetheless relevant. Those for which I have a link are hyperlinked.]
Court cases:
Bowers v. DeVito, 686F. 2nd 616, 618 (7th Cir. 1982).
Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748 (2005).
DeShaney v. Winnebago County, 489 U.S. 189 (1989).
Ford v. Town of Grafion, 693 N.E.2d 1047 (Mass. App. 1998).
Souza v. City of Antioch, 62 California Reporter, 2d 909, 916 (Cal. App. 1997).
Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981).
Other articles:
No Duty to Protect: Two Exceptions by L. Cary Unkelbach, Assistant County Attorney Representing the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office, Centennial, Colorado; Police Chief Magazine, July 2004
The Police: No Duty To Protect Individuals
Just Dial 911? The Myth of Police Protection by Richard W. Stevens; The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, April 2000
Police Have No Duty To Protect Individuals by Peter Kasler
As a final note, I will point out that, yes, 2 of these sources are pro-gun websites. However, both articles are -- for the most part -- grounded in the facts, and I've endeavored to keep the pro-gun bias out of this post. Nonetheless, if you feel that those two sources are too biased and therefore cannot be trusted, I encourage you to consider the weight of the other 8 sources, especially the 6 relevant court cases that are the legal basis for this post as well as the other articles mentioned here.
And, the final final note, the usual disclaimer that IANAL and that nothing here constitutes any form of legal advice; I am merely sharing what I have learned from the perspective of my best understanding of the source material, in the hopes that the information will be useful to you in some way.
If that statement upsets or disturbs you in any way, read on as I explain the reality of the situation.
According to the D.C. Court of Appeals, it is a "fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen." Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981). In layman's terms, that means that civil services such as police protection are to be provided to the public at large, but the government (whether federal, state, or local) is under no obligation to provide such services in any specific instance, including instances where a LEO may be directly aware of a situation but fails to act to prevent loss.
But it doesn't stop at D.C. The SCOTUS has weighed in on the issue as well, in DeShaney v. Winnebago County and Castle Rock v. Gonzales, among others I'm sure, and issued opinions very similar to the one in Warren: No government body, no LEO, is under any obligation to render aid or protection to any individual citizen from a criminal act.
There are, however, exceptions to this rule, specifically the special relationship and state-created danger theories. In a nutshell, since these apply in the overwhelming minority of cases and thus are not the typical case, a special relationship applies to a person in police custody or to whom an explicit statement or promise of protection from a specific identified threat is given; a state-created danger is a situation where the actions of one or more LEOs resulted in putting a person into a dangerous situation where no danger exist before, or increased the danger to a person. Specifically, a state-created danger can only exist if the harm is direct and foreseeable, and if the state's actions (as executed by the LEOs) created or increased the danger facing an individual -- but not merely the general public.
Now we've twice seen this distinction between individuals and the general public -- the government has a duty to protect the general public but not any individual, whereas a state-created danger can only apply to an individual and not the general public. Just what is the distinction? It's really quite simple, actually: An individual is, well, an individual, whereas the general public is the collection of statistics applicable to the population served by the government in question (e.g. a city, a county, a state, or the whole US). Thus the government's duty to protect the general public is measured by the area's crime rates, as well as other statistics such as arrests made, drunk drivers stopped, etc. It's a numbers game, really, and is completely divorced from any concept of the individual, despite the fact that the general public is, by definition, a collection of individuals.
So why does no duty to protect the individual citizens exist? Well, it's a quite practical matter, in fact:
Even if all 500,000 American police officers were assigned to patrol, they could not protect 240 million citizens from upwards of 10 million criminals who enjoy the luxury of deciding when and where to strike. But we have nothing like 500,000 patrol officers; to determine how many police are actually available for any one shift, we must divide the 500,000 by four (three shifts per day, plus officers who have days off, are on sick leave, etc.). The resulting number must be cut in half to account for officers assigned to investigations, juvenile, records, laboratory, traffic, etc., rather than patrol.So far, though, we've only talked in hypotheticals and legal mumbo-jumbo -- what does all this mean to us, the citizens?
-- Professor Don B. Kates, Jr.; Guns, Murders, and the Constitution (Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1990). [Note: I have no better citation than this, which seems insufficient; this quote and its citation where lifted from Police Have No Duty To Protect Individuals.]
Consider the case of three women who shared a house. In the early morning of March 16th, 1975, two men broke into the house and quickly discovered one of the women; they promptly began to sexually assault and rape her. Her screams woke her two roommates, who immediately dialed 911. Cops responded, but the most they did was knock on the front door and then leave when they got no answer. Repeated calls to 911 got no additional response.
At one point their roommate's screams stopped, and the other two women thought the cops had come in. They called out, which alerted the two intruders to their presence. All three women were abducted, robbed, sexually assaulted, raped, and beaten over the next 14 hours.
This is the heinous story behind the Warren case. At no point did any of the responding officers so much as walk around to the back of the house, where they would have seen the broken door and had reasonable cause to then enter the home and investigate. The first 911 call was received at 0623, but was not dispatched to the cops on the street for another three minutes -- at 0626. Cops arrived two minutes after that, but left the scene by 0633. A 5-minute response time is nothing to sneeze at, but a 5-minute investigation certainly is! The second 911 call was received 9 minutes after that, at 0642, but was never dispatched to officers. You can read all about this, and more, in the Warren case.
The DeShaney case is another shocking one, although this time involves the Department of Social Services instead of police. DSS failed to act when they had repeated reports of child abuse from hospital staff, with the end result being that Joshua DeShaney was beaten so badly by his father that he fell into a coma; life-saving brain surgery revealed evidence of repeated, long-term abuse, but despite the surgery young Joshua ended up with extensive brain damage and now requires the services of a facility for the "profoundly retarded" (actual language of court documents) for the remainder of his life. However, despite the clear fact that DSS knew or should have known that Joshua was suffering abuse at the hands of his father, the court ruling was that there is no duty to protect an individual.
Returning to LEOs, the Castle Rock case involved a restraining order against Jessica Gonzalez's husband during divorce proceedings, requiring him to stay 100 yards from her and their 3 daughters. In direct violation of the restraining order, he took the 3 daughters in the evening of June 22nd, 1999; Gonzalez frantically called the police several times throughout the night, but the police refused to so much as look for her husband to question him. Early the following morning, her husband entered the police station and opened fire; the resulting shoot-out left him dead, and a search of his vehicle afterward found their 3 daughters, murdered prior to his arrival.
As in the other cases, the SCOTUS ruled that the restraining order carried no implications of a special relationship nor any promise of protection, and therefore ruled in favor of Castle Rock -- there was no duty to protect Jessica or her 3 daughters, even though there was a restraining order against her husband.
I'll freely admit that these 3 examples, while each one heinous in the actions -- or lack thereof -- on the part of the government, are in and of themselves only anecdotal evidence, and on their own prove nothing.
The court decisions in these cases, especially those from the SCOTUS, however, are not anecdotal -- they are, for all intents and purposes, the law.
That means that it is already well-established that you, the individual citizen, have absolutely no guarantees that you will be protected should you ever be targeted for a crime. And in all practicality, how could you expect such? As already pointed out, there are far too few patrol cops to protect everyone, especially when the criminals have the luxury of deciding when and where they will strike.
Picture the situation: government establishes a police force and installs 911 emergency call service. ...And this scenario isn't just a made-up piece of FUD -- this is based on fact, history, and court decisions. This is the reality that we live in -- the government tells us we can count on them to protect us, but when it comes time to pay the piper the courts tell us that we, as individuals, have no such guarantees, that those promises of protection were instead directed at the "general public".
Now imagine you are snapped awake one night by the sounds of your door breaking in. You reach for the telephone to dial 911. The 911 emergency operator never answers. Or the police answer, take your frantic report, but don't come. Or they come too late. In any of these scenarios, the burglar gets in, knifes you, and steals your VCR.
-- Richard W. Stevens, Just Dial 911? The Myth of Police Protection
Sources and further reading:
[Note: Not all of these were used directly in this post, but are nonetheless relevant. Those for which I have a link are hyperlinked.]
Court cases:
Bowers v. DeVito, 686F. 2nd 616, 618 (7th Cir. 1982).
Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748 (2005).
DeShaney v. Winnebago County, 489 U.S. 189 (1989).
Ford v. Town of Grafion, 693 N.E.2d 1047 (Mass. App. 1998).
Souza v. City of Antioch, 62 California Reporter, 2d 909, 916 (Cal. App. 1997).
Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981).
Other articles:
No Duty to Protect: Two Exceptions by L. Cary Unkelbach, Assistant County Attorney Representing the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office, Centennial, Colorado; Police Chief Magazine, July 2004
The Police: No Duty To Protect Individuals
Just Dial 911? The Myth of Police Protection by Richard W. Stevens; The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, April 2000
Police Have No Duty To Protect Individuals by Peter Kasler
As a final note, I will point out that, yes, 2 of these sources are pro-gun websites. However, both articles are -- for the most part -- grounded in the facts, and I've endeavored to keep the pro-gun bias out of this post. Nonetheless, if you feel that those two sources are too biased and therefore cannot be trusted, I encourage you to consider the weight of the other 8 sources, especially the 6 relevant court cases that are the legal basis for this post as well as the other articles mentioned here.
And, the final final note, the usual disclaimer that IANAL and that nothing here constitutes any form of legal advice; I am merely sharing what I have learned from the perspective of my best understanding of the source material, in the hopes that the information will be useful to you in some way.
Debunking the Myth of "To serve and protect" - Kromey