via Wikipedia...
Warren v. District of Columbia[1] (444 A.2d. 1, D.C. Ct. of Ap. 1981) is an oft-quoted[2] District of Columbia Court of Appeals (equivalent to a state supreme court) case that held police do not have a duty to provide police services to individuals, even if a dispatcher promises help to be on the way, except when police develop a special duty to particular individuals.and this...
Read the whole thing....
In the early morning hours of Sunday, March 16, 1975, Carolyn Warren and Joan Taliaferro who shared a room on the third floor of their rooming house at 1112 Lamont Street Northwest in the District of Columbia, and Miriam Douglas, who shared a room on the second floor with her four-year-old daughter, were asleep. The women were awakened by the sound of the back door being broken down by two men later identified as Marvin Kent and James Morse. The men entered Douglas' second floor room, where Kent forced Douglas to sodomize him and Morse raped her.
Warren and Taliaferro heard Douglas' screams from the floor below. Warren telephoned the police, told the officer on duty that the house was being burglarized, and requested immediate assistance. The department employee told her to remain quiet and assured her that police assistance would be dispatched promptly.
Warren's call was received at Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters at 0623 hours, and was recorded as a burglary-in-progress. At 0626, a call was dispatched to officers on the street as a "Code 2" assignment, although calls of a crime in progress should be given priority and designated as "Code 1." Four police cruisers responded to the broadcast; three to the Lamont Street address and one to another address to investigate a possible suspect. (This suggests that when they heard that there had been a burglary, the police must have felt that they had a promising lead on a culprit.)
Meanwhile, Warren and Taliaferro crawled from their window onto an adjoining roof and waited for the police to arrive. While there, they observed one policeman drive through the alley behind their house and proceed to the front of the residence without stopping, leaning out the window, or getting out of the car to check the back entrance of the house. A second officer apparently knocked on the door in front of the residence, but left when he received no answer. The three officers departed the scene at 0633, five minutes after they arrived.
Warren and Taliaferro crawled back inside their room. They again heard Douglas' continuing screams; again called the police; told the officer that the intruders had entered the home, and requested immediate assistance. Once again, a police officer assured them that help was on the way. This second call was received at 0642 and recorded merely as "investigate the trouble;" it was never dispatched to any police officers.
Believing the police might be in the house, Warren and Taliaferro called down to Douglas, thereby alerting Kent to their presence. At knife point, Kent and Morse then forced all three women to accompany them to Kent's apartment. For the next fourteen hours the captive women were raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon one another, and made to submit to the sexual demands of Kent and Morse.
Do your own research into this case....
And then decide for yourself whether you WILL ... MAN UP... AND PROTECT YOU AND YOURS....
Or if you'll fall for the utopian dream that another man in uniform (that has his own family) will lay down his life to protect you and yours.
Remember this fact.
In briefing rooms all over America, a Police Sgt is telling his people that the most important thing is for them to all come back at the end of watch.
It makes perfect sense but doesn't exactly mesh with people's idealized version of police behavior.
Once we had someone putting small caliber bullets into the trees over our house clipping limbs and such. We called the LEO and they said someone was on the way. Three hours later they arrived. It was just a kid squirrel hunting from down in the holler and his rounds were traveling up hill to our house, it could have been an attack yet the LEO decided to wait three hours to show up, and when he did he told us he had to wait for back up since there were only two deputies a day working in the counties. These guys want to help but often are so wrapped up in red tape, out of fuel or miles apart and can only get to the scene after a couple maybe three hours.
ReplyDeleteI did ask if I should shoot back and was told I'd be arrested if I returned fire.
"What about the shooter?"
Well.......he got away.
and that's the thing. some want to help...many don't. i mean who can blame them? if they get involved and they aren't 100 percent right they can get sued and their own family endangered. so wait till you have all the info, write a report and safeguard your own families income.
ReplyDeleteadd that to the fact that you have one deputy per 50 mile area and they violate rules if they enter situations without back up on scene and you have homeowners that must do what it takes to survive. big city people will never understand that until a disaster hits...look back no further than the hurricane that hit new jersey and new york, but they quickly forget huddling in the dark waiting for help that never comes.