Think these officers saying "you're on your own" is strange? The fact is, police have zero obligation to protect you. The District of Columbia Appeals Court ruled in Warren v. District of Columbia that police do not have to provide services to citizens.
The most dramatic is Warren v. District of Columbia, in which three women were sexually violated because of gross negligence on the part of Metropolitan police officers responding to their call. In the early morning hours of March 16, 1975, two men broke down the back door of a D.C. townhouse in Northeast and began raping a woman on the second floor. Her two roommates, hiding one floor above, called the police. According to the court’s opinion, a squad car responded, and the officer failed even to exit his car before leaving. The two women, listening to their roommate scream, called the police again. This time, an officer went so far as to knock at the door, but then left without further inspection.
Once the attackers discovered the other two women, they had their sick, twisted way with all three of them for the next 14 hours (I will not describe any of the details). The women sued the District of Columbia, which argued that “a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen.” The District won the case based on what is actually a long-standing legal principle.
The Supreme Court has also ruled police have no obligation to protect or respond.
The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm, even a woman who had obtained a court-issued protective order against a violent husband making an arrest mandatory for a violation.
The decision, with an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia and dissents from Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, overturned a ruling by a federal appeals court in Colorado. The appeals court had permitted a lawsuit to proceed against a Colorado town, Castle Rock, for the failure of the police to respond to a woman's pleas for help after her estranged husband violated a protective order by kidnapping their three young daughters, whom he eventually killed.
Luckily, as demonstrated in the video by Milwaukee County Sheriff David J. Clarke Jr. in the video, sheriffs across the country actually promote law abiding citizens arming themselves for protection because after all, people are on their own whether it's because police can't get there fast enough or choose not to respond at all.
"Fifty-nine minutes on average to respond to a sexual assault."
Editor's note: A previous version of this post stated Warren v. District of Columbia was ruled on by the Supreme Court. This is incorrect. The case only made it to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
