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Do You Have A Right to Police Protection?

One of the basic themes of gun control is that only the police and military should have handguns or any type of firearm. I cannot explain their rationale, other than to say that gun control proponents must believe that the police exist to protect the citizenry from victimization. But, in light of court decisions, we find that such is not the case. Further, look at the behavior of attorneys, and in particular, one attorney Mr. John Brophy, who doesn't deny that the police have no legal obligation to protect citizens, but does attempt to intentionally mislead people into believing that the government in this country recognizes and upholds citizens' rights to self defense, a belief that is completely and utterly false! Look at Waco, Ruby Ridge, gun control legislation and associated court cases, the Bernard Goetz case in New York and other so called weapons charges cases, for evidence of the government's true intentions. In other words, Mr. Brophy is deliberately lying, in an attempt to cover up what the government really is, when he says that the government recognizes your legal rights to self-protection. Mr. Brophy's behavior is hardly surprising considering that he belongs to the same closed private club that the judges in the courts do. But, anyways, onto further discussion about what the courts have done.

The courts have decided that you have no right to expect the police to protect you from crime! Incredible as it may seem, the courts have ruled that the police are not obligated to even respond to your calls for help, even in life threatening situations! To be fair to the police, I think that many, and perhaps most, officers really do want to save lives and stop dangerous situations before people get hurt. But the key point to remember is that the courts have said they are under no legal obligation to do so. Another key point to remember is that the courts have committed treason against the people and sovereignty of this country in making those decisions, if, for no other reason than the following:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

For those who do not recognize what I just quoted, this is the Preamble to the United States Constitution, and the government is not obeying it because of the court decisions just mentioned, and which are backed up by case histories included later in this document.

The United States Constitution is the supreme law of the land and the Preamble has as much legal force as the rest of the United States Consitution. Furthermore, the Preamble of the United States Constitution defines why, and for what reasons, the government should exist. If the government isn't following the Preamble of the United States Constitution, then, it isn't what the people intended that it should be. Or, in other words, the government is a fraud and is acting in bad faith.

The questions that everyone should be asking now are:

What is the government today and who does it serve if it isn't the people of this country? Find the answer here, even though the reading is dense.
Who do the police serve? It appears that they ultimately serve whoever the courts serve.

Who do the courts serve and are they accountable to the people of this country? Look at this. It should be obvious that the courts certainly do not serve the people of this country, that they are doing everything in their power to hide this from the people, and that they are trying to keep secret who it is that they do serve.

What is the ultimate goal of the government in this country? Try this terrifying answer:

Case Histories.
I welcome anyone who has a case history of their own to add to this list. Simply email it here and I will add it to this webpage. Some of the court case cites in these case histories are links to the actual cases in official online law library databases. The reader may wish to take a look at those actual cases. All of the links were valid at the time that they were created and every effort is made to keep those links valid. Nonetheless, the validity of any of those links can't be guaranteed and I would very much appreciate being notified if a reader finds a link to be invalid. The reader can easily reach me through here.

Ruth Brunell called the police on 20 different occasions to plead for protection from her husband. He was arrested only one time. One evening, Mr. Brunell telephoned his wife and told her he was coming over to kill her. When she called the police, they refused her request that they come to protect her. They told her to call back when he got there. Mr. Brunell stabbed his wife to death before she could call the police to tell them that he was there. The court held that the San Jose police were not liable for ignoring Mrs. Brunell's pleas for help (Hartzler v. City of San Jose, 46 Cal. App. 3d 6 (1st Dist. 1975)). Those of you in the Silicon Valley, please note what city this happened in!

Consider the case of Linda Riss, in which a young woman telephoned the police and begged for help because her ex-boyfriend had repeatedly threatened: "If I can't have you no one else will have you, and when I get through with you, no one else will want you." The day after she had pleaded for police protection, the ex-boyfriend threw lye in her face, blinding her in one eye, severely damaging the other, and permanently scarring her features. "What makes the City's position particularly difficult to understand," wrote a dissenting opinion in her tort suit against the City, "is that, in conformity to the dictates of the law, Linda did not carry any weapon for self-defense. Thus, by a rather bitter irony she was required to rely for protection on the City of New York which now denies all responsibility to her" (Riss v. New York, 240 N.E.2d 860 (N.Y.1968)). Note: Linda Riss obeyed the law, yet the law prevented her from arming herself in self defense.

Warren v. District of Columbia is one of the leading cases of this type. Two women were upstairs in a townhouse when they heard their roommate, a third woman, being attacked downstairs by intruders. They phoned the police several times and were assured that officers were on the way. After about 30 minutes, when their roommate's screams had stopped, they assumed that the police had finally arrived. When the two women went downstairs, they saw that, in fact, the police never came, but the intruders were still there. As the Warren court graphically states in the opinion: "For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands of their attackers." The three women sued the District of Columbia for failing to protect them, but D.C.'s highest court exonerated the District and its police, saying that 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). Just what did happen to "provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" anyways?

The seminal case establishing the general rule that police have no duty under federal law to protect citizens is DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services (109 S.Ct. 998, 1989; 489 U.S. 189 (1989)). Look here to see when and where the United States Supreme Court first introduced that "general rule" that the police have no duty under federal law to protect the citizens. Frequently these cases are based on an alleged "special membership" between the injured party and the police. In DeShaney, the injured party was a boy who was beaten and permanently injured by his father. He claimed a special relationship existed because local officials knew he was being abused. Indeed, they had "specifically proclaimed by word and deed [their] intention to protect him against that danger," but failed to remove him from his father's custody ("Domestic Violence -- When Do Police Have a Constitutional Duty to Protect?" Special Agent Daniel L. Schofield, S.J.D., FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, January, 1991).

The court in DeShaney held that no duty arose as a result of a "special relationship," concluding that Constitutional duties of care and protection only exist as to certain individuals, such as incarcerated prisoners, involuntarily committed mental patients and others restrained against their will and therefore unable to protect themselves. "The affirmative duty to protect arises not from the State's knowledge of the individual's predicament or from its expressions of intent to help him, but from the limitation which it has imposed on his freedom to act on his own behalf" (DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 109 S.Ct. 998 (1989) at 1006). In other words, this court's decision is just so much doublespeak designed to allow the government to turn its back on the people. Consider the absurdities that this court put forth, namely:

A little boy in the legal custody of an abusive father is able to protect himself and is free to act on his own behalf, even though he is a minor and is not of legal age to act on his own behalf.

The word or assurances of a government official, including those of a police officer, mean nothing, because this court has decided that the giving of that word or those assurances in no way obligates a government official to keep his or her word or assurances.

About a year later, the United States Court of Appeals interpreted DeShaney in the California case of Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Department (901 F.2d 696 9th Cir. 1990). Ms. Balistreri, beaten and harassed by her estranged husband, alleged a "special relationship" existed between her and the Pacifica Police Department, to wit, they were duty-bound to protect her because there was a restraining order against her husband. The Court of Appeals, however, concluded that DeShaney limited the circumstances that would give rise to a "special relationship" to instances of custody. Because no such custody existed in Balistreri, the Pacifica Police had no duty to protect her. So, when they failed to do so and she was injured, they were not held to be liable.

Citizens injured because the police failed to protect them can only sue the State or local government in federal court if one of their officials violated a federal statutory or Constitutional right, and can only win such a suit if a "special relationship" can be shown to have existed, which DeShaney and its progeny make it very difficult to do. Moreover, Zinermon v. Burch (110 S.Ct. 975, 984 1990; 494 U.S. 113 (1990)) very likely precludes Section 1983 liability for police agencies in these types of cases if there is a potential remedy via a State tort action. That very deceptive case, because it appears to favor Burch, who was the injured party, in part, states:

"The constitutional violation actionable under 1983 is not complete when the deprivation occurs; it is not complete unless and until the State fails to provide due process. Therefore, to determine whether a constitutional violation has occurred, it is necessary to ask what process the State provided, and whether it was constitutionally adequate."

"We express no view on the ultimate merits of Burch's claim; we hold only that his complaint was sufficient to state a claim under 1983 for violation of his procedural due process rights."

Many states, however, have specifically denied such claims, barring lawsuits against State or local officials for failure to protect, by enacting statutes such as California's Government Code, Sections 821, 845, and 846, which state in part: "Neither a public entity or a public employee [may be sued] for failure to provide adequate police protection or service, failure to prevent the commission of crimes and failure to apprehend criminals." No doubt, Zinermon v. Burch (110 S.Ct. 975, 984 1990; 494 U.S. 113 (1990)) would still assert that those states provide adequate remedies.

Another key point stated in Zinermon v. Burch (110 S.Ct. 975, 984 1990; 494 U.S. 113 (1990)) is that of making "due process" dependent, at least in part, on fiscal issues. To quote that case again:

"Due process, as this Court often has said, is a flexible concept that varies with the particular situation. To determine what procedural protections the Constitution requires in a particular case, we weigh several factors:

'First, the private interest that will be affected by the official action; second, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and finally, the Government's interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail.' Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 335 (1976)."

Considering that the money in the United States is fraud, and that the problems that it has created will only get worse with time, it can be expected that the "due process" given the citizens of this country will also get more and more limited with time.