OFF THE WIRE
You’re on your own, regardless of what you think, what you were told, or believe cops are supposed to do.
Remember this when they talk about banning guns
In light of the recent terror attack in Orlando, Florida many people are
asking the question, “What can the government do to protect the
people?” Everything from banning certain types of firearms to
prohibiting people on the no-fly list from buying guns to immigration
reforms has been proposed as possible government solutions.
However, did you know that the government, and specifically law
enforcement, does not have any duty to protect the general public? Based
on the headline and this information, you might assume this is a new,
landmark decision. However, it has long been the court’s stance that,
essentially, the American people are responsible for taking case of
their own personal safety.
According to a 2005 ruling from the
SCOTUS, the government doesn’t even have a duty to protect you if you’ve
obtained a court issued restraining order. From a New York Times
article on that ruling:
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.
For hours on the night of June 22, 1999, Jessica Gonzales tried
to get the Castle Rock police to find and arrest her estranged husband,
Simon Gonzales, who was under a court order to stay 100 yards away from
the house. He had taken the children, ages 7, 9 and 10, as they played
outside, and he later called his wife to tell her that he had the girls
at an amusement park in Denver.
A 1989 case found the same thing. Also from the Times:
A 1989 decision, DeShaney v. Winnebago County, held that the
failure by county social service workers to protect a young boy from a
beating by his father did not breach any substantive constitutional
duty.
Going back even further, to 1981, a federal court of appeals found the same lack of responsibility. From the Wikipedia page on Warren v. District of Columbia:
In
two separate cases, Carolyn Warren, Miriam Douglas, Joan Taliaferro,
and Wilfred Nichol sued the District of Columbia and individual members
of the Metropolitan Police Department for negligent failure to provide
adequate police services. The trial judges held that the police were
under no specific legal duty to provide protection to the individual
plaintiffs and dismissed the complaints.
In a 2-1
decision, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals determined that
Warren, Taliaferro, and Nichol were owed a special duty of care by the
police department and reversed the trial court rulings. In a unanimous
decision, the court also held that Douglas failed to fit within the
class of persons to whom a special duty was owed and affirmed the trial
court’s dismissal of her complaint. The case was reheard by an en banc
panel of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
Given the fact that the government is not responsible for protecting
the general public from common criminals, rapists, mass murderers and
terrorists, then why do so many government proposed solutions involve
limiting the general public’s access to firearms? It’s a question that
is worth considering as we move forward with this discussion.
Sources:
– Warren v. District of Columbia
– Justices Rule Police Do Not Have a Constitutional Duty to Protect Someone (NY Times)
