[The following is courtesy of Karl Kleinpaste, our studious friend and colleague in Pittsburgh. My comments are in square brackets—Chris]

“Karl F. Bloss” <bloss@enter.net> writes:
> BTW, does anyone have the cite for the case that determined that the
> police are not liable if they don’t protect you?

Which one? :-)

1. “...a government and its agencies are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen...”

   —Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App. 1981)

   From the failed appeal by 2 victims of a rapist. The women were in their apartment when attacked. One of them managed to stay hidden in another bedroom and called 911. No police assistance ever materialized. The women sued, claiming that they had a right to protection. The trial court decided against them, and then the appeal court affirmed: Police have no responsibility, morally or legally, to provide protection either before or during an attack. (And of course you can't protect yourself—oh, horrors, no...)

   [Actually, it’s worse than that. According to attorney Peter Alan Kasler, who has written extensively on the topic of the inadequacy police protection, Miss Warren and one of her roommates were upstairs in their apartment when they heard someone break in and their other roommate began screaming. Warren dialed 911 and she and her roommate stayed upstairs. About 20 or 30 minutes later, the screaming stopped. Warren and her roommate, thinking the police had come to the rescue, went downstairs to find to their horror that the intruders were just taking a break. For the next fourteen hours, the intruders raped the three women and forced them to perform sexual acts upon each other (yes, the court even used this graphic description in its opinion). The police never came.—Chris]

2. “What makes the City’s position particularly difficult to understand 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 NY which now denies all responsibility to her.”

   —Riss v. New York, 22 N.Y.2d 579,293 N.Y.S.2d 897, 240 N.E.2d 806 (1958).

   Bitterly dissenting opinion in this case. Linda Riss was the victim of what we would today call a stalker. (Note date.) Her ex-boyfriend stalked her, and assaulted her by throwing acid in her face. She had notified the police of the difficulty she faced, who refused to do anything (what exactly could they have done, even if so empowered? Follow her around for the rest of her life?), and who also declined suggestions that she carry a weapon for her own protection.

   [Again, according to Kasler, Riss had, over the course of many months, petitioned for some kind of protection, and had repeatedly been denied. Her application for a permit to carry a handgun had been denied. The day of her attack was the day before her engagement party (she was to be married to her new boyfriend). Riss was permanently blinded and disfigured.—Chris]

3. “Law enforcement agencies and personnel have no duty to protect individuals from the criminal acts of others; instead their duty is to preserve the peace and arrest law breakers for the protection of the general public.”

   —Lynch v. N.C. Dept. of Justice, 376 S.E. 2nd 247 (N.C. App. 1989)

   The concept of “preservation of the peace” is functionally unrelated to any single individual’s personal safety. Gov’t. wants no responsibility to individuals, yet it wants power over them.

   Along with this, Jeffrey Snyder has written powerfully on the miserable moral position in which one is left, if one accepts the assertion that personal protection should be via a police force. Please see http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~karl/firearms/cowards.html:

   “It is impossible to address the problem of rampant crime without talking about the moral responsibility of the intended victim. Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because judges and prosecutors are too soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd technicalities. The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers.”

   [...]

   “Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to protect it? If you believe that it is the police’s, not only are you wrong—since the courts universally rule that they have no legal obligation to do so—but you face some difficult moral quandaries. How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself? Because that is his job and we pay him to do it? Because your life is of incalculable value, but his is only worth the $30,000 salary we pay him? If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so for you?”