The Police Have No Duty to Protect

 David Hardy over at the blog Of Arms and the Law has a post, the subject matter of which is the Parkland School shooting and the families' subsequent suit against the county and various officials. Hardy brings up the fact that the suit was dismissed essentially on the grounds that the police have no duty to protect individual citizens. The police, in other words, are not your body guards. Indeed, being a police officer and a body guard are two different skill sets, though they partially overlap.

To make the point of this post even more stark, though, let me lay it out for you:  you, alone, are responsible for your safety and security.  In the event of trouble, you should, if you have the time, call the police.  They may be there in time, who knows?  But in any case, you must be prepared to defend yourself.  You do have a weapon, right?

In saying the above, I am not in any way supporting the notion of defunding the police.  In fact, the police do serve a vital purpose in our community.  First, the police are charged with enforcing the law.  The effect of this is that criminals generally do not break the law right in front of a police officer.  To see the effect of this, recall that when you are driving, don't you pay more attention to your speed when the police are out in force handing out tickets?  Second, police, as part of their duties enforcing the law, investigate crimes, arrest perpetrators, and present cases to the prosecutor.  This helps make us all safer, though no one individual may lay claim to the services of the police.

At the same time, I need to point out that the police are drawn from the overall community, and of necessity can not be viewed as being special.  They are not more honest, nor better behaved, or in any way any "better" than the average.  Their training is in law enforcement.  Unlike TV cops, they may never have to fire their guns in defense of their lives, or the life of a citizen.

David Codrea, at the blog The War On Guns has a regular feature called "The Only Ones" that depicts police officers often committing crimes themselves. It is not to make police look bad, but rather to make the point that the police, like every other member of society, need to be policed. They are not avenging angels, but mere mortals who stray like everyone else.  They do not deserve to be the only ones who are allowed to carry arms.  In fact, we citizens would be fools to allow our servants to carry arms when we were not allowed to, or to possess arms which are denied to citizens.    

Now, back for a moment to the defund the police movement.  Are there crimes which should be decriminalized?  Well...yeah...of course.  I have argued for years that gun free zones, for example, should not exist.  While private property owners can make that determination for their properties, foolish though that is, I do not believe that government can make that determination, nor should they.  And I believe the entire National Firearms Act should have been struck down years ago by the Supreme Court.  That goes for the GCA68 as well.  And while we're at it, the ATF should be severely reigned in.  In terms of drugs, perhaps we might look to Switzerland as a model, since what we are doing isn't working, and there are so many behind bars because of drugs.

Good for David Hardy for making the point, again, that the police are not there to protect individuals.  Whenever the left points to the existence of police for why we needn't carry guns, we need to remind them that the purpose of police is to protect the community at large, not each individual.