From: wood@eisley.akita.com (Ken Wood)
Newsgroups: seattle.general
Subject: Self Defence
Summary: The police are not required to protect you.
Keywords: police crimes defence law
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 08:02:40 PDT
Organization: Mos Eisley Spaceport BBS


     Here is a repost of some interesting cases that illustrate the 
point that the police are NOT obligated in any way to protect any 
individual citizen.  I hope they prove interesting.

RELY ON THE POLICE: AND PAY HEAVILY.....Even someone repeatedly threatened by
another has no entitlement to police protection until they have been physical-
ly harmed.
        In 1959, Linda Riss, a New Yorker, was terrorized by an ex-boyfriend,
who had a criminal record.  Over several months, he repeatedly threatened her:
"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."  She repeatedly sought police protection,
explaining her request in detail.  Nothing was done to protect her.
        When he threatened her with immediate attack, she again urgently beg-
ged the New York City Police Department for help:  "Completely distraught, she
called the police, begging for help, but was refused."  The next day, she was
attacked" A "thug" hired by her persecutor threw lye (sodium hydroxide) in her
face.  She was blinded in one eye and her face was permanently scarred.
        The Court of Appeals of New York ruled that Linda Riss has no right to
protection.  The Court refused to create such a right because that would
impose a crushing economic burden on the government.  Only the legislature
could create a  right to protection:

        "The amount of protection that may be provided is limited
        by the resources of the community and by a considered leg-
        islative-executive decision as to how these resources may
        be deployed.  For the courts to proclaim a new and general
        duty of protection ...even to those who may be the partic-
        ular seekers of protection based on specific hazards, could
        and would inevitably determine how the limited police resources
        of the community should be allocated and without predictable
        limits."

        Judge Keating dissented, bitterly noting that Linda Riss was victim-
ized not only because she had relied on the police to protect her, but because 
she obeyed New York laws that forbade her to own a weapon.  Judge Keating
wrote:

        "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 New York, which now denies all
responsibility to her."  [Riss v. City of New York, 293 N.Y. 2d 897 (1968)].

CALIFORNIA: AN IMMINENT DEATH THREAT MEANS NOTHING.....Even a person whose
life is imminently in peril is not entitled to help.  On 4 September 1972
Ruth Bunnell called the San Jose (California) police department to report that
her estranged husband, Mack Bunnell, had telephoned her to tell her that he
was coming over to her house to kill her.
        In the previous year, the San Jose police, "had made at least 20 calls
and responses to Mrs. Bunnell's home...allegedly related to complaints of
violent acts committed by Mack Bunnell on Mrs. Bunnell and her two daughters."

Even so, Ruth Bunnell was told to call back only when Mack Bunnell arrived.
        Some 45 minutes later, Mack Bunnell arrived and stabbed Ruth Bunnell
to death.  A neighbor called the police, who then came to the murder scene.
        The California Court of Appeals held that any claim against the police
department:

        "...is barred by the provisions of the California Tort Claims
        Act, particularly Section 845, which states: `Neither a public
        entity nor a public employee is liable for failure to establish
        a police department or otherwise provide police protection or,
        if police protection service is provided, for failure to provide
        sufficient police protection."  [Hartzler v. City of San Jose,
        App., 120 Cal.Rptr 5 (1975)].

WASHINGTON, D.C.: RAPE IS NO CAUSE FOR CONCERN.....If direct peril to life
does not entitle one to police protection, clearly imminent peril of rape
merits no concern.
        Carolyn Warren, of Washington, D.C., called the police on 16 March
1975: tow intruders had smashed the back door to her house and had attacked a
female house-mate.  After calling the police, Warren and another house-mate
took refuge on a lower back roof of the building.  The police went to the
front door and knocked.  Warren, afraid to go downstairs, could not answer.
The police officers left without checking the back door.
        Warren again called the police and was told that they would respond.
Assuming they had returned, Warren called out to the house-mate, thus reveal-
ing her own location.
        The two intruders then rounded up all three women.  "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 (the intruders - ed.)
        The Superior Court of the District of Columbia held that:

        "...the fundamental principle (is -ed.) 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 duty to provide public services is
        owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relation-
        ship between the police and an individual, no special legal
        duty exists."

        In an accompanying memorandum, the Court explained that the term
"special relationship" did not mean an oral promise to respond to a call for
help.  Rather, it involved the provision of help to the police force.
[Warren v. District of Columbia, D.C. App., 444 A.2d 1 (1981)].



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