From: cmraman@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Serious Moonlighter)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: Police and their responsibilities in Australia (was Re: Susan is still only thinking about herself)
Summary: Brian drops the ball again
Date: 7 Apr 92 07:14:30 GMT
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz; Open Access Computing


In article <brian.702609223@coombs> brian@coombs.anu.edu.au (Brian) writes:
>malloy@NPRDC.NAVY.MIL (Sean Malloy) writes:
>
>>A month ago, I challenged him to provide hard proof (citation of
>>either the law or the court decision) that the police in Australia are
>>legally liable for damages resulting from a failure to carry out their
>>(claimed) responsibility to protect an individual.
>
>	So Sean, I admit that I was only half right (and you were only half
>wrong).  The Police are not _legally_ required to respond but can be 
>_legally_ held responsible for their actions and sued if they fail to
>protect an individual.  They are though, both politically and duty bound
>to respond.
>
Brian, I'm afraid that following this most recent post of yours (the legal
precedents, though, intersting, took up too much space so i nuked 'em. our
stupid news posting program won't accept a reply with more quoted text than
new text. damn kludge. if i had time i'd fix it. :), I must agree with
Sean's assertion that you are avoiding his question. Your post which
started this argument, as I recall, stated that the Australian police were
obligated to _protect_ the citizenry. He asked for precedents. You
responded with a post on their obligation to _respond_ to calls for aid.

However, response does not necessarily imply portection. Witness the
infamous "9-1-1 murder" here in San Francisco, CA. A young man driving home
from a baseball game experienced car trouble, and stopped to call a tow
truck. When he returned from making that call, he discovered two men
breaking into his car (apparently with intent to ransack). He ran back and
called 9-1-1, the police emergency number, and while reporting the break-in
to an insufficiently interested dispatcher (who gave the call a priority
"B" because it didn't appear to involve a life-threatening situation), he
was dragged from the phone by the thieves and beaten to death. The police
did _respond_ to the call, but they were unable to protect Scott
Quackenbush from being murdered.

Had he had a handgun (not likely, given California's restrictive gun laws),
he could have at least driven the thieves away from his car. He could also
(though less likely) have held them at bay while phoning the police and
therefore assisted in their apprehension. As a last resort, he could have
defended himself with deadly force, resulting in an innocent man still
being alive while a two-time loser bit the dust. (no great loss to society.
As things are, one of the thieves was sentenced as a minor to three years
in the California Youth Authority for manslaughter, while the other (who
was tried as an adult) got 6 years in prison.)

Now, if you'd managed to support your original contention that the police
were obligated to _protect_, I might have been impressed.

Marc Reeve
cmraman@ucscb.ucsc.edu cmraman@deeptht.santa-cruz.ca.us