In another of the cases dumped on an unsuspecting public today, the last day of the US Supreme Court’s session, the High and Mighty Nine reiterated that a municipality cannot be expected to provide competent police protection for its residents. The only twist was that this time the plaintiff was trying to hold the local coppers liable for failing to enforce a restraining order issued by a court.
The bad guy in question violated a restraining order to kidnap his daughters from his ex-wife’s front lawn. After being informed that the perp had announced he was taking the girls to an amusement park in Denver, the local constabulary neglected to call the Denver police or go to the amusement park. Their effort was limited to trying to contact the perp on his phone, and “keeping an eye out” for his truck.
Ultimately, he was killed in a shoot-out with police. After they had tracked him to his mountain hideaway? Not exactly. He was shot in front of the police station. One suspects that he was double-parked, and had blocked in the cruiser detailed with making the morning donut run.
Oh, the three little girls? They were found dead in his truck. Heaven forbid, though, that the municipality should be held to standards of ordinary care.
This has been the standard in all 50 states and DC for decades (by case law and statute). The police can hardly be expected to keep everyone safe, there are thousands of citizens per on-duty officer, even in densely populated areas. (Outside city limits? Probably tens of thousands of people per on-duty officer.) Sure they might’ve been able to handle this case better, but then someone else’s life might’ve been lost for lack of a cop, and they’d be complaining.
This is a large part of why private ownership of firearms, and concealed carry is so important. American citizens are responsible for their own safety. Police have an obligation only to the public as a whole.
But jay, dont you feel its reasonble, that if were going to pay for a service, that we should at least expect a minimum level of service to be enfoced, in this case a couple of squad cars going to a theme park in dnever perhaps?
And also, Jay, the fact that we have ‘competent law enforcement’ is the excuse to prevent people from using necessary means to protect themselves. People are prevented from arming themselves, thereby leaving them prey to criminals, and the police can hardly be expected to protect you as well? They at least can put crime scene tape around your dead body and make a feeble attempt to find your killer.
My understanding of the issue in this case was whether the police violated the victim’s Constitutional rights by failing to enforce the restraining order. Given that the Constitution, with a few exceptions, deals mainly with negative rights – things the government may not do – the Court made the correct ruling in my opinion.
that we should at least expect a minimum level of service to be enfoced, in this case a couple of squad cars going to a theme park in dnever perhaps?
Squad cars which are then no longer patrolling the streets, leaving the city open to complaints that there aren’t enough police men on patrol. (Also, if you’re suggesting that the Castle Rock police trundle up to Denver, keep in mind that Castle Rock police would not have jurisdiction inside Denver. They could, at best, hope to effect a snatch and grab of the kids.)
And the only minimum level of service you can count on is:
They at least can put crime scene tape around your dead body and make a feeble attempt to find your killer.
Indeed, that is the minimum level of service I expect.
And also, Jay, the fact that we have ‘competent law enforcement’ is the excuse to prevent people from using necessary means to protect themselves. People are prevented from arming themselves, thereby leaving them prey to criminals, and the police can hardly be expected to protect you as well?
The problem here is that people are stripped of the means to defend themselves. Not that they aren’t magically protected by the police. The correct state of affairs is: police aren’t responsible for you in particular, but you are allowed to defend yourself with whatever tools you deem appropriate.
That the statists work to deprive us of the tools wouldn’t make it any more right to make the police responsible for everyone. That only further increases dependancy upon the government. (If the government could be successfully sued for failing to protect individuals from every minor crime, the tax increases necessary to make the payouts would very rapidly make that state of affairs unpopular.)
Let’s hear it for the living Constitution. The same people who would abridge your right to own weapons to defend yourself say the police have no responsibility to defend you. Hello.
The police can’t be everywhere at once. You can’t expect the same level of police protection that the government gets to be extended to the ordinary taxpayer and you certainly can’t expect the government’s protection to be lowered to the level of the ordinary sucker’s.. And you can’t allow the ordinary taxpayer to have the means to defend himself in case those means are turned on somebody important, ie government.
Simple.
Who amongst us, if elected to number 10, could resist the urge to continue the age-old policies of “Lots of protection and bribes for me, screw everyone else, muahahahah!”?
We need more of this, much more. By that I mean individuals and associations seeking to have the state and its agencies ordered by law to do what we require of it. Yes, I would gladly put my money where my mouth is, if only Gordon Brown would let me keep some of it.
It would be a win-win all round: in this case, the police would be ordered to do what it is supposed to do (and be accountable) or the court will make it clear that the state isn’t on your side, something which Jessica Gonzalez has just discovered.
One suspects that if the case had gone the other way, the reaction from police departments would simply be to issue a great deal less restraining orders.
I agree that as a policy issue that the police are certainly honor bound to do more than they did, and that they let that woman and those children down. As a Consitutional issue, however, I’m not sure that I could find support for it. The Constitution does not mandate everything that I think is good.
One suspects that if the case had gone the other way, the reaction from police departments would simply be to issue a great deal less restraining orders.
1) Police departments don’t issue restraining orders. They come from judges, because a restraining order requires a hearing involving both parties. The to-be-restrained party is allowed to present evidence in their defense, after all.
1a) Further, a restraining order simply makes it a crime to come within a certain distance of another person. Nothing in it says that you’ll be provided with a personal police detail.
2) I don’t think you quite get what was being decided in this case. The question facing the court was, does anything in the Federal constitution give this woman the right to sue the city of Castle Rock because a crime was committed against her, despite Colorado’s law saying that no, you can’t sue the state just because it wasn’t able to protect you from something bad. (Colorado’s Supreme Court had already been asked the same question, except with “Colorado” replacing “Federal”.)
If the case had gone the other way, it isn’t just restraining orders which would be affected. It would’ve overturned statute and case law everywhere in the US, allowing people to sue the government because they were the victim of a crime which wasn’t prevented. It wouldn’t necessarily have made those cases winnable, but it would’ve permitted them.
(As it stands, you can only sue the police for things they do, like run you over, arrest you illegally, etc. You can’t sue them for not doing something.)
Everyone ought to take a nice close look at “Dial 911 and Die“, and the Supreme Court documents surrounding the case. The news articles on this case are particularly atrocious, and the blog entry above did nothing to make more clear the nature of things.
Look at the U.S. Constitution as a restraining order on government. It’s violated all the time, but who’s counting?
BTW, do the English still have the old peace bond? This was like a restraining order, but like bail, you had to put up money which was forfeit if you broke the terms. The intention was to prevent fights between known enemies, and it at least exacted a penalty for breach.
To take some of the above comments just a step farther, the weapon of choice in a domestic dispute isn’t a restraining order. It’s a gun. This woman certainly needed one.
That’s not what I suspect. What I suspect is that such a decision would have hastened the day when each of us has our own personal uniformed thug … er, police officer … assigned to keep an eye on us. After all, the police are part of the government, and the government is, you know, here to help you.
The court in this case merely reinforced the long standing concept of sovereign immunity i.e. the standard that you can’t sue the state unless the law expressly allows you to do so. Letting people sue the state is usually a bad idea because (1) the decision makers aren’t actually the ones coughing up the dough, the tax payers are and (2) lawsuits become a way for the well-heeled to influence government actions non-democratically. (See numerous “environmental” lawsuits for example).
One thing I did notice in this case is the utter disconnect between the courts, who issue the restraining order and the police who must enforce it. The courts never seem to ask the police if they have enough resources to have a realistic chance of enforcing the order, they just issue it and let the chips fall were they may. Lots of court action have this effect, the court makes a decision, like sentencing people to prison, and then the executive branch has to figure out how to pay for it.