Current Events > Are cops legally required to help/protect you?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Like if youre getting strangled in broad daylight, can a cop just choose not to intervene?

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dont they have the moto to serve and protect

naw man cops are only looking out for two people: corporations, dolla bills, an da republicans

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CADE FOSTER posted...

dont they have the moto to serve and protect

I mean is a motto legally binding though?

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SpriteLimit posted...

naw man cops are only looking out for two people: corporations, dolla bills, an da republicans

Sounds about white.

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No. I believe that a supreme court case determined this somewhat recently. It was the case with that security officer at that school shooting who ran from the scene and left the students to fend for themselves.

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I believe the SCOTUS deemed they don't have to do shit if they don't want to

CADE FOSTER posted...

dont they have the moto to serve and protect

That's the LAPD motto, adopted by many precincts across the country, but it's not an oath.
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voldothegr8 posted...

I believe the SCOTUS deemed they don't have to do shit if they don't want to

darkzero297 posted...

No. I believe that a supreme court case determined this somewhat recently. It was the case with that security officer at that school shooting who ran from the scene and left the students to fend for themselves.

Man, thats wild.

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I have the serve and protect on my sleeve patches. Funny a prison guard is actually expected to uphold that more than a cop. Inmate dies on my watch and they are gonne be so far up my ass with investigations it aint funny. Could even end up in prison. Happened to a guard in this state a couple years ago. Inmate was murdered and upon reviewing camera footage the guard hadnt made a round in many hours. Never kept up with the case but he was being charged and facing potential prison time last I heard about it.


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Welp, time to haul this one out again from Cracked:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAfUI_hETy0

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i usually have max charisma with cops, actually

no idea why, either

but that said? my police department??? kindof gangsta'. and im not the kind of brown they like to shoot or have 5 police cars come for JUST me

i will. change this shit. i will single-handedly have the head-inspector REPLACED

probably if there isn't anything preventing them or if it isn't a suicide job.

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They could. But they most likely won't be a cop any longer once that action gets out.

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The only thing cops seem to be legally required to do is shoot black people for no reason.
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Should, but aren't

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ScazarMeltex posted...

No they do not.
Both cases show that the police are not legally required to protect you.
Warren vs District of Columbia
Castle rock vs Gonzales

This legal firms page explains the relevant case law.
https://www.barneslawllp.com/blog/police-not-required-protect

This is good siting of evidence, and no the police are not obligated to help, really fucked up when you really think about it.

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I feel like people always quote those SCOTUS cases and then others more familiar with the law explain that's an oversimplification. Isn't it that the police are not obligated to protect a specific person in the face of a possible threat of a crime happening?

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BB mofo posted...

Welp, time to haul this one out again from Cracked:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAfUI_hETy0

The one thing that video or the case seems to leave out that Im curious about: What would justify the police having to intervene where you could win a lawsuit? If the police were not already behind a locked door and being confronted, would that have changed the entire scenario? Could they have never taken the guy into custody and let him walk away? At what point are they required to intervene or lose their job and face a lawsuit theyd lose?

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They dont owe any individual duty to anybody.

The SCOTUS case came from a case of a woman being stalked and the cops wouldnt do anything up to the night the guy killed her. The courts said the police had no actual duty to any individual citizen.

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They can't do anything until a crime is committed.
Unless there's a protest. Then they're all over the fucking place.

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DJquackquack posted...

Like if youre getting strangled in broad daylight, can a cop just choose not to intervene?

Is your name George Floyd?
Then the answer is yes.
However those officers are now facing criminal charges for their failure to intervene. So the answer is also no.

Nah cops kill more innocent people than they actually do to help people

They legally have no obligation to help you and to ask them to do that may set them off.

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Damar posted...

Is your name George Floyd?
Then the answer is yes.
However those officers are now facing criminal charges for their failure to intervene. So the answer is also no.

Well, you kinda stated that completely wrong. It sounds like they didnt help Floyd, which is completely different than not intervening at all considered they absolutely did and l became the attackers. To be a real comparison itd be like if the business owner was kneeling on Floyd and the cops just stood by and watched, not wanting to intervenewhich from this topic sounds like theyd have been perfectly fine doing (from a legal standpoint) to not put themselves in harms way. Which definitely sucks but again, not the same as the cops being the one doing the attacking.

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Bump

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Cops have only one actual duty, and that's to protect oligarchs.

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CADE FOSTER posted...

dont they have the moto to serve and protect

They never specified who they're protecting & serving though.
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St0rmFury posted...

They never specified who they're protecting & serving though.

https://ehlinelaw.com/blog/do-police-have-a-duty-to-protect-me

Since My Self Defense Rights Are Questionable, Why Dont I Have A General Right To Be Affirmatively Protected By Law Enforcers From My Attackers?
We have seen elected DAs filing nonsense charges against law-abiding citizens trying to defend their families and homes with guns. Sure, eventually, the charges get thrown out in most cases. But typically, using a firearm to defend yourself, even if its on tape (clearly defensive in nature), will result in your arrest and bankruptcy defending false charges. And unless the police took an affirmative act in furtherance of some duty they assumed to protect you, you are out of luck most of the time. You are left facing jail to invoke an unalienable right after saving your life, limb, and property.

SCOTUS opined: Nothing in the language of the Due Process Clause itself requires the State to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens against invasion by private actors. (DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services (1989) 489 U.S. 189). The seminal U.S. case that started it all is Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of App. 1981). In Warren, three women were held hostage by two violent men. Although the women were able to phone the police department two times during their 14-hour gang rape, the police never showed.

The women were later discovered, beaten, robbed, and bloodied after enduring hours of painful vaginal, anal and oral rape. SCOTUS sided with law enforcement, stating there is a well-established rule that official police personnel and the government employing them are not generally liable to victims of criminal acts for failure to provide adequate police protection. In other words, despite the imminent danger, the cops did nothing. Imagine if one of those women rape victims had a firearm? If she had used it in a town like Washington State or DC, shed be arrested, called a racist by CNN and WaPo, and probably lose her job. That is the state of things today in America, where illegal is legal and right is wrong. (Orwell).

When Do The Police Have A Duty To Protect Me?
The late, great Johnny Cochran lost that argument once and for all back in 1996. And once again, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its 2005 decision in Castle Rock v. Gonzales.
There, SCOTUS reminded us the only time police have liability to citizens for failing to provide police protection is:
-> Imminent Danger,
-> After police accept a duty to do something,
_> When police deny you police protection based upon your race or some related civil rights violation.

Otherwise, police agencies are not obligated to protect citizens.

Conclusion:
Though you may find it alarming, we maintain no affirmative right to police aid, even a helpless woman or child, facing imminent danger. We all remain responsible for our own personal safety, the main reason firearms rights activists are exposing the hypocrisy of what they call the nanny state. The United States Constitution does not require police to protect you from an individual attacker. This has remained an unwavering rule since our ancient common law history and wont change anytime soon.

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Conker posted...

What would justify the police having to intervene where you could win a lawsuit? If the police were not already behind a locked door and being confronted, would that have changed the entire scenario?

Police have "Qualified Immunity" to personally protect their ass from civil lawsuits. The department can be sued and has to pay for any damages. The department themselves don't really give a shit if they win or lose because it's not their money, it's the taxpayers who have to pay the damages.

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Wasnt there a case where, during a school shooting, a cop basically hid and got in serious trouble for it?

Edit-
Here it is:

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/judge-school-officer-hid-shooting-facing-charges-79552640

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what's their hotline for

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Nukazie posted...

what's their hotline for

For?

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Legally, maybe not. People have tried to sue police departments and government organisations in the past for negligence, but multiple court cases have upheld the decision that these organisations don't have a duty to protect people from private actors.

https://www.barneslawllp.com/blog/police-not-required-protect

Furthermore, the police motto of "Serve and Protect" has been defended as simply a motto or a slogan, not a duty that the police are required to uphold.

As per the link:

on June 27, 2005, in Castle Rock v. Gonzales, the U.S. Supreme Court again ruled that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm. The decision overturned a federal appeals court ruling which permitted a lawsuit against the town of Castle Rock for the polices failure to respond after Jessica Gonzales tried to get the police to arrest her estranged husband Simon Gonzales for kidnapping their three daughters (ages 7, 8, and 10) while they were playing outside, in violation of a court-issued protective order. After Simon called to tell Jessica where they were at (in Denver at an amusement park), for hours she pleaded for the police to arrest Simon. But, the police failed to act before Simon showed up at the police department and started shooting inside, and with the bodies of the 3 children in the trunk of his car.

In her suit against the town, Jessica argued that the protective order stating you shall arrest or issue a warrant for arrest of a violator and that it gave her a property interest within the meaning of the 14th Amendments Due Process guarantees, which prohibits the deprivation of property without due process.

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The Court went on to reaffirm the DeShaney ruling that there is no affirmative right to aid by the government or the police found in the U.S. Constitution, and thus no legal recourse could be brought thereunder. [16] The no duty to protect rule remains unwavering and the law today.

Constitutionally, the police and government aren't dutybound to protect people. As such, they can't be sued on constitutional grounds - a last ditch effort brought forward by people whose children were killed due to governmental and police negligence, as they usually aren't punished on other grounds either.

But the wider consequence of this precedent is that the government and the police are seen as having no duty to protect, and private citizens havinf no right to protection by those institutions. Meaning that if someone were to die or be substantially harmed due to negligence from a governmental body or the police, those organisations can't be found liable.

The term "protect and serve" is a motto and a slogan, nothing more. The law doesn't see it as their responsibility or duty. So while there are probably laws that require law enforcement to act in the event of them witnessing a crime, they're not duty-bound to help - which is a precedent set by the supreme court that has since been upheld.

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I realise that I haven't made the best case for the excerpt I published, where the plaintiff tried to sue under the banner of property damage.

The reason why she tried to sue under property damage was due to a 1989 ruling that established the original precedent of government bodies having no duty to protect people, in which a 4 year old boy was beaten to the point of disability by his father, before becoming comatose and subsequently dying.

Notably, the organisation took some action, but they didn't remove the child from the custody of his abusive father. The resulting court case led to the predecent that the state isn't required to protect the life, liberty or property against invasion by outside actors:

In the 1989 landmark case of DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the failure by government workers to protect someone (even 4-year-old Joshua DeShaney) from physical violence or harm from another person (his father) did not breach any substantive constitutional duty. In this case, Joshuas mother sued the Winnebago County Department of Social Services, alleging it deprived Joshua of his "liberty interest in bodily integrity, in violation of his rights under the substantive component of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, by failing to intervene to protect him against his father's violence.

While the Department took various steps to protect Joshua after receiving numerous complaints of the abuse, the Department took no actions to remove Joshua from his father's custody. Joshua became comatose and extremely r------- due to traumatic head injuries inflicted by his father who physically beat him over a long period of time.

Nevertheless, the Court found that the government had no affirmative duty to protect any person, even a child, from harm by another person. Nothing in the language of the Due Process Clause itself requires the State to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens against invasion by private actors," stated Chief Justice Rehnquist for the majority, "even where such aid may be necessary to secure life, liberty, or property interests of which the government itself may not deprive the individual" without due process of the law."

Which was subsequently upheld in the 2005 case against the police, applying the same standards to them as well as government bodies such as Social Services.

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Are cops legally required to help/protect you?

I know one of the textbook exceptions is when you're trying to assault and maim them. Cops are still citizens too.

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ClockworkHare posted...

I know one of the textbook exceptions is when you're trying to assault and maim them. Cops are still citizens too.

Well yeah, but that kinda goes without saying. Your rights cant infringe on theirs.

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