Police Have No Obligation To Protect You

Police are government workers, salaries paid from government coffers funded by your tax dollars and, yes, by the fines, sanctions, penalties, fees, and surcharges drivers pay the courts for traffic tickets. Most people think that the police have an obligation (“duty”) to protect the citizens in the jurisdictions they serve. Many police forces even have a motto along the lines of “To Protect and Serve.” The unfortunate reality is that the police have no obligation to protect you. The police do not even have an obligation to respond to your call for help.

Warren v. District of Columbia

The most well-known case on this topic is Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1, D.C. Ct. of Ap. 1981). The summary of the case is this: Four women lived in a boarding house. One women lived on the 2nd floor with her 4 year old daughter, and two women lived on the third floor. Two men broke into the house and proceeded to assault and rape the woman on the second floor. The women on the third floor, hearing the screaming and cries from the floor below, called the police and were assured help was on the way, only to watch the police drive by the house, knock on the door and leave when no one answered. The two women on the third floor then called the police (again) and were assured (again) that help was on the way. The police never came, but thinking the police might be in the house, the two women called out the the third woman being assaulted. This resulted in the two assailants becoming aware of the other women in the house. The assailants proceeded to kidnap the three adult women at knife point and rape and beat them for the next 14 hours.

The three women sued the District of Columbia based on numerous failures of the police department in this event, but their case was dismissed at the trial court level. The Supreme Court of the United States explained that it is a “fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.”

If the police have no duty to protect you, what is their purpose?

There’s no denying that sometimes police do engage in activities that protect us. Sometimes police arrest perpetrators of violent crime, or perpetrators of crimes that at least involve a victim. Is protecting you their primary goal though? Most of the criminal charges we see arise from victimless crimes. No one was hurt, nothing was stolen, no property damage occured in the commission of these victimless crimes. Criminal charges like excessive speed are predicated on the *possibility* that something *might* happen if a driver drives too fast. Other laws, like the old marijuana laws in Arizona, weren’t based on any possibility of any negative outcome; the government just didn’t like weed.

It seems that much police activity is geared towards enforcing the will of the government leadership. And okay, fine, perhaps we can argue that the will of the government leadership is the result of the will of the people because the government leadership is often elected. However, we do see what we might generously call “irregular enforcement” of victimless crime laws. This means the police can simply choose to enforce particular laws as it suits their goals. If police don’t like you or your business, then perhaps they will selectively enforce the law on you so that you go away.

Conclusion

The bottom line is this: Police are not here to help you, you are generally best served by avoiding police interaction, and be prepared to take care of yourself. The police probably aren’t coming to help you.