The No Duty to Protect Argument (lets hate some cops)

As with most supreme court decisions regarding conduct of law enforcement, the case that would determine the duty to care (public duty doctrine) for all law enforcement in the US would be comical if it wasn't the exact opposite.  Just like Batman, law enforcement is not legally obligated to protect you.  Unlike Batman, the police are real and have a duty to do so, not a moral obligation bred of personal tragedy (and perhaps some helpful psychological issues), rather they serve for a paycheck, an actual sense of duty or because they have some issues of their own that the badge allows them to act on.  Their duty is personal and legal.  Outside of a hilarious (or tragic) dereliction of their legal duty, they cannot be held liable for not protecting a citizen.  If you notice all those legal words its because the legal system has helped create the problem.

Its not this easy, shockingly

Many court decisions that identify what LE can and cant do are codified because law enforcement did something stupid.  Not malicious (at least, not usually) but stupid (or ignorant) nonetheless.  Everyone at some point in their career will make a mistake, will fail to perform a task or will outright derelict the hell out of their duty.  It may even be funny when they do it, when its a cop going Chief Wiggum on you, the comedy is decidedly lacking.  We like the bumbling cop on TV, but we sure as hell dont want officer McDouchecanoe responding to your 911 call or consoling the victim of an armed robbery or rape.  As the line between reality and entertainment is blurred by a Greek tragedy-long list of horrible police shows, what is known and what is suspected becomes so blurred it might as well be the US/Mexico border.


I see the comment all the time "The cops have no duty to protect you." This is 100% true; except when its not.  There is a good reason for this, but it gets lost in the hate of LE in general that, if it isn't growing, is becoming far more obvious.  We live in times that make authority (real and imagined) uncomfortable because we see continued abuses of power at every level of the government.  There is a clear reason why LE has no "duty" to protect you and it has everything to do with the litigious nature of our society and the protection of the people, not the person.  But before we get into that, lets talk about why this is such a popular rallycry for folks to use when its time to bash the po'.  


These people (cops) have a sworn duty to uphold the law, not circumvent or ignore it.  Police brutality is perhaps seen as the first step on the stairs to the top of government corruption and its one the media is more than happy to exploit to make their air time more valuable.  Are the cops in the US more abusive than they were 50-60 years ago?  I would say absolutely civil rights movement not, either that or point to the abuse that led to the mandatory Miranda Warning given to anyone under interrogation because a few cops decided that they could obtain a confession without letting the accused know he had legal rights.  The man in question was eventually convicted of the crime (rape of a teenager) but only after his first conviction was thrown out.  Because some cops did what they did, we have Miranda and it has been hilariously misunderstood ever since (thanks, TV).  No, I think history bears that LE today is more educated, more professional and more law-abiding than their Adam 12 ancestors, despite the fact that everything else looks otherwise because lets face it, filming a cop doing exactly what he is supposed to be doing is boring unless that something is him face shooting bad guys.


If hes saving a kitten, pulling a kid from a car wreck, teaching a free class on car seats, helping a stranded motorist or generally doing anything not in the script of The Wire, we dont care enough to film it.  This is not in any way an excuse for stupid ass police behavior, but it does put it in a new light.  We love the negative, we love building drama and we maybe even like to think that we are on a freefall elevator full of screaming monkeys ride to a dystopian future.  Dont think so?  Name the last move that depicted the future as a place that would be worth living in.  Oh, no, Ill wait, go on.

The exception movie is nothing buy filthy, heart breaking lies.

     Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.       

Dont like Starbucks?  Why Not Zoidberg?

People are dumb.  Dumb people gotta eat so they get jobs.  Lazy people do too, and so do the ignorant and indifferent.  They work everywhere doing all manner of jobs from barrista to sheriff. One of them can screw up your coffee, the other one can ruin your life.  Which one will you rage at more?  Yeah. Humans sort of suck at not screwing up, in fact I would go the other way and say we excel at making mistakes.  Law enforcement is no different; but the problem isnt as simple as honest mistakes.  There are people wearing the badge who honestly shouldn't be, and some of those people should be in prison.   Some.  As hard as it is to become a police officer (credit, background, physiological investigations, polygraph, fitness, shooting, legal knowledge, driving, criminal procedure, hand to hand, etc. etc.) sometimes a dirt bag makes it in.  The honest cops hate that guy more than you do and we want to identify them and get rid of them as soon as possible, but its going to happen again because human nature.  Mistakes will be made.  This is no excuse, its an explanation.

Now what if I told you that a lot of the time, there are shitty people on the end of a 911 call and what if this simple fact of life was an overriding reason why cops have no duty to protect you?  What if I told you that the Justices understand the legal system maybe a bit better than you or me and have to make the most objective of objective decisions trying to account of every possible situation their decision could affect while you and me usually only think of how our decisions could affect us?  The police have no duty to protect you, rather they protect the public at large.

If they had a duty to protect you, as in every single individual, all manner of ridiculous law suits could and Better Call Saul would be filed when cops couldnt get to a burglary call in time, or were not able to pre crime the theft of your car.  If you want to see a total collapse of the legal system, this would be the way to do it.  Does this fact get abused by lazy, bad (or scared) officers? Yes, it does, but it also protects LE from the type of lawsuits that get airtime on TMZ.  Rest assured; any law that allows someone to not do their job will be exploited as often as it is legitimately used.


Duty isnt in an oath, ethics classes in adulthood are as pointless as a Tetris Movie and selfless service isnt something you can pick up like a card trick.  It takes a special kind of person to be a good officer and then that same person has to wade through depraved humanity, filth, shit, hate, bullshit lawyers, indifference and mediocre pay to arrive on the other side being the same sort of good person they started their career as.  If you think thats difficult, now consider an ehhhh-quality person or shit bag starting the same journey.   just because LE has no duty to protect you does not mean that they wont try, or maybe even lay down their life to do so.


If you want to hate all cops based on the actions of a few, thats fine.  Dont expect any reasonable person to be swayed by your unqualified statements or quoting of laws out of context though.  Its socially acceptable to hate all cops, chances are that if you arent a cop hater, you know one.  Thats fine too.  Im in LE and I dont care for some cops (as individuals I have met) but by and large the cops you havent met that you hate are actually on the same side as you.  I wont go as far as to compare blanket cop hatred with racism because its not nearly the same thing, though if both ideas were people they would probably get their coffee at the same Starbucks.

 

Flawed Media Reaction to a Flawed FBI report (FBIs Active Shooter Report, part II)

Yesterday I talked about the FBI's nonsensical Active Shooter report, today I happened upon an article by the Huffignton Post.  Obviously the Hufpo is not considered serious unbiased media by me or probably anyone reasonable, though its a source of credible information for at least enough people to keep it in business which says something.

Some people enjoy smoking meth, too, which also says something

Is this Hufpo piece a work of investigative journalism that breaks down the inconsistency and futile nature of the FBI reports data?  Haha, no.  The Hufpo decided that the report was sound and ran with the numbers to back a "moral" position even though the report admits to the reader that its incomplete and very specific in what it considers an active shooter event to be, which is basically an arbitrary definition someone in the government came up with and maybe won a bet on.

See, the Federal Government needs three deaths (not including the shooter) to classify an event as an active shooter (it also has to happen in a confined space, size not detailed).  40% of the 160 incidents included in the report dont meet this definition but are used anyway because, well, I actually have no idea...bodies are bodies, I guess?  Of these 160 events, 21 shooters were stopped by unarmed individuals (not LE) and only 5 incidents were stopped by armed individuals (not LE).  These aren't good numbers for the NRA's "Good guy with a gun" line, says HufPo.  Well, setting aside the problems with the report to begin with, Hufpo seemed to miss the point that these numbers represent people.  Actual living, breathing Americans and are not statistical commodity to be traded for political points.  Yeah, forgive me if I dont like peoples life and death situations being used to further a political ideology.  Lives were actually saved and Hufpo says its just not good enough.  They want less lives saved, I suppose.

Hufpo writer Mike Weisser doesn't care about your feelings, he has an issue with personal responsibility and obviously doesn't like the idea of people protecting others out of some moral or ethical desire to do so (unless its as a paid employee as the government, that is).  But Mike isnt done, he then cites a 2005 paper by Gary Kleck that looked at sexual assaults against women. 

Kleck examined sexual assaults and attempted sexual assaults from 1992-2002.  He goes into great detail on if these victims defended themselves and with what (gun, knife, other object) and then supposes based on numbers that those who didnt resist or fled to call the police were far better off than those who did fight back.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Klecks report advocates being a victim by choice (im seeing a trend here).  Our first problem is that the data he used if from the National Crime Victimization Survey, which does not ask a victim specific questions regarding guns, only resistance and it includes all victims including children/teens ("persons aged 12 or older") who cant legally own guns and probably didnt carry dirty.  Kleck comes right out and says that those who didnt resist with force were much less likely to be injured, except for being raped, that is.  Based on this dickpunchingly stupid correlation, Kleck is an idiot who thinks being raped must be better than being beat up after attempting to stop a rape, or, you know, smoke checking the rapist.  Hes an advocate for the victim-in-waiting mentality.  Because Kleck speaks Mike Weisser's language, its obvious why the Hufpo writer would include a report about sexual assault against women in an article about citizens resisting an active shooter because in the liberal mind these must be the same thing.  You literally can not make this shit up.  Well, you can but not ironically.  Oh yeah, and Kleck kind of contradicted himself a few times in the report like this one time he wrote this:

"In assault incidents, most Self Protection (SP) tactics appear to reduce the risk of injury and serious injury compared to nonresistance."

So self defense is good...then?  Im not convinced that they even know what they are saying.  Whatever they are selling, im not buying.  What is on display is that guns must not be very effective since they are used rarely to stop rapists and active shooters.  This is true if you re-arrange the numbers or sample the data to prove your point.  The evidence should not be made to fit the crime is rule number one of criminal investigations, not J school, it seems.  So Hufpo wrote a bad article on a bad report and a bad study.  Wait, I have something for this....

The FBIs report does not focus on those who stopped attempted active shooting events.  Now, someone reading this could say "well how can we know that someone prevented an active shooting?"  How about because this country and our legal system in general is obsessed with motive and intent.  Even when something isnt a tragedy, we want to know how bad it could have been.  Oh, and by we I mean the same media that wants you to be a victim, apparently.  The investigation and common sense regarding the elements of the crime will show what may have happened; and we my have the criminals words as well.  Just off the top of my head I can think of a few situations where a CCW or off duty cop prevented an active shooter.

I dont know about you, but having a chance is always better than no chance and being unarmed is not much of a chance.  Though if I read the Hufpo piece right, he may be advocating that unarmed resistance is better than armed resistance which makes a weird kind of sense if you are morally opposed to inanimate objects based on their effectiveness to perform certain tasks.  Im sure he rides his bike across country as opposed to using an airplane because its the right thing to do.  Just looking at some of his other articles im also pretty sure hes trolling Hufpo and the irony is that his trolling is indistinguishable from extremism so no one has noticed.

Calling Shenanigans on the FBI's Active Shooter Report

I read the news every morning, its somewhat of a ritual though I wouldnt say I have a pattern. MSNBC, CNN, Breitbart, The Blaze, Infowars (to see how the tinfoil is fitting that day), local news and Reuters are all part of my morning stops (as well as Cracked.com).  This morning I came across an article on the FBI's latest Active Shooter study so I figured it was time to read it.



Jesus Christ.

I have been hearing about the FBI's new Active Shooter study, I know it was emailed to me a few times but until this morning I had not bothered to read the entire thing.  Well I read it, and my general reaction is wondering if somehow I came to work drunk and forgot that I drank when I woke up.  I put some thought into this and decided no, I am sober so it must be something else.

Awesome work, guys.

Its the report, or I should say the problems with the report.  Anyone who has bothered to think about it knows that you can make statistics say anything you want as long as you are in control of the formula.  The government has been in charge of the crime statistics formula since the FBI began collecting data decades ago with the Uniform Crime Report.  The UCR is very useful, though is usefulness is directly related to what you want to use it for.  The FBI doesn't generate the data, rather it relies on state and local government to report the data to them.  Our first problem is that definitions may vary.  What is seen at the state level as one thing may be viewed at the Federal level as something else, and the Active Shooter report certainly gives us a great example of that.  The Federal Governments definition requires that there be three or more fatalities for an event to classify as an "Active Shooting" or "Mass Killing" according to the law (Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012)  Okay, so right off the bat our first problem is that "mass killing" or "active shooting" is a definition, not a crime.  Its murder, and the title is given to it by the circumstances and facts of the event.  Requiring three murders to occur under specific circumstances “an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area.” leaves us a great ability for the skewing of data.  The FBIs own report admits,

"Though additional active shooter incidents may have occurred during this time period, the FBI is confident this research captured the vast majority of incidents falling within the search criteria."  

.....go on

The FBI further poisons the sample data waters by stating;

"Incidents identified in this study do not encompass all gun-related situations; therefore caution should be taken when using this information without placing it in context. Specifically, shootings that resulted from gang or drug violence—pervasive, long-tracked, criminal acts that could also affect the public—were not included in this study."

What the hell are you doing?

So we need three murders, but only if they occur outside of criminal enterprises, well that sort of makes sense if you hold your mouth right and read through squnited eyes but okay, it cant get any worse, right?

"The study does not encompass all mass killings or shootings in public places and therefore is limited in its scope."

Okay...So I need three murders, and it has to happen on the right kind of real estate and cant be in any way criminally related and we aren't worried about attempted anything...Which is kind of like the FBI telling me losing my virginity didn't count because it didn't include three or more women even though that was most certainly my plan. Oh, and even if I meet the "requirements" the crime may still not be included by their own admission because, you know maybe someone else will cover it (maybe).

"Other private and public entities have studied mass casualty incidents, murder rates, and school or workplace violence. (e.g., Campus Attacks:Targeted Violence Affecting Institutions of Higher Education, a joint publication of U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Department of Education, and Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2010"

I have a lot of respect for the FBI's investigative power when there is nothing political at stake.  This report has been beat so hard by politics that it flinches at sunlight.  Seriously, this report lays out 160 events between 2000 and 2013 and then goes right ahead and tells you that

"The FBI found that 64 incidents (40.0%) would have been categorized as falling within the new federal definition of “mass killing,” which is defined as “three or more killings in a single incident."

So screw the other 60% of events then, I guess?  This is arbitrary and forced anecdotal statistics at its best.  Lets not even make an attempt to include attempted active shooter events where the shooter was stopped by someone (predominately a CCW holder) before they could carry out their plan.  Lets not include a drive by of a night club or a parking lot shooting because it may be "gang related."  I have read some carefully crafted statistics in my life time but this report is like a schizophrenic juggler who is also a part time impressionist house painter in a job interview with the king of France who is also a Ronald McDonald statue on a bench in Jersey City. It makes that much sense.

If you are going to do a study on active shooter events for public consumption, perhaps do the damn thing right?  There is nothing the FBI did here that could not have been done by a private party, in fact a private party may have done a better job.  The report shows (with graphs of course, because words are hard for journalists these days) a remarkable increase in active shootings from 2000 to 2013 even though this "increase" includes the shootings the FBI stated in the report that they shouldn't have included but did anyway because fuck logic.

Pictured: A Better author and researcher

The New York Times ran with it and used this report as further evidence that the sky is falling and guns are evil, obviously not actually reading the report (it looks like all information quoted was pulled directly from the graphs and only basic reading comprehension was exercised).  Way to go J school, this new generation or reporters is so much better than the last....Oh, and violent crime is down.  Way down and shows no signs of doing anything else but going down.  But hey, assault rifles.

My problem is that the low information crowd relies on the media to make their decisions for them, or at the very least give them the information they need to flip a coin (because everything is a two choice decision, right?).  The media takes this trust and exploits it like a corner pimp shelling out cocaine bumps to working girls.  The system is obviously broken, this particular situation is a good example of that but who is going to notice?

Anyone paying attention