Need a hand--SC case that established police don't have to protect individuals?

D

Don Gwinn

Staff Emeritus
I just posted about this on another board, confident that I could come here and find the citation before anyone asked for it. Well, that was dumb. I've searched both legal and the archive and can't find it for the life of me, so I must be using the wrong terms.

Could anyone point out the citation for me? If you have a link to another website that explores the issue, that would be great too.
(I'm arguing with a Britisher who says he's more free than I am since I have to live with anxiety about being governments and criminals while he can go to sleep unarmed in a city with a lot of "gun crime" and feel secure. Huh?)

Thanks.
 
The state in general, and police specifically, have no legal obligation to protect any one person from crime, and such failure to protect is not a Fifth or Fourteenth Amendment due process issue. DeShaney v Winnebago County Social Services, 489 US 189, 196, 197 (1989).

I think this is what you are looking for.

Joe

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Joe's Second Amendment Message Board
 
While I don't know the names or dates, there is one federal district court case from D.C. and one from Oklahoma.

The DC case has been commented upon in The American Rifleman; the NRA site should have info, somewhere.

SOF magazine has commented upon the Oklahoma case; you might query them as to particulars.

The D.C. case involved a woman who was raped; the rapist left her bedroom; she called the cops, giving pertinent info. The rapist returned and raped her again. During this time, the police drove around the apartment building, but never went to her door. Hearing or seeing nothing untoward, they went on about their affairs. She sued. The fdc judge ruled the police had no duty toward an individual citizen; only toward peace in the community at large.

FWIW, Art
 
"There is no constitutional right to be protected
by the state (or Federal) against being murdered
by criminals or madmen. It is monstrous if the
state fails to protect its residents against such
predators but it does not violate the due process
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, or, we suppose,
any other provision of the Constitution.
The Constitution is a charter of negative liberties:
it tells the state (gov't) to let people alone; it
does not require the federal government or the state
to provide services, even so elementary a service as
maintaining law and order"

-US Federal Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
Bowers v. DeVito, 1982

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What a world we live in.
 
I believe what your looking for is Lynch v. N.C. Dept. of Justice. Ruling states that;
"Law enforcement agencies and personnel have no duty to protect individuals from the criminal acts of others; instead their duty is to preserve the peace and arrest lawbreakers for the protection of the general public". Lynch v. N.C. Dept of Justice, 376 S.E. 2nd 247 (N.C. App. 1989)

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Times have changed, but the nature of man hasn't. That's why I always go to AA, "Alert and Armed". :)
 
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