Posted on 10/27/2006 9:50:10 AM PDT by kiriath_jearim
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Law enforcement officials today joined with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence to denounce the National Rifle Association's (NRA) campaign to weaken enforcement of federal gun laws. The NRA's attacks on federal law enforcement are profiled in a new Brady Center report, "The NRA: A Criminal's Best Friend," which chronicles decades of NRA assaults on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that have greatly aided criminals seeking to obtain illegal firearms.
Chief Richard Pennington of Atlanta; Commissioner Sylvester Johnson of Philadelphia; Chief Gil Kerlikowski of Seattle; Police Foundation President Hubert Williams; and Jesse Lee, executive director of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives told a National Press Club gathering in Washington that police efforts to crack down on illegal gun trafficking were being directly and sharply undermined by the gun lobby's agenda.
"What the gun lobby is doing in Washington is making it harder for me to do my job in Atlanta," Pennington said. "Instead of handcuffing law enforcement, we should put political handcuffs on the NRA's lobbyists."
"If you look at what has been attempted and done to weaken common-sense measures to prevent gun violence, particularly over the past six years, it is obvious that the gun pushers have way too much influence over federal law enforcement policy," said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center. "As a newcomer to Washington, D.C., I'm particularly surprised at how little respect has been given to the concerns of the law enforcement community."
The report exposes the hypocrisy of the NR's refrain that there is no need to "pass new gun laws," just to "enforce our existing laws." "The NRA: A Criminal's Best Friend" shows how the NRA has fought to hamstring and intimidate federal law enforcement. NRA allies in Congress have required ATF to meet extraordinary burdens of proof to prosecute gun traffickers and revoke lawbreaking gun dealers' licenses, imposed severe restrictions on ATF inspectors, and allowed largely unregulated gun show sales to flourish.
The report reveals the NRA's aggressive campaign to undermine the landmark Brady background check law, from its unsuccessful lawsuits to strike down the law to its success under President Bush in mandating the destruction of crucial Brady background check records needed to prevent criminals from buying firearms. It chronicles the NRA's lambasting of federal ATF agents as "fascists" and "street thugs" who "murder law-abiding citizens," as well as the NRA's recent charges of ATF "abuses" in retaliation for successful ATF gun show stings in Richmond, Va., that disrupted widespread gun trafficking at the gun shows.
This year the NRA has intensified its anti-federal law enforcement efforts. It is supporting a package of legislation to make it virtually impossible to revoke the licenses of lawbreaking gun dealers (H.R. 5092), to prohibit the government from revealing the identities of rogue dealers to the public (H.R. 5005), and to repeal the longstanding prohibition on interstate sales of handguns at gun shows (H.R. 1384). The legislation was introduced shortly after NRA Board Member Sandy Abrams had his Baltimore gun shop's license revoked this year for 900 violations of federal gun laws. H.R. 5092 passed the House of Representatives last month despite law enforcement opposition and may come before the Senate in a lame-duck session next month.
"This report reveals the NRA's true colors as the criminal's best friend," said Daniel R. Vice, Brady Center staff attorney. "The NRA's tireless efforts to undermine enforcement of our gun laws has helped criminals and gun traffickers obtain illegal firearms and fueled the recent surge in gun violence."
"The NRA: A Criminal's Best Friend" is the latest in a series of Brady Center reports exposing the role of the gun industry and the gun lobby in aiding criminal access to firearms. All of the reports can be accessed at http://www.bradycenter.org/gunindustrywatch. Gun Industry Watch is a comprehensive research effort of the Brady Center to monitor the gun industry and expose industry practices that endanger innocent lives.
Vote. Rant and rave. Try to get good lawsuites through. Try to get some good legislation.
All the usual things that haven't worked really all that well over the last 70 years.
I thought a criminal's best friend was the Brady Center, and NRA, along with armed citizens, their worst fear.
Translation: We've stolen their mojo.
Yet another reminder on why we must maintain the Republican majorities. These past 5 years have been great for the Second Ammendment, as is evidenced by this desperate article.
To understand the whole implication here you first have to understand that Atlanta, DeKalb county and, to a slightly lesser extent, Fulton county's governments are run primarily as racial spoils systems designed to plunder taxpayers and reward black bureaucrats. The primary qualification for high paying appointed positions in these places is the color black, not competence, so Pennington who is massively incompetent, is always looking for someone else to blame his numerous inadequacies on. Second Pennington is a dedicated freedom hating leftist - your total on the liberal Democrap's plantation black bureaucrat. He's dumb as a stump (wouldn't be on the dem's plantation if he weren't), so you can expect him to regurgitate the Democrat's view on this.
The more disturbing thing is that his attitude is very widespread among law enforcement. They ain't there to protect your rights. They're there to collect their salaries and ENFORCE THE LAW. If this were all there was to it, we could live with it, but these clows aren't content to ENFORCE laws, they play a significant role in WRITING them as well. Every major police organization in the state has dedicated lobbyists that push the legislature for fewer restrictions on their powers and more restrictions on our rights. I've lost count of the number of times the Atlanta police lobbyist has supported gun control in committe meetings that I've attended.
A big problem is that the legislators (many of whom have room temperature IQs as well) listen to them. They typical line for the lobbyist is "This will make it easier for the police to do their job." I've yet to hear a legislator respons "It isn't our role to help you do your job, but to protect the rights of the citizens who throught their taxes pay your salary." For that matter their job would be even easier if me all lived in concentration camps with no rights at all, and this is the sort of worldview that Pennington and his massas want.
Chief Richard Pennington of Atlanta; Commissioner Sylvester Johnson of Philadelphia; Chief Gil Kerlikowski of Seattle; Police Foundation President Hubert Williams; and Jesse Lee, executive director of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives
I spit on them all
Nothing new here.
As usual, the chiefs -- many of them control freaks and POLITICAL APPOINTEES -- don't WANT us to be in a position to defend ourselves. Sort of a perverse form of job security.
Ask MOST beat cops if you should own a firearm and under their breath they'll say "yes."
There are 300 million of us. At any given hour, there are approximately 200,000 cops on duty. That's one cop for every 1,500 of us. If you're lucky, YOUR cop will show up in time to draw your outline on the pavement and load the body for the trip to the morgue.
Write this down somewhere and read it every day:
WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR IMMEDIATE PERSONAL SAFETY, YOU ARE ESSENTIALLY ON YOUR OWN!!
Don’t think so?
The courts do and here’s the proof:
(If you’re not big on reading legal opinions, skip to the last few paragraphs for the meat of the decision which is IDENTICAL to virtually every other case on the matter throughout the U.S.)
Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C.App. 1981)
Carolyn WARREN, et al., Appellants, v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, et al.,
Appellees. Wilfred NICHOL,
Appellant, v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT, et al.,
Appellees. Nos. 79-6, 79-394.
District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
Argued En Banc April 13, 1981. Decided December 21, 1981. Appeal from the Superior Court, Joseph M. Hannon and William C. Pryor, JJ.
Stephen A. Friedman, Washington, D.C., for appellants. Charles L. Reischel, Deputy Corp. Counsel, with whom Judith W. Rogers, Corp. Counsel, and David P. Sutton, Asst. Corp. Counsel, Washington, D.C., were on the petition, for appellees.
Before NEWMAN, Chief Judge, and KELLY, KERN, NEBEKER, HARRIS, MACK and FERREN, Associate Judges. NEBEKER, Associate Judge:
Appellants Carolyn Warren, Miriam Douglas, and Joan Taliaferro in No. 79-6, and appellant Wilfred Nichol in No. 79-394 sued the District of Columbia and individual members of the Metropolitan Police Department for negligent failure to provide adequate police services. The respective trial judges held that the police were under no specific legal duty to provide protection to the individual appellants and dismissed the complaints for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Super.Ct.Civ.R. 12(b)(6).
However, in a split decision a three-judge division of this court determined that appellants Warren, Taliaferro and Nichol were owed a special duty of care by the police department and reversed the trial court rulings. The division unanimously concluded that appellant Douglas failed to fit within the class of persons to whom a special duty was owed, and affirmed the lower court's dismissal of her complaint. The court en banc, on petitions for rehearing, vacated the panel's decision.
After rearguments, notwithstanding our sympathy for appellants who were the tragic victims of despicable criminal acts, we affirm the judgments of dismissal. Appeal No. 79-6
In the early morning hours of March 16, 1975, appellants Carolyn Warren, Joan Taliaferro, and Miriam Douglas were asleep in their rooming house at 1112 Lamont Street, N.W. Warren and Taliaferro shared a room on the third floor of the house; Douglas shared a room on the second floor with her four-year-old daughter. The women were awakened by the sound of the back door being broken down by two men later identified as Marvin Kent and James Morse. The men entered Douglas' second floor room, where Kent forced Douglas to sodomize him and Morse raped her.
Warren and Taliaferro heard Douglas' screams from the floor below. Warren telephoned the police, told the officer on duty that the house was being burglarized, and requested immediate assistance. The department employee told her to remain quiet and assured her that police assistance would be dispatched promptly.
Warren's call was received at Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters at 6:23 a. m., and was recorded as a burglary in progress. At 6:26 a. m., a call was dispatched to officers on the street as a "Code 2" assignment, although calls of a crime in progress should be given priority and designated as "Code 1." Four police cruisers responded to the broadcast; three to the Lamont Street address and one to another address to investigate a possible suspect.
Meanwhile, Warren and Taliaferro crawled from their window onto an adjoining roof and waited for the police to arrive. While there, they saw one policeman drive through the alley behind their house and proceed to the front of the residence without stopping, leaning out the window, or getting out of the car to check the back entrance of the house. A second officer apparently knocked on the door in front of the residence, but left when he received no answer. The three officers departed the scene at 6:33 a. m., five minutes after they arrived.
Warren and Taliaferro crawled back inside their room. They again heard Douglas' continuing screams; again called the police; told the officer that the intruders had entered the home, and requested immediate assistance. Once again, a police officer assured them that help was on the way. This second call was received at 6:42 a. m. and recorded merely as "investigate the trouble" - it was never dispatched to any police officers.
Believing the police might be in the house, Warren and Taliaferro called down to Douglas, thereby alerting Kent to their presence. Kent and Morse then forced all three women, at knifepoint, to accompany them to Kent's apartment. For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands of Kent and Morse.
Appellants' claims of negligence included: the dispatcher's failure to forward the 6:23 a. m. call with the proper degree of urgency; the responding officers' failure to follow standard police investigative procedures, specifically their failure to check the rear entrance and position themselves properly near the doors and windows to ascertain whether there was any activity inside; and the dispatcher's failure to dispatch the 6:42 a. m. call.
Appeal No. 79-394
On April 30, 1978, at approximately 11:30 p. m., appellant Nichol stopped his car for a red light at the intersection of Missouri Avenue and Sixteenth Street, N.W. Unknown occupants in a vehicle directly behind appellant struck his car in the rear several times, and then proceeded to beat appellant about the face and head breaking his jaw. A Metropolitan Police Department officer arrived at the scene. In response to the officer's direction, appellant's companion ceased any further efforts to obtain identification information of the assailants. When the officer then failed to get the information, leaving Nichol unable to institute legal action against his assailants, Nichol brought a negligence action against the officer, the Metropolitan Police Department and the District of Columbia.
The trial judges correctly dismissed both complaints. In a carefully reasoned Memorandum Opinion, Judge Hannon based his decision in No. 79-6 on "the fundamental principle that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen." See, infra. The duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists. Holding that no special relationship existed between the police and appellants in No. 79-6, Judge Hannon concluded that no specific legal duty existed.
We hold that Judge Hannon was correct and adopt the relevant portions of his opinion. Those portions appear in the following Appendix.[fn1] Judge Pryor, then of the trial court, ruled likewise in No. 79-394 on the basis of Judge Hannon's opinion. In No. 79-394, a police officer directed Nichol's companion to cease efforts to identify the assailants and thus to break off the violent confrontation. The officer's duty to get that identification was one directly related to his official and general duty to investigate the offenses. His actions and failings were solely related to his duty to the public generally and possessed no additional element necessary to create an overriding special relationship and duty.[fn2] Here the effort to separate the hostile assailants from the victims - a necessary part of the on-scene responsibility of the police - adds nothing to the general duty owed the public and fails to create a relationship which imposes a special legal duty such as that created when there is a course of conduct, special knowledge of possible harm, or the actual use of individuals in the investigation.
See Falco v. City of New York, 34 A.D.2d 673, 310 N.Y.S.2d 524 (App. Div. 1970), aff'd, 29 N.Y.2d 918, 329 N.Y.S.2d 97, 279 N.E.2d 854 (1972) (police officer's Page 4 statement to injured motorcyclist that he would obtain name of motorist who struck the motorcycle was a gratuitous promise and did not create a special legal duty); Jackson v. Heyman, 126 N.J. Super. 281, 314 A.2d 82 (Super.Ct.Law Div. 1973) (police officers' investigation of vehicle accident where pedestrian was a minor child did not create a special legal duty to child's parents who were unsuccessful in their attempt to recover damages because police failed to identify drivers of vehicle). We hold that Judge Pryor did not err in dismissing No. 79-394 for failure to state a claim. In either case, it is easy to condemn the failings of the police. However, the desire for condemnation cannot satisfy the need for a special relationship out of which a duty to specific persons arises. In neither of these cases has a relationship been alleged beyond that found in general police responses to crimes. Civil liability fails as a matter of law.
APPENDIX SUPERIOR COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIVIL DIVISION Civil Action No. 4695-76 CAROLYN WARREN, et al., Plaintiffs, v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, et al., Defendants. MEMORANDUM OPINION * * * The Court, however, does not agree that defendants owed a specific legal duty to plaintiffs with respect to the allegations made in the amended complaint for the reason that the District of Columbia appears to follow the 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. Compare Rieser v. District of Columbia, 183 U.S.App.D.C. 375, 390-91, 563 F.2d 462, 477-78 (1977) (rehearing en banc granted and panel opinion vacated on other grounds; panel opinion reinstated in pertinent part, 188 U.S.App.D.C. 384, 580 F.2d 641 [647] (1978)); Westminster Investing Corp. v. G. C. Murphy Co., 140 U.S.App. D.C. 247, 259-50, 434 F.2d 521, 523-24 (1970) and Yohanan v. Wells, No. 78-0671 (D.D.C. June 28, 1978), with Massengill v. Yuma County, 104 Ariz. 518, 456 P.2d 376 (1969) (en banc); Riss v. City of New York, 22 N.Y.2d 579, 293 N YS.2d 897, 240 N.E.2d 860 (1968); Annot., 46 A.L.R.3d 1084 (1972) and Annot., 41 A.L.R.3d 700 (1972). This uniformly accepted rule rests upon the fundamental principle that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen. Turner v. United States, 248 U.S. 354, 357-58, 39 S.Ct. 109, 110, 63 L.Ed. 291 (1919); Rieser v. District of Columbia, supra. A publicly maintained police force constitutes a basic governmental service provided to benefit the community at large by promoting public peace, safety and good order. The extent and quality of police protection afforded to the community necessarily depends upon the availability of public resources and upon legislative or administrative determinations concerning allocation of those resources. Riss v. City of New York, supra.
The public, through its representative officials, recruits, trains, maintains and disciplines its police force and determines the manner in which personnel are deployed. At any given time, publicly furnished police protection may accrue to the personal benefit of individual citizens, but at all times the needs and interests of the community at large predominate. Private resources and needs have little direct effect upon the nature of police services provided to the public. Accordingly, courts have without exception concluded that when a municipality or other governmental entity undertakes to furnish police services, it assumes a duty only to the public at large and not to individual members of the community. E.g., Trautman v. City of Stamford, 32 Conn. Sup. 258, 350 A.2d 782 (1975); Henderson v. City of St. Petersburg,
Then again, it becomes increasingly clear the some of these propagandists, at least, believe their own lies.
You will notice that the chief proponents of gun restrictions do not live in high crime areas.
Atlanta and DC seem pretty high in crime to me. And I disregard when Congress is in session - I mean normal DC crime.
CHP ARRESTS Total Arrests by CHP 2,488,839
CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL 2006 FACT SHEET
FELONY ARRESTS 12,865 Felony and Misdemeanor Arrests 2,279,000
22 CHP OFFICERS INJURED FROM ASSAULTS
/CHP OFFICERS KILLED
5,920 Killed in the Line of Duty (1929- 8/2006)
In 1971, I worked in the County area of South Central Los Angeles. Almost everyone HAD A GUN. Why? To protect themselves. Did we ( Law Enforcement) know this? Hell, yes! Did we arrest them and confiscate those guns? Hell, NO!
You see, unlike the Perfumed Princes who operate out of Ivory Towers, Law Enforcement Officers on the street have a sense of who we are dealing with. 99% of the time, the crook goes for another crime, and a weapon is found after the arrest, and added to the chargers.
Police chiefs of major US cities are almost universally arrayed against the Second Amendment. Police Chiefs of small cities and street cops of all size cities are almost universally pro-Second Amendment.
Indeed, I would suggest that if the BATF's powers were rolled back so that it couldn't expend its efforts very effectively at harassing lawful firearm owners and dealers, agents might realize that if they were going to do anything at all they had to go after real criminals.
Good point. It seems that's the direction we're headed.
When high-paid doughnut eaters fail to recognize the second ammendment as part of the "laws" they are sworn to uphold, the should all turn-in their badges and refund the salaries they've derived from taxpaying, U.S. citizens.
BTTT
Fat chance of anything good happening for Second Amendment rights after yesterday.
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