Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
Looting and arson have followed what began as peaceful protests in response to the apparent killing of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin, a now-former member of the Minneapolis Police Department.
But whatever was the spark that set off the current round of rioting in the Twin Cities area, it is clear that most property owners and residents will have to fend for themselves where riots have taken place. In other words, any unfortunate shopkeeper or resident who finds himself in the path of the rioters ought to just assume that police won’t be around to provide any protection from the mob.
For example, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports:
The police station on E. Lake Street has been the epicenter of protests this week… Nearby, Minnehaha Lake Wine & Spirits, the target of looters the night before, also was set ablaze. …On Wednesday night, a man was fatally shot and crowds looted and burned buildings on E. Lake Street late into the night.
Earlier in the day, in St. Paul, looters broke windows, stormed through battered-down doors and snatched clothes, phones, shoes and other merchandise from shops along University Avenue near the intersection of Pascal Street. Officers formed a barricade in front of Target. But police were absent a block away at T.J. Maxx, where looters smashed down the door and fled with heaps of clothing piled on shopping carts.
Many business owners who now face destruction at the hands of rioters can scarcely afford it:
Many of the shops destroyed along this stretch of E. Lake Street are immigrant-owned businesses — many of which were already struggling during the coronavirus pandemic. “Now it’s worse,” said Roberto Hernandez, who stood guard outside his nutrition store for five hours to fend off looters. (emphasis added)
Another man, who was working to open a sports bar in the area later this year, saw his bar destroyed. Needless to say, with only a few exceptions, the police weren’t around to “protect and serve.”
Admittedly, in cases like this week’s riots, the police are heavily outnumbered and unable to provide any sort of general protection from rioters. Even if individual officers were engaging in heroic behavior to turn rioters away from potential victims, there would be little they could do to confront all offenders.
But heroics or not, the outcome for victims is the same: they must rely on self defense, formal private security, or private armed volunteers likely to be labeled as “vigilantes.”
A failure to protect taxpaying citizens from violence and crime in a wide variety of situations is standard operating procedure for police departments which are under no legal obligation to protect anyone, and where “officer safety” is the number-one priority. The lesson to be learned here is that the alleged “social contract” between citizens and the state is a one-way street: you pay taxes for police “services,” and the police may or may not give you anything in return.
Police Are Not Obligated to Provide Protection
It is now a well-established legal principle in the United States that police officers and police departments are not legally responsible to refusing to intervene in cases where private citizens are in imminent danger or even in the process of being victimized.
The US Supreme Court has made it clear that law enforcement agencies are not required to provide protection to the citizens who are forced to pay for police services, year in and year out.
In cases of civil unrest, of course, be prepared to receive approximately nothing from police in terms of protecting property, or life and limb.
During the 2014 riots that followed the police killing of Michael Brown, for example, shopkeepers were forced to hire private security, and many had to rely on armed volunteers for protection from looters. “There’s no police,” one Ferguson shopkeeper told FoxNews at the time. “We trusted the police to keep it peaceful; they didn’t do their job.”
More famously, shopkeepers during the Los Angeles riots defended their shops with private firearms:
“Where are the police? Where are the police?” [shopkeeper Chang] Lee whispered over and over from his rooftop perch. Lee would not see law enforcement for three days — only fellow Korean-Americans, who would be photographed by news agencies looking like armed militia…
Officer Safety Comes First
During the Columbine school shootings in Colorado in 1999, the Sheriff department’s “first responders” formed a perimeter outside the building and refused to enter because the situation was deemed too risky for law enforcement. Meanwhile, children were being slaughtered inside.
Nearly twenty years later, law enforcement officers at the Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida cowered behind vehicles while students were murdered inside the school.
But even in cases where police are willing to enter the premises and attempt to subdue violent criminals, the victim may find law enforcement officers to be of little help. According to 2008 data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, police response times to violent-crime-related calls exceeded 11 minutes one-third of the time. Things were no better twelve years earlier in 1996, when a similar survey was conducted. Now, twelve years after 2008, there’s no reason to assume anything has improved.
11 minutes is a long time to wait when dealing with a violent criminal.
Moreover, when police do arrive, don’t expect a competent response. The cases of Atatania Jefferson and Botham Jean provide some helpful reminders.
According to multiple accounts of the Jefferson case, a neighbor of Jefferson called police to “check up” on Jefferson whom the neighbor feared Jefferson might be in danger. Jefferson was soon shot dead in her own living room by law enforcement. The shooter — a now-former cop named Aaron Dean — entered Jefferson’s private property unannounced in the middle of the night. He peered into Jefferson’s windows, and within seconds, the officer had shot Jefferson dead. Jefferson had been playing video games with her nephew.
A year earlier, former police officer Amber Guyger was sentenced to ten years in prison for unlawfully shooting Botham Jean in his own apartment. At the time, Guyger was a police officer returning home from work. She illegally entered the wrong apartment and promptly shot Jean — the unit’s lawful resident — dead.
And, of course, there is the case of Justine Damond, who called the Minneapolis Police Department to report a possible sexual assault near her home. When police arrived, they shot Damond dead, for no known reason other than hysterical fear on the part of police.
Those who proactively attempt to defend themselves fare little better. In 2018, Colorado resident Richard Black used a firearm to defend his grandson against an intruder. Unfortunately, someone called the police. When officers arrived, they opened fire on Black, even though was only a threat to the criminal intruder.
The lesson to be learned from all this is that it is foolhardy, to say the least, to rely on law enforcement officers to intervene to provide “safety” when troubles arise.
After all, experience has shown police are thoroughly unmotivated when it comes to preventing, or even investigating true violent crime. Confronting violent criminals is dangerous and costly. Thus, police departments are geared much more around encouraging harassment of petty offenders (such as George Floyd) and going after small-time drug offenders while confiscating property under asset forfeiture laws.
This provides revenue to pad agency budgets while prioritizing the targeting of easy marks, rather than violent offenders. In the United States, more than half of serious crimes are never solved.
And yet, though it all, we hear again and again the myth that law enforcement agencies will provide protection, retrieve stolen property, and keep the peace. Many people in Minneapolis are now experiencing the reality.
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Duh! How many would it take to offer the protection you want? An army in the streets would be required for that. I prefer occassonal chaos.
Not sure why the downers. I also prefer the occasional chaos AS LONG as I can legally defend myself, family and friends and my property.
I was thinking about the “how many” the other night while watching the police abandon their station and let it be torched.
Hypothetically, without police there, a single citizen, well perched, could have dispersed that whole mob in minutes with a .308 and a dozen clips. Ironically, without the police, the citizen could have simply driven away after.
Don’t expect any government entity to save you. You’re on your own.
Here is a guest article that deserves the light of day:
No One Cares If You Go Home Safe At The End Of Your Shift
Jan 02, 201812:50AM
Category: Politics
Posted by: Michael Z. Williamson
Here at the house, I have a couple of decades plus of military experience. I have tools to dig in or out of natural disasters. I have extinguishers and hoses. I have a field trauma kit and bandages. I have weapons both melee and firearm. I know how to use them. I know how to trench, support and revet. I understand the fire triangle and appropriate approaches. I understand breathing, bleeding and shock. I know how to detain, restrain and control. I have done all of these at least occasionally, professionally. I’ve stood on top of a collapsing levee in a flood. I’ve fought a structure fire from inside so we could get everyone out before the fire department showed up, which only took two minutes, but people can die that fast. I’ve had structures collapse while I was working on them. I’ve been in an aircraft that had a “mechanical” on approach and had to be repaired in-flight before landing. I’ve helped control a brush fire. I’ve hauled disabled vehicles out of ditches in sub-zero weather.
My ex wife has over a decade of service and some of the same training.
We have trained our young adult children.
My wife is a rancher who knows her way around a shotgun, livestock, sutures and tools, hurricanes and floods, and works in investigations professionally.
Our current house guest is another veteran.
This means if anything happens at the house, and last year we had a lightning strike, a tornado and a flood within 10 days’ we’re pretty well prepared.
Now, we’re probably better off than 95% of the households out there. The level of disaster that necessitates backup varies.
If we find it necessary to call 911, it means the party is in progress and it’s bad.
You will probably not be going home safe at the end of your shift.
And you know what? If it gets to that point, I really don’t give a shit. I don’t give a shit if you get smoked. I don’t give a shit if you fall under a tree. I don’t give a shit if you get shot at.
Because at that point, I’ve done everything I can with that same circumstance, and run out of resources.
If my concern was “you going home safe,” then I’d just fucking hunker down and die. Because I wouldn’t want that poor responder to endanger himself.
Except, that’s what I pay taxes for, and that’s what you signed up for. Just like I signed up to walk into a potential nuke war in Germany and hold off the Soviets, and did walk into the Middle East and prepare to take fire while keeping expensive equipment functioning so our shooters could keep shooting.
There’s not a single set of orders I got that said my primary job was to “Come home safe.” They said it was to “support the mission” or “complete the objective.” Coming home safe was the ideal outcome, but entirely secondary to “supporting” or “completing.” Nor, once that started, did I get a choice to quit. Once in, all in.
When that 80 year old lady smells smoke or hears a noise outside her first floor bedroom in the ghetto, she doesn’t care if you go home safe, either. She’s afraid she or the kids next door won’t wake up in the morning.
If I call, I expect your ass to show up, sober, trained, professional. I expect you to wade in with me or in place of me, and drag a child out of a hole, or out from a burning room, or actually stand up and block bullets from hitting said child, because by the time you get there, I’ll have already done all that. And there will be field dressings, chainsawed trees, buckets and empty brass scattered about.
I don’t want to hear some drunk and confused guy squirming on the ground playing “Simon Says” terrified you so much you had to blow him away. I don’t want to hear that some random guy 35 yards away who you had no actual information on , may have reached toward his waist band. Or that “the tree might fall any moment” or that “the smoke makes it hard to see.”
Near as I can tell, I don’t hear the smokejumpers, or the firefighters, or the disaster rescue people say such things.
But it’s all I ever hear from the cops. If you and your five girlfriends in body armor, with rifles, are that terrified of actually risking your life for the theoretically dangerous job you volunteered for and can quit any time, then please do quit.
You can get a job doing pest control and go home safe every night.
Until a bunch of fucking pussies with big tattoos, small dicks, body armor and guns blow you away for minding your own business.
Because what you’re telling me with that statement is, your only concern is cashing a check. That’s fine. But if that’s your concern, don’t pretend you’re serving the public. If you wanted to help people at risk of life, you would be a firefighter, running into buildings, dragging people out, getting scorched regularly.
If you’re cool with writing tickets, then there’s jobs where you can do just that.
If you want to tangle with bad guys and blow them away, fair enough. But understand: That means they get to shoot first to prove their intent, just as happens with the military these days. Our ROE these days are usually “only if fired upon and no civilians are at risk.”
If your plan is “shoot first, shoot later, shoot some more, then if anyone is still alive try to ask questions,” and bleat, “But I was afeard fer mah lahf!” you’re absolutely no better than the thugs you claim to oppose. All you are is another combatant in a turf war I don’t care about.
Since I know your primary concern is “being safe,” then I’ll do you the favor of not calling. Cash your welfare check, and try not to shoot me at a “courtesy” sobriety checkpoint for “twitching my eye “in a way that suggested range estimation.
If you’re one of the vanishingly few cops who isn’t like that, then what the hell are you doing about it? If there’s going to be a lawsuit costing the city millions, isn’t it better that it be a labor suit from the union over the clown you fired, than a wrongful death suit over the poor bastard the clown shot? Both are expensive, but one has a dead victim you enabled. So how much do you actually care about that life?
How is the training so bad that it’s not clear who is the scene commander who gives the orders?
How is it that trigger happy bozos who, out of costume, look no different from the gangbangers you claim to oppose, get sent up front to fulfill their wish of hosing someone down because “I was afraid for my life!”?
Why does the rot exist in your department?
If you can’t do anything about it, why are you still in that department?
At some point, collective guilt is a thing.
You’ve probably not been a good cop for a long time.
And I still don’t care if you go home safe. I care that everyone you purport to “serve and protect” goes home safe.
Abolish publicly-funded police departments and privatize those who wish to truly “protect and serve”.
Where have I heard this before? Oh, right.
In Minnesota, you are not legally able to defend your property. By law, you must retreat. Lethal force is forbidden, unless you are under personal attack.
What a load of shit.
I don’t think it’s legal to go outside and shoot people over personal property, anywhere.
Your life is not in danger when you are inside. That’s the way the law will look at it.
But I would react myself to anyone just trying to come on my property. Or if I had busted my ass to come up with a business to support my family. amazing we haven’t heard of anyone getting shot during this looting.
Llpoh.
Some states have well defined Castle Doctrines, most don’t. In my state the only good thing we got from our mid 90’s republican revolution were self defence laws that don’t require an attempt to retreat from a threat. Also getting is somebodys face like the punks do is legally defined as assault. This allows an old geezer like me to defend myself from getting a heart attack over some punk trying to set me up for attack. With the Prison Pre-release industy booming, we have hoods from the inner cites moving here in droves. Part of the resettlement programs that have turned many a quiet hamlet in Ghettos in a decade.
The Police are employees. They serve the corporation (city, town, municipality, etc.), not the government or the governed. You are the enemy. That’s really as it has always been..we just believed otherwise. But reality is a bitch. You can’t escape it forever.
Governments are just Mafia’s in a pretty dress and Cops are just the enforcers in an ugly dress.
Flea, when my kid was in elementary school, the school was making them go through the DARE program, with police officers doing the presentations. After I researched it, I opted him out of the program. I even showed congressional testimony indicating the program did not work and just introduced kids to drugs. And the testimony showed that black kids simply consider the police another gang in the neighborhood, basically a Mafia.
Instead, my son did his own research and wrote a report on why drugs are bad and how to keep his body healthy.
this was an ok article until near the end when it turned into a hit piece against cops–they can’t do much b/c they’re so outnumbered & spread out–
even when they have enough force they are handcuffed–last night here in tampa they were firing rubber bullets & teargas canisters which were being picked up & thrown back at them–
how long would violent riots occur if government leaders announced a shoot to kill policy & that snipers would be scanning 4 the people leading the riots–
If I hear the phrase ‘spicy time’ just one more time, things are going to get sporty…
A government sanctioned riot is akin to the Nixon era maneuver to kill streaking by approving it.
you were in yer prime during the streaking era,weren’t you?