Can the Police Respond Instantly to Every Emergency? Part 7 in The Right Response?

The only thing that stops a spree shooter is a bullet. The sooner he gets that bullet, the less innocents and vulnerable children he gets to slaughter.

How long does Emergency Response Take?

The police do a difficult job, often in very difficult circumstances. David Thweatt, Superintendent of the Harrold school district in Texas where teachers are armed, says:

"Police officers are true, everyday heroes in my book, but one of them once told me something very revealing. He said, ‘Ninety-five percent of the time, we get to the scene late.’ I can’t afford to let that happen.”

Some years ago, police found a methamphetamine lab in a house close to the Harrold school. A deputy had looked inside and “saw something in the walls and windows and called for backup,” reports Thweatt. “They made it to the house in 15 minutes. We had figured it would take 18 to 20 minutes in a typical situation.”

The Harrold school is in the middle of a prairie, miles from the nearest police station. If that had been an armed intruder at his school, the response time would have been too slow.

“We’re the first responders. We have to be,” says Thweatt. “We don’t have 5 minutes. We don’t have 10 minutes. We would have had 20 minutes of hell” if attackers had targeted the school.

Instant Response is Impossible

The police recognize reality. As Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke observes*: "You can beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you can fight back ... While we wish we could be teleported to your home it ain’t going to happen. It will take minutes to get to your home and an attack will be over within seconds."

Any response takes time, whether armed or not. It is literally impossible for any organization to respond instantaneously to any problem.

Don't Ignore Reality

Those who ignore the facts underlying response by armed police, as do many gun control fanatics, simply ignore reality whenever it conflicts with their opinions. How long does response actually take?

• It takes time to get access to a phone. This is only possible if one of the potential victims in a shooting spree is not stopped from getting and using a phone by the murderer. In practice, finding a phone can cause a substantial delay.
• It takes time to make an emergency call.
• it takes time for the emergency call to be answered and for the emergency service operator to find out exactly what's happening.
• it takes time for the emergency service to initiate the actual response. Police may be busy with other crimes, so are not necessarily instantly available.
• it takes time for responders to travel to the shooter's location - police stations are not usually located right next to the scene of the crime.

With the best will in the world, this all means that if police are there within a handful of minutes, they've done a truly outstanding job. Yet as emergency services all recognize: When seconds count – we’re just minutes away.

Give the Police Less Responsibilities

Sometimes less is more. What would happen if politicians stopped overloading the police with yet more and more laws, and ceased trying to micro-manage people's lives. If there were no laws against victimless crime, for example, then the police would have more manpower to respond faster to such emergencies.

Contrary to general belief, the police have absolutely no duty to respond to an emergency call and cannot be sued if they do not. D.C.'s highest court found 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." (Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981).

No matter how much gun-control zealots wish otherwise, you have a duty to protect yourself and your family. Any gun-control legislation that seeks to restrict the rights of responsible citizens to own a gun restricts your ability to defend yourself and your loved ones.

Larry Correia, Elite Firearms Expert State Witness

Many advocates for stringent gun bans like to think they are experts. But since to become an expert you need extensive hands-on experience, such pretensions are pure arrogance.

What do real experts say? Larry Correia, Utah Concealed Weapons instructor**, military and law enforcement master trainer, competition shooter, expert witness for the Utah State Legislature, Title 7 SOT gun store owner, elite firearms expert:

"Police are awesome. I love working with cops. However any honest cop will tell you that when seconds count they are only minutes away. … cops can’t be everywhere. There are at best only a couple hundred thousand on duty at any given time patrolling the entire country. Excellent response time is in the three-five minute range.

"We’ve seen what bad guys can do in three minutes, but sometimes it is far worse. …So in some cases that means the bad guys can have ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes to do horrible things with nobody effectively fighting back. So if we can’t have cops there, what can we do?"

"The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by law enforcement: 14. The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by civilians: 2.5. The reason is simple. The armed civilians are there when it started."

Yet politicians still pretend their desire to disarm responsible citizens is for their own protection! Maybe it is - but to protect the politician!

© Copyright worldwide Cris Baker, www.LifeStrategies.net All rights reserved. Republishing welcomed under Creative Commons noncommercial no derivatives license preserving all links intact, so please +1 and share this widely!

Food for Thought

"The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth."

- Anthony Kennedy, United States Supreme Court Justice

" Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke observes:

http://floppingaces.net/2013/01/26/milwaukee-sheriff-you-can-beg-for-mer...

** Larry Correia, Utah Concealed Weapons instructor, military and law enforcement master trainer, expert witness for the Utah State Legislature:

http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/an-opinion-on-gun-control/