Judge Sides with Police in Parkland Slaying: LEO Has No Duty to Protect Students

The problems you point out support the rationale for the decentralized nature of US police authority. In the US, federal, state, and local police authorities are for the most part independent from each other. I believe this is quite unusual if you were to survey the structure of police authority in other countries. This is one way to mitigate the "blast radius" of corrupt officials.

While I agree that there are some structural problems with policing (militarization, over-reliance on guns, prioritizing officer safety over citizen safety), I don't think "completely tear[ing]" it down is a wise course.

This is nothing new. It has already been ruled on that the police have no obligation to protect you. They can simply say "no" if you ask them to protect you. It certainly means that they can de-prioritize your call and only show up after getting lunch.

Which makes it all the more awful when someone says "If you feel unsafe just call the police! It's what I would do." That's great. I'm glad you live in a place with a good police force. But it is frankly evil to disarm people who have no other means to protect themselves.

>At this point, I believe the only function of the police is to execute state violence.

It would be best to form your opinion based on overall statistics rather than the most sensational news articles that have the most virility.

For a different perspective, in the UK the approach taken to policing is (in theory) governed by the Peelian Principles [0]. None of the principles explictly mention protection of the public, but 5/9 of them do refer to the police force's relation to the rest of the population.

Principle 7 - ‘Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.’

[0] http://www.lacp.org/2009-Articles-Main/062609-Peels9Principa...

As far as I know, this is US-specific. For example in Germany, it is very specifically duty of the police to protect the rights of citizens, which includes their right to not be harmed (which also comes from the duty to uphold the law, which is typically being broken when people are harmed).

Not sure why this is controversial. If a state lets thugs get away with anything, and then is ruthless with vigilantes, they are taking the side of the criminals. They are enablers of rape and murder.

That's an important point. I'd caution people getting upset about this (especially getting upset with the judge) to recognize that judges are bound to consider higher court decisions.

There is arguably good reasons why police (and fire fighters, and social workers, and meterologists) and the governments they work for can't be sued for not protecting people from the bad actions of others, or disasters. It's not their fault that bad stuff happens (and when it is, that's a different legal situation).

That said, state constitutions can be more restrictive, and it would be interesting to consider the effect of creating such a duty would have.

Perhaps it could be created as a duty to the state government rather then individually harmed people, such that the state attorney general would be the one who sued (or more likely settled with a consent decree that created policy changes).

Consider this story about a man stabbed on the NYC subway and the police who locked themselves in the train cabin whilst a bystander provided first aid [0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAfUI_hETy0

In general the police show up long after the fact and are there to write reports for insurance. We are safe by the peace of those around us, and not by whether the cops can show up on time.

This reads like a joke, but it is more literally true than most would think: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/internet-speech/new-ha...

As a high school teacher and a gun owner that has competed off-and-on over the years, I vehemently disagree.

The problems of my classroom mirror the problems of my community. This means that while the vast majority of my students are just wonderful young people, I also have my fair share of the chronically depressed, the trauma survivors, and the budding criminals. Are they a small minority? Of course.

But why should I open the window of “what’s possible” on any given day in my classroom to include deadly force by strapping a pistol to my hip. It is - in my opinion - reckless and foolish.

:/ or maybe just the option. Firearms are very safe in competent hands, not so much in the opposite case.

IMO, teachers who have guns and are interested in keeping the peace should go through a state licensing program, and have special badges (maybe brass) so we can identify them. They could be called peacekeepers.