Maybe they could send someone out and make contact with the reporter rather than the reported? Make sure the reporter is ok since they seem to be the one having a problem.

I always preferred to talk to both parties, usually to at least make the reporter feel like a douchebag for calling.

You just gotta check it out. If you don't you're creating alot of liability. Just imagine the liability if someone called about a man with a gun, the cops never responded then 10 mins later the guy reported is now an active shooter.

Now somebody is out $100 Mil.

I think what PVN is saying is that although you may be dispatched and therefore obligated to follow up as your boss is expecting you to... the law is such that the police can not effectively be sued for not responding to a call as this was tried in court and some chicks who were getting raped lost the case (think it was NJ, not sure). The ruling was the cops don't have a duty to protect.

Warren v. District of ColumbiaFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
Warren v. District of Columbia[1] (444 A.2d. 1, D.C. Ct. of Ap. 1981) is an oft-quoted[2] District of Columbia Court of Appeals (equivalent to a state supreme court) case that held police do not have a duty to provide police services to individuals, even if a dispatcher promises help to be on the way, except when police develop a special duty to particular individuals.

In this case, three rape victims sued the District of Columbia for negligence on the part of the police. Two of three female roommates were upstairs when they heard men break in and attack the third. They phoned the police, reporting that their house was being burglarized, and waited on the roof. Their call was incorrectly dispatched as less important than it was three minutes after they made the call, and three police cars came to the scene, three minutes after the call was dispatched. One policeman drove by without stopping, and another officer walked up to the door and knocked. Upon receiving no answer, the officers left five minutes after they had arrived. Nine minutes later, the two women called the police again and were assured they would receive assistance. This call was never dispatched and the police never came. Believing that the police had arrived and were in the house, the two women called down to the third who was being attacked. This alerted the intruders to their presence, and they then took them captive at knife-point. They were then raped, robbed, beaten, and forced to submit to the attackers' sexual demands for the next fourteen hours. The court noted that because the police are only under a general duty to provide services to the public at large, a special relationship must exist between the police and the individual in question for the "duty" element of negligence to be satisfied. It held that no such special relationship existed so the case was properly dismissed by the trial court for failure to state a claim and the case never went to trial.[3]

Contents [hide]
1 Incident
2 Appellants' claims
3 Decision
4 See also
5 References


[edit] IncidentIn the early morning hours of Sunday, March 16, 1975, Carolyn Warren and Joan Taliaferro who shared a room on the third floor of their rooming house at 1112 Lamont Street Northwest in the District of Columbia, and Miriam Douglas, who shared a room on the second floor with her four-year-old daughter, were asleep. 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 0623 hours, and was recorded as a burglary-in-progress. At 0626, 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. (This suggests that when they heard that there had been a burglary, the police must have felt that they had a promising lead on a culprit.)

Meanwhile, Warren and Taliaferro crawled from their window onto an adjoining roof and waited for the police to arrive. While there, they observed 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 0633, 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 0642 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. At knife point, Kent and Morse then forced all three women to accompany them to Kent's apartment. For the next fourteen hours the captive women were raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon one another, and made to submit to the sexual demands of Kent and Morse.

[edit] Appellants' claimsAppellants' claims of negligence included:

the dispatcher's failure to forward the 0623 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;
the dispatcher's failure to dispatch the call received at 0642 hours.
[edit] DecisionBy a 4-3 decision the court decided that Warren was not entitled to remedy at the bar despite the demonstrable abuse and ineptitude on the part of the police because no special relationship existed. The court stated that official police personnel and the government employing them owe no duty to victims of criminal acts and thus are not liable for a failure to provide adequate police protection unless a special relationship exists.

I am aware of that case. I was using the term "duty" in it's more colloquial and standard meaning, for which I should have used "obligation" instead. I merely meant the police have a commonly understood responsibility to investigate reports of suspicious people.

Also remember in Warren, the issue was whether or not the police had a responsibility to effectively stop a situation, not whether they must respond at all.

What this means to me is that the police cannot be sued for ineptitude. At this point we're delving deeply into the area of acting in good faith, etc. I'll prepare a detailed rebuttal tomorrow. Until then, review this:
Failure To Act

Local politician calling for ban on police chases



Ignoring the other issues that I'm sure will come up, does anybody find the logic LDO******ed other than me? There are alot of good, logical reason to curb, or even ban outright high speed pursuits, but the fact that those chased tend to exit the vehicle WHERE THEY ARE APPREHENDED BY POLICE WHO ARE ON SCENE BECAUSE THEY CHASED because they "weren't in the car at the time of apprehension" clearly isn't among those logical arguments.

From my personal perspective, I'm leery of putting too many legislative restrictions on chases, because so much is dynamic. For instance, at 3am, I can chase someone at 100+ MPH through Atlanta city streets without really being a threat to anyone other than myself and the running man. On a Tuesday afternoon headed toward a school zone, I may make a decision to let the suspect go if we're only running 50.

Also, note they were pursuing a motorcycle.

I think whether or not cops should be allowed to chase someone should be based on what the person is being chased for and then whether the chase will endanger the public. There should NEVER be high speed chases with situations like guy refuses to pull over for a routine traffic stop, or cops run guys plate and he has warrants for X, Y, and Z minor stuff. Just get the plate number and send a couple of units to the guy's house at 5am the next day. If he's there, great, bring him in. If he's not, he gets a warrant for evading.

In cases where there is a fleeing robbery suspect, murder suspect, escaped prisoner, etc., chases should be allowed, but only to the extent that they don't put the public in danger (this should be strictly enforced, i.e. street cops can lose their jobs for starting a "bad" chase, supervisors can be demoted/suspended for not immediately ordering the stop of a "bad" chase). Rules would be clear and draw a bright line in terms of how few other cars/pedestrians need to be on the road for a chase to continue. All chases the exceed the speed limit would be reviewed by a board totally outside the police. I assume most states have some kind of Traffic Safety Commission within their DOT. That would be perfect for this.

Ideally, bigger departments would just always keep the cars well back and follow the guy with the helicopter from a high altitude until he stops and holes up somewhere.

Do you believe creating "no chase" policies would lead to an upswing in people seeing blue lights behind them and simply pulling off?

Using the assumption the police often lack information at the point of initial contact, how reasonable do you believe the commonly held police assumption of "They're running for a reason" is?

ETA: Also, the standard of law in most states is a scale, weighing the threat to the public posed by the fleeing suspect vs the danger to the public posed by the chase. What are your thoughts on this?

ETA II: to answer my first question, I'm of the opinion the upswings would be rather large.

To answer my second question, I've never personally seen a chase end where the conclusion was the only crime the suspect committed was the minor traffic infraction they were originally stopped for (this statement is excluding crimes committed during the pursuit btw)

I think there would be one, but not a huge one. I doubt anyone is going to just drive away to avoid a traffic ticket if there's like a 95% likelihood that 4 cops are going to show up at their house/work, arrest them for fleeing, and give them the traffic ticket anyway.

This kind of seems like a corollary to a police philosophy I strongly disagree with: "Hey that guy looks kind of sketchy, lets follow him until he commits a minor traffic violation. Then we can pull him over and see if we can get some criminal charges on him."

I think if chases for mere traffic violations were outright banned, you'd see a LOT less people getting pulled over for rolling a stop sign, or a broken tail light, or failure to use a turn signal, or illegal tint or whatever, because cops are rarely going to be able to put other charges on the people that actually pull over. That's why I don't think there would be a huge upswing of people driving away. Cops would just stop bothering to make these pretense traffic stops altogether. When people get pulled over under a no chase system, it would be because their driving presents a danger, not because they look like a meth head and their rear license plate is partially obscured by a tow hitch.

Probably. So what?

So the guy who ax'd your wife 4 days ago is driving a friends car. I pull behind him, notice his suspicious activity, slow driving and weaving as he watches me in his rearview mirror.

I blue light him, he disappears.

He has an active warrant.

He is never heard from again.

ETA: Disregard. Didn't realize who I responding to. Enjoy your fun, I'm not interested in your anti-Govt bs.

FYP

EZ GAME

The point is it's not the end of the world if a bad guy gets away every once in a while. "Anti-government BS" doesn't have anything to do with this. Not nearly as much as you getting all offended any time anyone mentions the possibility of reigning cops in even a tiny bit.

Different people want to reign the police in, for a wide variety of reasons. Are you stating your anti-govt sentiments don't drive the reason you want to reign them in?

And in response to this:
I think this FYP better shows both your opinion, and reality:

Yes, in this case anti-government sentiment is unrelated.

Also note I didn't even state a preference for "zero-tolerance no chase" policies. You just sort of made that up. All I did was ask you "so what" if a bad guy gets away.

I mean seriously. "anti government sentiment" really? We're talking about innocent people getting killed in unnecessary chases here. It's anti-wasting-human-life sentiment. Get a grip.

And yes, its NOT the end of the world if "several hundred" "bad guys" get away.

How many of them are going to never be seen again?

How many apprehensions of, say, bank robbers, do you need to make RIGHT NOW to make losing a car full of innocent kids worth it?

http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktl...,1627273.story

Justified?

How many bank robbers hit "a car full of innocent kids" during a police chase? This seems to be a rather lower number...

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06186/703427-53.stm

in the same story:

Nice that's nice.

OK Fredd-bird, how many people with broken brake lights do you need to apprehend RIGHT NOW to make the tradeoff of killing two innocent civilians worth it?

Better question?

about 350

.

Sick pursuit brah, so your contention is that police shouldn't be able to pull over anyone at all for anything ever?

I the way it's the fault of the police the children died, rather than the fault of the driver of the vehicle that actually hit them in your example.

I'd say there is a pretty solid argument to be made that in your hypothetical, even if the police, rather than the bank robber, hit the car full of kids, it's still the responsibility of the runner, due to the fact that the person running is in commission of a felony at the moment they happened, not the cop.

I'd say a pretty large percentage will never be seen again, since criminals tend to live somewhat vagrant lifestyles and they'd just simply never stop. They don't live the lifestyle you and I do, they don't have stable residences, and they're almost always arrested while driving.

Before you say "Get the tag, catch them later" how do we deal with first, stolen cars, and secondly, if the car isn't stolen, how are police to be sure enough of the driver to swear out a warrant?

They aren't, "The vehicle tag is registered to PVN" doesn't even come close to reaching the probable cause line, so not knowing who they are = they get away never to be seen again about 75% of the time.

As sn aside, I'd assume since you have issues with chases you also would have a problem with blue lights on vehicles and police exceeding the speed limit to answer calls?

I'm not absolving the other parties here.