We hear again and again the myth that law enforcement agencies will provide protection, retrieve stolen property, and keep the peace
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.
Action 7 documents the violent protests that have hit Austin, TX in response to the death of George Floyd.
For example, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports:
Many business owners who now face destruction at the hands of rioters can scarcely afford it:
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.
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.
