American Police Fails and Police related Bureaucracy Fails

I became fascinated with a man named Joe Lozito lately. He was on board a NYC subway train when he was suddenly stabbed in the face by spree killer Maksim Gelman; who had already killed 4 people and injured 5 more a few hours earlier.

He survived and tackled Gelman to the floor and got stabbed several more times while disarming him.

Amusingly, the police knew Gelman was on the train, and had locked themselves in the motorman's booth. They were on the train specifically as part of the manhunt for Gelman. But as Lozito was being stabbed, the police never came out.

Even after Gelman was disarmed, and the police finally cuffed him, Lozito was bleeding on the ground of the train that the police had now stopped, and none of the officers even tried to render aid. Lozito had to be saved with a napkin of another passenger named Alfred Douglas.

To make matters worse, the cowardly officers who let Lozito get stabbed immediately took credit for bravely disarming Gelman themselves while excluding Lozito entirely.

But all witnesses disagreed and it became known that the police on the train were afraid of Gelman because they thought he had a gun, and locked themselves in the motorman's booth. Its cowardly for an officer, but it is human I suppose.

The real kicker is the judicial mess. When Lozito became aware that the police left him to die and took credit for his efforts in detaining a spree killer, 2 lawyers sued on his behalf, and Lozito attempted to sue personally later.

All lawsuits didn't even make it into a courtroom on the grounds of... and this is amazing:

A Supreme Court Ruling among many others stated that police have "no constitutional duty to protect" American citizens.

On a side note that sentence changed the way I felt about gun control and restriction. I was originally on the fence about it, and for a time a common anti-gun argument was that police have the guns to protect citizens. A weak argument since it can take police several minutes to get to you, but even weaker when you realize that police don't even have to come at all.

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There was a situation where, in Washington DC banned lethal protection items, but also banned non-lethal protection such as mace and tasers. A group of thugs broke into a home and began beating and raping a woman who lived downstairs, while women upstairs called the police. Dispatch reported it as a domestic disturbance and police never arrived.

Dispatch was called again, and said police were on the way and did not issue any orders. The women upstairs shouted downstairs that police were on the way, and got captured in the process. For the next 14 hours, the women were all brutally beaten and raped and police never appeared... in Washington DC where mace was banned, and the police are your only legal protection.

The fact that the thugs somehow knew they could rape for 14 straight hours without police intervention is kind of suspicious, but we'll leave that one for another day.

When the women tried to sue the DC Police, their suit didn't see trial either, because of that same court ruling that states that police are not required to save or help any citizen.

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While police in the US are not required to protect citizens by law now, we also have "Good Samaritan Laws" that require non-police citizens to protect or render aid to others if they are able to do so under penalty of law if the law decides you had the power to help but didn't.

The police are at fault for a lot of these, but the bureaucracy around it creates problems or worsens existing problems. To say that citizens can only protect themselves and are even legally required to protect each-other, but police are not legally required to, is contradictory to the "protect and serve" line that is written on so many of their cars.


TL;DR:

I am legally required to protect others by law and would like to protect myself, and cannot rely on the police to do it because a court ruling says that American Police are not required to protect American citizens. The argument that guns should be banned or restricted on grounds that police will protect us with their guns is therefore legally false and contradicted. (At least until the ruling is overturned)


Its a beautiful wall of text... but also a very scary wall of text. I hope you enjoy though. I would like to dedicate this thread to other incidents of Police failures. The focus and title mention "American" but other countries may be welcome.

Well fuck, even my country is more competent than that.

This judgement is complete and utter bullshit. Those who came up with that are beyond retarded.

Consider the next:

- People (police, non police, flying tunas, whatever), when they see others in danger around them and they can help, they should. They are forced by law to don't be ambivalent toward it. If it were legal to not help, then let's imagine the 4 rapist scenario: Let's say one of them didn't rape the girl, but didn't anything to stop it. He's STILL an accomplice for the inaction.

- If police were forced by law to protect people (this law don't override the previous one, a police that sees a crime near is treated as a civilian in that case). Then than means that each time they fail on their work (don't found the criminals, don't know where is the crime happening, blah), they could be put in the jail. That is absurd, police can and will fail on their jobs (often) because they aren't perfect. Of course, if that failure happens for negligence, that is already a legal crime.

- If a police is being too ineffective but the negligence laws doesn't apply, there exist internal rules in the institution to fire them and happens often. You don't need to put them in the jail to just force them to work, basically. Corruption exits to worse things, but corruption is on everything and is fault of the society itself.

- You can have the hugest weaponry in the world, and you can still got raped. A surprise attack, an attack with even stronger weaponry (because you'll not go to the work with an AK-48) or just being outnumbered is more than enough. There are only a few things that can stop the rapists:

1. Third parties forces (usually police) are frightening them. Patrolling, basically.

2. The fear to get caught and put in jail. Good laws (that punish the specific crime) and police forces (that are the unique that can arrest) do that.

3. Preventing to stay alone in a dangerous zone in a dangerous time reduce a lot the risk to being targeted. Not like it completely prevents it, though.

4. Of course not involving personally in dangerous stuff.

5. The criminal is already in the jail.

6. Prevent the person in becoming criminal in the first place (ranges from very possible to almost impossible, depends of the crime and situation).

And then, those things will not stop all of them, just a few. Can't be helped.

- In fact, the law and system works in that way in all the world. It's an international law that is being applied in most the countries already.

Note: There are a lot of things you can do to improve the issue. Corruption is societies fault and you can help (a lot) if you are not corrupt, and you make sure people around you isn't, neither, and you help to third parties being be not corrupt, neither. You can also directly help becoming a (good) police, lawyer, detective, police assistant, emergency phone assistant, politician (of any degree), watchdog, teacher and journalist, or helping friends and family who are those being a good one. Putting pressure to the government each time they fail also helps.

We also have a case of Jessica Lenahan-Gonzales. She had a restraining order against her husband, who violated the order and kidnapped her three children. She called the police and told them about the violation and kidnapping at around 7:30 pm but no police action was taken.

She constantly called the police several times over the next few hours and eventually just personally went to the police station 12:40 in the morning.

Amusingly, the police didn't have to find the woman's husband. He eventually came to them at 3:20 in the morning and starting shooting at them. He was killed but when the police checked his car, they found all of Jessica's children dead. The Police had a report of a kidnapping and restraining order violation, and took so long to respond or even begin investigating, that the man accused actually found his way to the station to shoot at officers.



If there was a reason for the supreme court ruling, this was probably part of it. They were afraid that people would sue the police every time a person was hurt or killed in a crime and the police didn't have the ability to help.

But it was worded poorly. They basically said that police are never required to help people under any circumstance. Police are also not treated as regular citizens in circumstances where "Good Samaritan" is violated. They are immune to criminal and civil charges on these cases.

Obviously getting sucker attacked won't save you. But I'd still rather have a gun. The issue of situations where police can't save you are terrible enough. This thread is for when the police won't save you even when they know you are in trouble.

Also, in a country where gun control is debating the idea of banning mace is insane as well.

Washington DC's shit laws are legendary. DC's laws are determined by congress as no state owns it, and we all know how great congress is at making laws.

For example, it is illegal for women to carry 3 or more condoms on their person. Which is horrible on so many HIV inducing levels.

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New issue:

American police can use tear gas. Even the military of every single nation on Earth is forbidden from using tear gas because of how damn horrible it is to die from. Yet somehow the police get to use it on civilians. Riot or not, tear gas is something that should be banned.


Some police are really bad about filing reports too. As we learned from the Ferguson protests, a report on the initial shooting was not filed for damn near two weeks after. And it had to be filed by other police units and departments other than Ferguson because they never made one. As though the shooting never happened at all.

There was also a woman shot in the head during the protests, we don't know who by, because the police stopped by the hospital to confiscate the bullet and never took her statement or really talked to her at all. For about 2 weeks after her shooting, no police officer ever took her statement or made a report on her shooting. As though it never happened. Made worse by the fact that bullet that was taken disappeared.

Oh, yeah, the DC always makes sucky laws. And don't tell me, the congresses most often fuck up than don't. For example here (Chile), you have 20 years of jail for stealing a CHICKEN, but if you kill 4 persons, you're only 5 years... that you only need to make the half of them in jail, that when you have 2.5 years of real jail, you're leave free and you're just ordered to firm monthly in the congress... What a stupid system. *Facepalm*.

Still the ideas are kinda OK, but they're poorly worded as you say.

As Nyara has already hinted at the main reason for the ruling is resources. One of the problems in America is that when someone suing turns out to be wrong they pay no price for it. They can just walk away. So the ruling can stop a lot of resources going out the window of police station in not having to deal with such lawsuits and also in not having to pay more lawyers to deal with such issues. Not to mention not have cops tied up in court when they could be on the street so to speak.

I can understand your resentment for their failings in the issues you've mentioned but one has to remember that cops just like the rest of us have limited resources. They cant go after every so called case that comes up they must prioritize those cases that are more likely to be solved(and are likely to be actual cases) over those that they may have little power over. For example the Jessica Lenahan-Gonzales case. First lets ask ourselves how often they may get such reports and then we must ask ourselves does calling over and over make it a more important case? And if they accept the case where do they start in tracking the kidnapper down?

I understand that we hear about plenty of cases in which the police have failed but how often do we hear when they succeed? There are things that could make it better like reducing bureaucracy but that wont make such cases go away.

These are not issues of police not being able to help.

They deliberately did not. Refused to help even.

The case of Joe Lozito being the most damning of all, in which the police officers literally locked themselves in the next car a few feet away, and even ignored a man who kept tapping on the door telling them that a spree killer was on board. The police basically told that man to shut up and go away. And this is considered legal for police to do. Again, these police were actually on the train looking for spree killer, and dismissed a witness who said he had boarded it.

The stabber even knocked on the locked car door too, and tried to trick the police by addressing himself as an officer. To which the police said "you aren't the police" All completely legal.


You might say these cops shouldn't be tied in court because they could be on the streets...

except these cops shouldn't even be on the streets at all. And only belong in court.

Until the rulings are overturned, I'd also like it to be illegal for police to have the words "protect" on their vehicles.



We just have to acknowledge that police are not in America to protect and serve. But only to serve the government and only to make arrests and other authority actions. The judicial government has basically declared it to be true, so everyone else should too until it changes.

You're overreacting it. It's a bill that is everywhere in the world for the already explained reasons. They aren't forced by law to protect you, but they are forced by the institution to do so. Of course the institution can (and do) fail (ins't is the same for the judiciary system, too?), corruption exits and cases like the ones you're telling appears.

For example a teacher isn't forced by law to teach you, but if they want their salary they are forced by the director and so to do the work. This is the same.

Sometimes the police just fails because they failed. Other times is for corruption an negligence. In the later cases, it's a case by case thing rather than a standard (well, the corruption side is a global issue, but in USA the corruption isn't that unworkable).

It isn't a perfect system, but make sure that without police the society could be in a bigger, hugest issue. Even with the romanticism that cowboys movies portraits it, the old west times were a really dark time full of sadness and victims. The gun on hand manly men was just a rare exception.

And I believe they should be forced by law to protect citizens, or remove "protect and serve" from their job description. Since they enforce the law, they should enforce according to the law, and not by institution.

In the meantime, I'll also be pro-firearms for all law abiding civilians.

I will only protect myself. No police officer can be trusted to do it. I will still call them when shit hits the fan and I need them, I just can't actually rely on them to help, because I have no recourse if they dismiss me.

I can only rely on myself.

I'm not disagreeing with you on this particular case but you seem to be arguing that this one case proves that cops will not protect you. Which judging by what you have provided so far is quite the stretch. There are hundreds of thousands of cops in America just because a few acted badly does not mean the entire group will act the same way. Last year 27 cops were killed by felons they were trying to apprehend. The year before 49 cops were killed by felons they were trying to apprehend. Tens of thousands of cops are assaulted each year resulting in thousands of injuries. I don't think the cops that were killed and the ones that were injured were shying away from their job.



Some cops should be fired and some should even be charged. The question throughout all of your argument though is will all cops act as some of the ones that end up in some scandal that we hear about in the news? Cops failing to do their job when they are able to can be life and death but the question we should ask is are there any jobs out there that don't have people that fail to perform that which they are being payed to do? If officers are cowering when they should be doing their job then they should be fired and depending on the situation charged. Bureaucracy may make this hard or down right impossible which is why I think much of it if not all of it needs to go. Also getting ride of many of our laws would also help cops focus more on the laws they really ought to be focusing on. However no matter what is done such cases as the Lozito case will not go away entirely.



Whether you want to trust the cops or not relying on them isn't the best of ideas since when "shit hits the fan" cops are not likely to be standing next to you. which means that they have to respond and regardless if they do or not its still much time for things to go horribly awry.

The rape case was in 1978, Warren v. District of Columbia. I think that looking back 36 years for such an example is kinda digging deep. Especially since handguns are non longer banned there, even concealed carry.

This protection is there so when police make the safest choice, they are not penalized for someone getting hurt in unpredictable occurrences that they didn't cause and might have prevented. Police hide when someone is shooting, they don't stand up and shoot back like some movie. They don't go in alone then they see the murder, they can't be penalized for having fear and not overcoming it. They can be penalized for acting and messing up, they can get in trouble for many many things. They are not immune.

I do not think the problem you state is an big issue, it needs clarification so the laws do not protect negligence. Instead protects officers from taking undue risks when they see them.
As for your gun ownership/protection relation to this. I am for gun ownership, but for regulations, training, background checks including mental health, all sales being documented. I am iffy for concealed or open carry. I think you need valid reasons, some as simple as I make night deposits for my job, or I have to carry because I have to handle transporting money for purchases for my job. Mace and pepper spray should never be banned, tazers are iffy but shouldn't be banned if guns are not. Weapons like batons, large knives and other weapons shouldn't be more restricted than guns. Small folding pocket knives should not be banned, they are tools, its like banning kitchen knives.

This is why I own guns. My cousin is a cop and we go to the shooting range all the time. He said you can be awesome at the range and still fuck up if you are indecisive or hesatant in a real world situation. The mindset has to change, and be prepared for the unexpected. If you train for it properly you will react properly.