Monday, October 13, 2008

Betting Your Life On 911

From the Local6 News website in Orlando:
A Central Florida woman whose 17-year-old daughter was killed in a murder-suicide apparently committed by her ex-boyfriend said the teen was told by police to stop calling for help or she'd be arrested.
Further in the article:
Hall's mother, Sherry, said her daughter was concerned about Coffner and informed police.

In fact, Hall said her daughter called police so much that on Jan. 15 they threatened her.

"The police officer said if you call us one more time on him, I'm going to arrest you both," Sherry Hall said. "So, the day she died, she knew she couldn't talk to police. So, she handled it herself."
The local PD has so far not responded to inquiries.

I'll just bet they haven't.

Florida has some of the best personal defense laws in the country. They have no duty-to-retreat, and protect defenders from civil suits by their assailants (or the assailants' survivors). Handgun permits are shall-issue, although they are on the expensive side and can take 90 days to process through the system.

But it's too late to start that slow ball rolling when the police are already telling you to stop bothering them with your violent-ex-boyfriend problems.

Another consideration is how long help will take to arrive even if they do send it.

According to statistics published by the US Department of Justice, in 2005, the most recent year with full data available, police nationwide responded to "crimes of violence" within 5 minutes only 28.9% of the time. If you narrow things down to just "aggravated assault," it improves slightly to 30.5%.

29.7% of the "aggravated assault" calls were handled in from 6 to 10 minutes.

34.8% were handled in from 11 minutes to 1 hour.

The solution is not to wait until you're facing death to prepare to prevent it.

We need to be able to address the Bad Thing ourselves if and when it happens. Violent criminal actors overwhelmingly avoid police presence when they commit their crimes. But that means we must have the tools, skills, and will to do so effectively. Otherwise, we're just live bait.

3 comments:

Rio Arriba said...

Agreed. And then at the other end of the equation, the courts have ruled time and time again that the police have no obligation to render aid to an individual citizen at all. This fact alone makes the anti-gun stance of places like MA, CA, NJ, IL, and WI, et al, indefensible.

I live a long way from so-called civilization. According to the stats, if an LEO was available when I called, I could expect them to show up here in MAYBE two hours. If I were lucky.

I prefer to count on something else besides luck.

Anonymous said...

South Dakota has a permit app fee of only $25, requires no classes to apply, and issues a temp permit within 5 days. Of the states that issue permits, that's the best I've seen for cheap and speedy service.

Utah has an emergency permit to cover situations like the one in FL, specifically for people in urgent need of CCW. Alaska and Vermont go one better; if you can own the handgun, you can carry it concealed.

Here in Nebraska, after taking the required class ($150 or so), and applying for the permit ($100), you wait 3 weeks. However, we've only had about 5,000 (I'm one of them) issued in this state of 1,800,000. Why? Because of the cost, all the places we can't carry, the fact that local gubmints can ban CCW, the lack of any standards regarding "no guns allowed" signage (it can be smaller than a postage stamp), and the fact that it's a misdemeanor to miss a miniature sign and enter the building. We really need our CCW law revamped.

Hecate said...

Hey, three weeks is a huge improvement. When I applied for my Nebraska permit in early 2007, it took four months.

Absolutely agree about the over-long list of prohibited places and the lack of preemption. The biggest reason folks tell me they have for not getting the permit is having to forfeit the affirmative defense.