http://dial911.itgo.com/
Dial 911 and Die
by Richard W. Stevens
With an Introduction by James Bovard
Author of Lost Rights and Freedom in Chains
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OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK: Do the police owe a duty to protect you from criminal attack? In most of the United States, the answer is "no." In fact, in most cases the police do not even have to respond to your emergency 911 call.
Don't believe it? Read the true stories from all across America about citizens who depended solely upon their telephone and police response for emergency help against a violent criminal. Not only did those crime victims not get help, the local government and police escaped legal responsibility for failing to help those victims.
This compact paperback reviews the law in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the District of Columbia and Canada, showing how statutes and court decisions consistently hold that the police generally have "no duty" to protect individual citizens. When it comes to personal self-defense, citizens are on their own.
Highlighting the importance of preparing to protect oneself and family, the book also retells 45 stories about people who successfully defended themselves long before any police could help.
Check the law of your state, and of the states where your loved ones live. If you are interested in public policy questions about government liability, gun control or victims' rights, or if protecting yourself and your family is your worry, this book tells you what you need to know about whether you have any "right" to police protection.
Certainly you will never look at your telephone the same way again.
SPECIAL NOTE TO LAWYERS AND RESEARCHERS: Dial 911 and Die provides full citations to all statutes and cases for all 54 jurisdictions referenced in the book. There is also a citation list of relevant secondary authorities. All of these legal materials are available on-line and in full-service law libraries everywhere.
PERSONAL NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: It was the most shocking thing I learned in law school. We had been studying how, under current law, you can sue for almost anything. You can sue a ladder manufacturer for failing to warn you that you might fall off. You can sue the phone company when a drunk driver crashes into a phone booth that you are using. You can sue your landlord for failing to take enough precautions to deter criminals from harming you on the property. A burglar can sue the homeowner when the crook trips and falls while burgling. In all these cases, the law courts said the product manufacturer, the phone company and the property owner "owed a legal duty" to prevent the accidents or protect the citizen.
Turn the page, and prepare for a jolt: you cannot sue the government or the police for failing to protect you from crime. Whether liberal or conservative, almost everybody agrees that if there is one thing the government should do for the people, it should protect people from violent crime. Yet the law in most localities says that the government and police owe no legal duty to protect individual citizens from criminal attack.
You don't hear this fact from the media and political figures. So, I wanted to inform every American and Canadian about it. People are worried about violent crime, but the authorities just hand them a telephone number to call. After reading this book I hope people will understand that they have a right and duty to protect themselves from criminal attack, and that nobody else can really do it for them.
Some people won't believe this message unless they see the law and the cases in black and white with footnotes. Dial 911 and Die tells the true stories, gives the law, and provides the legal references. Get one copy for yourself, and one extra copy to lend to skeptical friends and family members. It might just save a life.
-- Richard W. Stevens,
[email protected]
