HELP! POLICE!

I'm going to say something here that is going to raise some hackles. Then I'm going to explain my statements and, hopefully, make everyone buy it. Here we go. Ready?

Buy a gun. Get a bat. Own some weapon and have enough skill to use it to save your own life and the lives of your family members. DO NOT RELY ON THE POLICE TO SAVE YOUR LIFE FOR YOU.

Wait. What's this? What heresy are you speaking of? Officer Smith, are you really telling me not to rely on the police to protect me? What about that "Protect and Serve" horse shit plastered all over the sides of their patrol cars? Aren't they SUPPOSED to protect me?

Now, let me explain.

Suppose some bad guy comes into your driveway and starts to attack you. When you (or perhaps your hopefully observant neighbor) call 911, what happens? The phone rings in some dispatch center and hopefully gets answered immediately. Now, let's assume for simplicity's sake that you are calling from your own home phone and your call is actually going to your local police. Remember that if you call 911 from your cell phone the call is usually routed to a mobile 911 call center, not to mention they will have the added chore of figuring out where you are if you're unable to tell them yourself.

Anyway, your call in this scenario is answered by your local police and a call taker begins collecting information from you such as your location, the type of emergency and what response is required. Elapsed time so far while you're getting your ass kicked: 2 minutes.

Now the call goes to a dispatcher who has to read the call, decide which officer(s) to send, and dispatch the call. On a good day: probably another minute.

So now you've been fighting for your life, or more likely laying there being beaten upon, for three minutes. The police are on the way. If an officer is immediately in your neighborhood, you may get a response within a minute or two. With four officers covering your entire city, figure 5 minutes is more likely. So you've now been under attack for 8 minutes. And that is under ideal circumstances. Longer times are far more likely. If your attacker is using a weapon of some sort you are most likely already dead or dying if that was their intent. Otherwise, they have most likely made whatever point it was they were trying to make and they have probably fled the scene. At this point the police arrive and find your bloody, beaten carcass in your driveway.

Where were the police? Why didn't they protect me? This is unacceptable! This is an outrage!

The police cannot be everywhere at all times. It takes time for you to get help when you call 911.

If the news this morning is any indication, people simply cannot grasp this concept. Berkeley cops arrived too late to save a man who was being beaten in his driveway. Now Berkeley residents are all in a tizzy because they think the police response was inadequate.

The response may not have been adequate to some people. But it was as fast as they were able to get there under the circumstances.

There were a lot of things conspiring against a good outcome in this situation. The police were short handed because of the occupy protesters. The neighbor who called was not clear to the call taker about what was happening. Who knows what else was happening at the time.

There are many other things that can cause a delay in police response. You may be in a fight and unable to talk to tell the call taker what's happening. Your neighbor who is calling for you may be hysterical and unable to tell the call taker what's happening. The call might be coming from a cell phone, which can add several minutes while the call is transferred to your local police. You may not even have a phone with you.

The bottom line is this. If you're depending on us, the police, to save your ass in any foreseeable situation, you're deluding yourself. You need to be able to protect and defend YOURSELF. Then, after you have taken care of business, you can call us to come clean up the mess. That way it'll be the person who attacked you who is bleeding in your driveway, instead of you.

Folks used to understand this, once upon a time. There has never been a time when the police would magically appear at the snap of your fingers. In fact, modern technology has made police response MUCH faster than it was at any time in the past. But people have somehow forgotten over the years that it is first YOUR responsibility to protect yourself. People have gotten soft, and come to the conclusion that any violence on their part is a bad thing. They don't want to be responsible for an injury to another person, no matter what that other person is doing unto them.

If you are such a person, I cannot help you. You have already come to your own conclusions. You have already decided you are just going to sit there and take whatever beating you're going to get. You have decided it's better to be submissive and hope you don't get hurt. You have decided the police are responsible for coming to your rescue. You're an idiot.

I believe every person should be armed with something, even if it's just some sort of training on how to use their fists and feet to protect themselves. If you are attacked, DO SOMETHING! Be self sufficient!

Even under ideal circumstances, by the time we get there it'll probably already be too late...