No Obligation

• The courts have consistently ruled that the police do not have an obligation to protect individuals, only the public in general. In Warren v. District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department (D.C. App. 444 A. 2d 1 (1981)), the court stated "courts have without exception concluded that when a municipality or other governmental entity undertakes to furnish police services, it assumes a duty only to the public at large and not to individual members of the community".
• Former Florida Attorney General Jim Smith told Florida legislators that police responded to only 200,000 of 700,000 calls for help to Dade County authorities.
• The Department of Justice found that, in 1989, there were 168,881 crimes of violence which were not responded to by police within 1 hour.
• Currently, there are about 150,000 police officers on duty to protect a population of more than 250,000,000 Americans.