Most Americans are under the impression that the police are there to protect and serve them. That impression is wrong. In many cases, it can be dead wrong. Out of remote northwestern Alaska comes an interesting story of what happens when the police can’t respond.

Susan Jones knew she had to leave her remote southeast Alaska village when she came home to find her husband clutching his loaded rifle. In his other hand, she said, was the crumpled restraining order she had filed against him a day earlier after he sent several bullets whining past her head.

“He just had it bunched in his hand and it clearly didn’t mean anything at all,” Jones said.

Many crime victims in rural Alaska face the same predicaments Jones faced as a victim of domestic abuse: weak law enforcement, lack of anonymity and no easy way to escape the state’s isolated bush communities. . . .

Dangerous weather and the lack of a road network in rural Alaska can leave crime victims marooned for days. Most villages can be reached only by air or sometimes boat or snowmobile. . . .

About three dozen of Alaska’s more than 200 bush villages have no law enforcement at all because of a lack of state or local funding.

Those who stay in their villages after reporting a crime must wait for state troopers to catch a plane or helicopter from the nearest large community, a trip that can take hours or even days in blizzards or fog.

“We could get a bad weather case and it could be days, in a worst-case scenario, before we could get out there,” said Lt. Rodney Dial, a deputy commander with the troopers.

The lengthy response times often result in victims recanting their calls for help. Delays can also allow telltale wounds to heal or perpetrators to destroy crucial evidence.

Even communities with small police departments or state-funded Village Public Safety Officers have difficulties helping victims.

According to the Alaska Rural Justice and Law Enforcement Commission, village public safety officers are limited to protecting crime scenes until a trooper arrives. They are usually the only law enforcement presence in their village and are often local hires who are related to, or friends with, alleged perpetrators, and as a result are at times more reluctant to investigate crimes. They are also barred from carrying weapons.

Because of the lack of patrols in the Alaskan bush, even the prospect of a victim obtaining a restraining order can be a deadly choice.

Recalling her experience with her ex-husband, Jones said: “That piece of paper’s not bulletproof.” — Associated Press

These people make the same mistake that a lot of people make: they assume that a criminal is going to suddenly start behaving because somebody wrote something on a piece of paper.

In the lower 48, where virtually everything is much easier to get to, it’s often said that the police are never around when you need them. But even so, many people operate under the assumption that the police will be there when you call. For many, that mistake was deadly.

And some of those who are dead wrong are dead because they have been duped by ignorant or dishonest politicians or police chiefs, who promise protection that they cannot give and have no legal duty to give. Some of these officials know they have no legal duty to protect the average person, and yet still support disarming law abiding people, the better “to protect” them from criminals! Front line police officers sometimes are verbally abused by victims of criminals who wrongly believe that police officers have a duty to protect the law abiding. These good citizens blame the police officer for not doing a job for which he/she has never been responsible: protecting the average person against criminals. . . .

U.S. law is based on English Common Law. In English Common Law “the Sheriff” is a government employee whose main job is enforcement of government decisions: seizure of property, arrest of persons wanted by the authorities, collection of taxes, etc. Maintenance of public order, a secondary duty, was done to the extent resources allowed.

It was obvious — 500 years ago in England and in America now — that a sheriff could not be everywhere at once. It was — and is — equally clear that to protect every person would require an army of Sheriffs (or Sheriffs deputies) [or The Assize of Arms, 1181 A.D., the Early Militia Law]

Maintaining an Army of police officers — in effect a police state — would nullify the Freedoms set forth in the Bill of Rights. Neither the Framers of the Constitution — nor their successors — wanted to avoid the risk of harm to some individual arising from criminals’ activity by creating a police state that inevitably would harm every individual.

Instead, the Framers provided for a judicial system to deal with criminals, persons who abused the Freedoms provided by the Constitution. The Framers assumed that a law abiding person would largely be responsible for his/her own safety. As a matter of Law, that assumption still is valid. . . .

State and city governments — rather than the Federal authorities — are responsible for local law enforcement. So, only occasionally have Federal Courts ruled on the matter of police protection. However, in 1856 the U.S. Supreme Court declared that local law enforcement had no duty to protect a particular person, but only a general duty to enforce the laws. [South v. Maryland, 59 U.S. (How.) 396, 15 L.Ed., 433 (856)]. The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives you no right to police protection. In 1982, the U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, held that: “… there is no Constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen. It is monstrous if the state fails to protect its residents against such predators but it does not violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or, we suppose, any other provision of the Constitution. The Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: it tells the state to let the people alone; it does not require the federal government or the state to provide services, even so elementary a service as maintaining law and order.” [Bowers v. DeVito, U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit, 686F.2d 616 (1982). See also Reiff v. City of Philadelphia, 471 F.Supp. 1262 (E.D.Pa. 1979)]. — Excerpted from Dial 911 and Die

This excerpt also shows numerous examples of people who have relied on “police protection” and died as a result. The stark truth is, in an emergency, law enforcement may be unwilling or even unable to respond, and you have to be prepared to take care of yourself and your loved ones.

And that may very well mean using a gun to defend yourself from a criminal intent on doing you harm.