From: Lawman . ARTICLE II - BILL OF RIGHTS . welì regulateä Militia¬ beinç necessarù tï thå security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall no be infringed. . Police Have No Duty To Protect Individuals (1982) . An appelliate court has ruled that police were not negligent in failing to protect three women from two knife-wielding assailants. The case (D.C. 444 A. 2d 1) stemmed from a 1975 incident in which two men broke into the house shared by three women. Two of them called police after hearing the other scream for help. A police dispatcher assured them assistance was on the way. A squad car arriving on the scene, merely circled the house without stopping, and the dispatcher failed to relay a second call for help. The iintruders, discoving the other two women, repeatedly raped and beat all three over the next fourteen hours. In dismissing the suit, the Court of Appeals reaffirmed what it called the "well-established" and "uniformly accepted rule" that "a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection to any particular individual citizen." The court held that police have a duty only to the "public at large and not to individual members of the community." Similar decisions across the nation place citizens in a dilemma, as more states are adopting stronger limitation on the right of self defense, compounded by the nationwide drive to place restrictive gun control law on the books. If court rulings continue to hold that police have no duty to protect the individual, as ownersship of fire-arms faces increasing restraints. U.S. citizens will ultimately find themselves completely at the mercy of violence-prone criminals. Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253