Philosophical Deja Vu....

Well, well, well.

I was randomly checking out some posts from the start of the year, trying to find a review about a book when I came across this post about Tanya Huff's vampire series, in which I said:

For all that the author likes to point out that police work isn't like it is in the movies, she sure doesn't bother to point out that in real life, there aren't last moment White Knight rescues that universally absolve women of their responsibility to defend themselves. I'd almost rather we didn't have a police force at all, for all the damage that it has done to the concept of personal responsibility for one's saftey (and before I hear comments of hypocrisy, yes, every time I step out of the house without the Glock I am stupidly putting myself at risk. But I also accept that risk. I accept that, if I'm assaulted in a situation where I could have defended myself, it is, quite literally, my own damn fault for being without the means to defend myself. Just like it's the damn fault of every other able-bodied victim that could have carried a firearm to prevent a personal assault and didn't).

The above is a rather rare idea, I've discovered. Most people have the mistaken belief that tax dollars entitle them to police protection. It really doesn't. Ever. The police are under no legal obligation to answer a particular call, or be there in a certain amount of time, or risk their lives to rescue a victim. So not only have most people been deprived of their right to defend themselves - they don't have a "right" to police protection, either.

And the worst part is - assuming you can get to a working phone, dial, give all the pertinent information to the 911 operator under heavy, panic-laden stress, and assuming your case is prioritized, and there's a cruiser in your neighborhood, you're still looking at least two to three minutes before somebody physically comes to rescue you. And that's under the luckiest of lucky stars, when every factor involved in your 911 plea is working in your favor. We're talking Super Lotto odds in your favor here.

But what happens when you momentarily forget your address (don't think it isn't possible, if you've recently moved or move a lot) and the system has to track you? Or if another extension of your land line phone is off the hook? Or if you're house is hard to get to? Or what if you have a surly 911 operator who thinks you're hysterical? What if the cops are all at an officer-down shooting on the other side of town? Or just a serious accident? When is your knight going to show up?

Two to three minutes is plenty of time to kill a person. Five to seven, they can take their time. In high school, I once knocked a phone that had a preprogrammed 911 button off my bed, in my sleep, dialing the emergency service at 3 AM and obviously not responding to the operator's queries after my health. The response time, which my parents looked into, was almost 16 minutes. Considering that a silent 911 call is a fairly ominous sign...

And that my riding instructor, an EMT, instructed me to report a break-in or attack as a fire rather than police call, because fire fighters have much, much higher response times...

Yeah.

*blinks a bit, looks down, faintly surprised*

I don't remember getting on this soap box...

Anything look familiar? I knew I'd spoken my mind on this subject before, that this philosophy should not have come as a surprise to any of my friends.

What's really annoying about this is that this post was better written than my post on the same concept this week. I'm deteriorating.