Judge’s Dismissal of Parkland Shooting Lawsuit Shatters “Protect and Serve” Myth

Contrary to what you may believe, police in this country are not legally required to keep you safe.

Instead, they have the option to keep you safe, mostly depending on whether they have to place their own lives in danger to keep you safe.

That is why a federal judge on Monday threw out a lawsuit filed by surviving students of the Parkland school massacre from earlier this year in South Florida.

The lawsuit claimed that Broward County sheriff’s deputies were lackadaisical in trying to stop Nikolas Cruz as he shot and killed 17 students and teachers on February 14, 2018.

Despite video evidence supporting the claim, U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom based her decision on a 2005 Supreme Court ruling that determined police have no Constitutional duty to protect the public.

The decision infuriated the parents of the slain students who apparently were under the impression that cops are sworn “to protect and serve.”

But that is just a myth; a marketing slogan coined by the Los Angeles Police Department in the 1950s when Hollywood was romanticizing the LAPD through cop shows on TV.

Instead, police abide by the “officer safety” code which gives cops unlimited and unrestrained power over citizens.

Officer safety is what allows cops to kill suicidal citizens for not obeying their barking and many times contradicting orders.

Officer safety is what allows cops to snatch iPhones from unarmed citizens, claiming they thought it was a gun.

Officer safety is what allows cops to pile on top of an unarmed man while punching and kicking him, each of them straddling a body part while another cop chokes the life out of him as he gasps for air, all of them yelling “stop resisting” even though the man is unable to breathe, much less move.

Officer safety has always been more about cops exerting their control over the populace than about the safety of officers.

After all, if officer safety is such a priority, then why do so many cops refuse to wear their seatbelts, many times ending up dead in one-car crashes, despite it being the law and departmental policy not to mention a proven yet simple safety device?

And why are police not doing more to address the high rate of suicides within their ranks other than the painful fact that they are clueless in how to deal with suicidal citizens?

Police will tell you that driving without a seatbelt keeps them safer in case they need to jump out the car and kill somebody.

And they will blame the stress of the job for the suicides but is the job really that stressful or does it just attract unstable applicants in need of mental health?

When you consider that policing is not even ranked in the top ten list of most dangerous jobs, the answer becomes obvious.

The truth is, more cops are killed each year in car crashes than by actual cop killers. And more cops are killed each year in suicides than by actual cop killers.

And cops kill an average of three citizens a day. And 25 percent of those victims happen to be mentally ill .

And we can’t even even keep up with the number of school resource cops who get accused of raping or beating the students they are supposed to be protecting.

So knowing all this, why would anybody ask for more cops in schools?

Is it really about the safety of the students or control of the students?

Once again, the answer is obvious.

It’s always going to be about control when it comes to police. That is what they are trained to do, which is why so many control freaks become cops.

It has nothing to do with keeping you safe.

In fact, the blame for the Parkland massacre goes all the way up to the FBI, who ignored at least two tips from students that Cruz was a school shooter in the making during the months leading up to the shooting.

State and local officials also ignored warnings, including Child Protective Services and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, who had received numerous calls about Cruz prior to the shooting.

It was a colossal failure from a multitude of government agencies to keep students safe despite the daily rhetoric that they do just that.

So isn’t it time we break this dependency on police, if only for our own safety?

Contrary to what you may believe, police in this country are not legally required to keep you safe.

Instead, they have the option to keep you safe, mostly depending on whether they have to place their own lives in danger to keep you safe.

That is why a federal judge on Monday threw out a lawsuit filed by surviving students of the Parkland school massacre from earlier this year in South Florida.

The lawsuit claimed that Broward County sheriff’s deputies were lackadaisical in trying to stop Nikolas Cruz as he shot and killed 17 students and teachers on February 14, 2018.

Despite video evidence supporting the claim, U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom based her decision on a 2005 Supreme Court ruling that determined police have no Constitutional duty to protect the public.

The decision infuriated the parents of the slain students who apparently were under the impression that cops are sworn “to protect and serve.”

But that is just a myth; a marketing slogan coined by the Los Angeles Police Department in the 1950s when Hollywood was romanticizing the LAPD through cop shows on TV.

Instead, police abide by the “officer safety” code which gives cops unlimited and unrestrained power over citizens.

Officer safety is what allows cops to kill suicidal citizens for not obeying their barking and many times contradicting orders.

Officer safety is what allows cops to snatch iPhones from unarmed citizens, claiming they thought it was a gun.

Officer safety is what allows cops to pile on top of an unarmed man while punching and kicking him, each of them straddling a body part while another cop chokes the life out of him as he gasps for air, all of them yelling “stop resisting” even though the man is unable to breathe, much less move.

Officer safety has always been more about cops exerting their control over the populace than about the safety of officers.

After all, if officer safety is such a priority, then why do so many cops refuse to wear their seatbelts, many times ending up dead in one-car crashes, despite it being the law and departmental policy not to mention a proven yet simple safety device?

And why are police not doing more to address the high rate of suicides within their ranks other than the painful fact that they are clueless in how to deal with suicidal citizens?

Police will tell you that driving without a seatbelt keeps them safer in case they need to jump out the car and kill somebody.

And they will blame the stress of the job for the suicides but is the job really that stressful or does it just attract unstable applicants in need of mental health?

When you consider that policing is not even ranked in the top ten list of most dangerous jobs, the answer becomes obvious.

The truth is, more cops are killed each year in car crashes than by actual cop killers. And more cops are killed each year in suicides than by actual cop killers.

And cops kill an average of three citizens a day. And 25 percent of those victims happen to be mentally ill .

And we can’t even even keep up with the number of school resource cops who get accused of raping or beating the students they are supposed to be protecting.

So knowing all this, why would anybody ask for more cops in schools?

Is it really about the safety of the students or control of the students?

Once again, the answer is obvious.

It’s always going to be about control when it comes to police. That is what they are trained to do, which is why so many control freaks become cops.

It has nothing to do with keeping you safe.

In fact, the blame for the Parkland massacre goes all the way up to the FBI, who ignored at least two tips from students that Cruz was a school shooter in the making during the months leading up to the shooting.

State and local officials also ignored warnings, including Child Protective Services and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, who had received numerous calls about Cruz prior to the shooting.

It was a colossal failure from a multitude of government agencies to keep students safe despite the daily rhetoric that they do just that.

So isn’t it time we break this dependency on police, if only for our own safety?

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For almost 15 years, PINAC News has remained active despite continuous efforts by the government and Big Tech to shut us down by either arresting us for lawful activity or by restricting access to our readers under the pretense that we write about “social issues.”

Since we are forbidden from discussing social issues on social media, we have created forums on our site to allow us to fulfill our mission with as little restriction as possible. We welcome our readers to join our forums and support our mission by either donating, volunteering or both.

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After all, the government has made it clear it will not police the police so the role falls upon us.

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But if we succeed, we will be able to keep innocent people out of prison.

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Carlos Miller
Carlos Millerhttps://pinacnews.com
Editor-in-Chief Carlos Miller spent a decade covering the cop beat for various newspapers in the Southwest before returning to his hometown Miami and launching Photography is Not a Crime aka PINAC News in 2007. He also published a book, The Citizen Journalist's Photography Handbook, which is available on Amazon.

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