The Only Civilized City in the
United States
By
Hans Sherrer
(May
8, 2004, Rev. Feb 14, 2006)
Hooper Bay, Alaska is one
of the United States’
most remote communities. It is over 500 miles west of Anchorage
on the wind-swept coast of the Bering Sea, and
there are no roads from the city to the outside world. The nearest city, Bethel, is 150 miles away
by airplane. [1]
In
spite of its isolation, the city is over a hundred years old and commercial
fishing is its main industry. The fishing and hunting is so plentiful that many
of Hooper Bay’s 1,100 residents supplement their
food with those activities. [2]
By
all accounts Hooper
Bay is a rough place for
a person to live – with challenges of living that people in other cities rarely
– if ever – have to face.
However
the most notable thing about Hooper
Bay is not its location
and living conditions. That distinction belongs to its status as the only
organized community in the country that prohibits its police from carrying a
firearm – and the city’s nine person police department has no firearms of any
kind. [3]
Furthermore, no one in Hooper
Bay can ever remember a
time when the police were armed. [4]
Even though the police
don’t have firearms, many Hooper
Bay residents do. Consequently, Hooper Bay’s
police must approach all situations with a response that diffuses its actual or
potential volatility – instead of the brute force method used in cities where
law enforcement officers have firearms readily available. There is an Alaska
State Police office in Bethel, however, an
officer must be flown to Hopper
Bay in the rare instances
when their assistance is requested. The rarity of those occasions is indicated
by the fact the State Police has seen no need to station an officer in Hooper Bay.
[5]
Naysayers
and critics of Hooper
Bay’s gunless police
force are silenced by one simple fact: It works, and it has worked for over a
hundred years. That lack of police armament bestows a unique honor on Hooper Bay:
It is the only civilized city in the United States.
Merriam-Webster’s
11th Collegiate Dictionary defines civilized as, “characterized by
taste, refinement, or restraint.”
That is in contrast with barbarous, that is defined as, “uncivilized.” A
volatile situation, such as the sort that results in firearm use by the police
around the country – is exactly the type of situation that requires the
civilized response of “restraint.” However police restraint can all too easily
be disregarded if the use of a firearm is an option to resolve a situation.
That response is barbarous because the deadly projectile exiting from the
business end of a firearm is the antithesis of a reasoned, rational, and
restrained effort to resolve a situation without escalating it, or
unnecessarily causing injury to anyone.
Although
Hooper Bay is unique in its civilized approach
to handling police firearm use – it is a throwback to the attitude that was
common in this country in the nineteenth century. The first municipal police
force in the U.S. was
established in 1845 in New York,
and municipal police didn’t begin to carry firearms as a matter of policy until
years after that. [6]
Emphasizing that there is no inherent necessity for the police to be armed,
most policeman in England
continue to be unarmed. [7]
Furthermore, a 1995 survey revealed broad support for that policy: 79% of
British police were opposed to carrying a firearm, and 3 out of 5 people in the
general population were likewise opposed to the idea. [8]
Those opinions are consistent with the observation of Hertfordshire’s Chief
Constable, “I think the British public cherish the image of a police officer
who is very much part of the community and is very close to them, and we
recognize that firearms create a bit of distance.” [9]
Pistol
packing police are inevitably distanced from the people in a community who may
be victimized by their disregard of civilized restraint. The societal attitude
that there is a symbiotic connection between the police
and the community is unreservedly taken to heart in those countries where the
police are unarmed – just like Hooper
Bay. The relationship of
people in those countries with the police is radically different in nature than
in this country, where the police in every city but one are armed at all times,
and medium and large cities have paramilitary style SWAT teams on call.
Scholarly
research supports the soundness of Hooper
Bay’s lack of police
armament, and undermines the position of those who claim the police must be
armed to protect the community. Historian Joyce Lee Malcolm, for example,
documented in Guns and Violence
(2002) that as private gun ownership - and with it the ability of people to
defend themselves - increased in Britain over a period of centuries,
violent crime decreased. [10]
The general low level of crime when the British had a ready means of adequate self-defense
is exemplified by the fact that in 1904, London - then the largest city in the
world with a population of several million people – had four armed robberies, or an average of
one every three months. [11]
Joyce Lee Malcolm noted the nearly self-evident reason why the proliferation of
private gun ownership has a deterrent effect on crime: “They clearly are one of
the few means by which the weak can defend themselves against the strong, women
against men, a lone man against two or more attackers.” [12]
However
that centuries long trend of a generally decreasing level of violent crime in Britain was
reversed in 1954, after passage of the 1953 Prevention of Crime Act (PCA). [13]
The PCA made it illegal to carry in public any
article “made, adapted, or intended” for a protective purpose “without lawful
authority or excuse.” [14]
In voicing his opposition to the PCA when its merits were debated in the House
of Lords, Lord Saltoun argued: “The object of a weapon is to assist weakness to
cope with strength and it is this ability the bill is framed to destroy. I do
not think any government has the right, though they may very well have the
power, to deprive people for whom they are responsible of the right to defend
themselves.” [15]
The
self-protective items that British courts have considered to violate the PCA
include such diverse objects as a knife, sewing needle, sand bag, pickaxe
handle, a stone, a container of pepper, and a firearm. [16]
Furthermore, a person who uses a potentially unlawful self-protection item to
defend him or herself is considered guilty of violating the PCA until they can
prove their innocence. [17]
The
PCA is still in effect, and the British courts have interpreted that even
brandishing a “toy gun” to ward off an attacker or burglar violates the Act. [18]
In 1997 the underlying intent of the PCA to undermine the right of self-defense
was logically extended by enactment of a law banning private ownership of
handguns in Britain.
[19]
A
consequence of emasculating the ability of the British to defend their persons
and property is the rate of violent crime more than doubled from 1997 to 2001,
and a person in London is six times more likely
to be mugged than a person in New
York. [20]
The increase in crime has been accompanied by an increase in the number of
British police who carry firearms – although they are still a minority of the
total. [21]
The increase in crime in Britain
that followed the 1997 ban on handguns also provides empirical evidence in
support of the estimate that close to 100% of people in urban areas are
afforded a measure of protection if a critical mass of 5% or so of people carry
a firearm. [22] That is
because a potential attacker or burglar doesn’t know who is, and who isn’t
armed. [23]
In
stark contrast with Britain,
as the number of private firearms in this country has approximately doubled
since 1973, the rate of all crimes, including those perpetrated by a gun
wielding assailant – has correspondingly decreased by more than half. [24]
That decrease cannot be attributed in any way to police presence. There was
universal police armament in 1973, and a survey of several thousand felons in
ten states found that they were more concerned about encountering an armed
citizen than an armed policeman. [25]
That finding is reinforced by a study of all 3,054 U.S. counties published in
the Journal of Legal Studies (January 1997): Nationwide the counties that allow
concealed handguns have a 8.5% lower murder rate; 5% fewer rapes; and 7% less
violent assaults. [26]
That research is confirmed by FBI crime statistics that show an even greater
percentage of crime reduction in counties of more than 200,000 people – which
are the ones most likely to have higher
rates of violent crime. [27]
Furthermore, research shows laws that interference with the ownership of a
firearm for self-protective purposes – such as the 1994 Brady Act – are
associated with increases of rapes, assaults, and other crimes above what they
would be without the law. [28]
The multiplicity of
findings in the late 20th and early 21st century on the
apparent effect private gun ownership has on deterring crime, are consistent
with the effects of widespread gun possession in the 19th century
“Wild West.” Contrary to its portrayal in Hollywood
movies and television programs, the frontier west had a low level of violent
crime.
Thus from historical
precedent and crime statistic analysis it can be surmised that laws impairing
the ability of people to defend their person and property are
counter-productive to checking or actually reducing crime in the U.S., just as
they are in Britain.
Although
there are nuances to the significant increase of crime in Britain as private gun ownership decreased,
while the significant decrease in crime in the U.S. paralleled an increase in
private gun ownership (including concealed weapons), the general trends are
unmistakable. One factor, however, that can be discounted as negligible to
those trends in both countries is the presence of armed police. [29]
In the U.S. that can be attributed in part to the fact that according to the
Supreme Court in DeShaney v. Winnebago
County Dept. of Social Services (1989), public agencies such as the police
have no federal constitutional obligation to provide the public with “a
guarantee of certain minimal levels of safety and security.” [30]
In that same decision the Court unambiguously stated that constitutional
provisions “confer no affirmative right to governmental aid, even where such
aid may be necessary to secure life, liberty, or property interests…” [31]
The Court also made it clear in DeShaney
that since the U.S. Constitution, “does not require the State to provide its
citizens with particular protective services, … a State’s failure to protect an
individual against private violence simply does not constitute a violation of
the Due Process Clause.” [32]
The Due Process Clause is the constitutional provision relied on by people
seeking redress for the failure of one or more government agencies (such as the
police or children protective services) to provide protection from a violent
situation that agency personnel knew, or should have known existed, the same as
any reasonable person would have.
The
Supreme Court expanded on its DeShaney
ruling in a 2005 case, Town of Castle Rock, Colorado
v. Gonzales (2005). The case involved a woman who repeatedly sought and was
repeatedly denied over a period of hours, police enforcement of a permanent
restraining order issued by a judge against her husband, after he violated its
terms by taking the couple’s three daughter as they played in the yard of their
home. Ten hours after the children’s abduction the father went to the police
station and was shot to death after he opened fire on officers. The three
children were found dead in the cab of their father’s pick-up. The children’s
mother sued the city, its police department, and the officers involved,
alleging they had violated her due process right to police enforcement of the
restraining order.
In
denying her claim, the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution “did not
create a system by which police departments are generally held financially
accountable for crimes that better policing might have prevented…” [33]
The Court described police protection as a privilege of living in society, and
“government officials may grant or deny it in their discretion.” [34]
The Court further inferred that under the Constitution a person has no
“common-law or contractual entitlement to [police] enforcement.” [35]
The Court made it unambiguously clear that police protection of a person’s
life, liberty and property is not Constitutionally required when it stated, “In
light of today's decision and that in DeShaney,
the benefit that a third party may receive from having someone else arrested
for a crime generally does not trigger protections under the Due Process
Clause, neither in its procedural nor in its "substantive"
manifestations. [36]
The
“third party” referred to by the Court is any person expecting protection by
the government (first party) from a person engaging in criminal activity
(second party). Even the two dissenters in Town
of Castle Rock
conceded, “It is perfectly clear, on the one hand, that neither the Federal
Constitution itself, nor any federal statute, granted respondent or her
children any individual entitlement to police protection.” [37]
Interestingly, the dissenters pointed out that the mother (Gonzales) could have
sued a private security company for non-performance if she had contracted for
protection from her estranged husband prior to his murderous rampage. [38]
The
lack of a Constitutional obligation for the police to aid a person in distress
is compounded by courts likening the police to a volunteer who can pick and
choose when to help someone in need. [39]
In a 1981 case, a federal appeals court described this position in the
following way: “… it would be absurd to presume than an individual assumes
permanent “volunteer” status when he becomes a police officer. … A person does
not, by becoming a police officer, insulate himself from any of the basic
duties which everyone owes to other
people, but neither does he assume any
greater obligation to others individually.” [40]
Police Irrelevant To Ensuring The Public’s Safety
Since police have the
legal status of volunteers who are not legally obligated to protect the “life,
liberty, or property” of the American people, it would be expected that their
presence is an insignificant factor in either checking or reducing the
prevalence of crime, or otherwise ensuring the safety of Americans. [41]
Lo
and behold, that is exactly what numerous studies over decades have found.
Professor of Criminal Justice David H. Bayley summarized that information in Police For The Future (1994), “The
police do not prevent crime. This is one of the best kept secrets of modern
life. Experts now it, the police know it, but the public does not know it. Yet
the police pretend that they are society’s best defense against crime and
continually argue that if they are given more resources, especially personnel,
they will be able to protect communities against crime. This is a myth.” [42]
Professor Bayley further explains that after four years of intensively studying
crime and police statistics in the United States,
Canada, Great Britain, Australia
and Japan,
“The plain but disconcerting fact is that differences in crime rates cannot be
attributed to variations in the number of police. This discovery is not new.
The President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice
pointed it out in 1967.” [43]
Consequently, even when the number of police is suddenly and significantly
reduced by an event like a strike or a layoff, crime rates are unaffected. [44]
Supporting the known lack of impact on crime that the prevalence or absence of
police has on crime, is Professor Bayley’s observation that evidence shows,
“The ineffectiveness of the police in preventing crime comes from evaluations
of the impact on crime of the three core strategies of contemporary policing:
street patrolling by uniformed officers, rapid response to emergency calls, and
expert investigation of crime by detectives. These are the activities that
police themselves believe to be essential for protecting public safety. These
are the functions they say will prevent crime. Unfortunately, there is no
evidence that they do.” [45]
So it is known that
contrary to popular public belief, neither the number of police, nor the methods
they employ makes Americans, or Brits, or Australians, or Canadians, any safer
from a criminal assault on their person or their property. Consequently the
illusory impact of the police, whether armed or not, on preventing or reducing
crime is consistent with their lack of a constitutional obligation to “serve
and protect” the American people.
In
stark contrast with the impotence of the police on reducing crime, is the
empowering ability of people to pro-actively engage in effective self-defense,
that at the very least has an empirical relationship to the decrease in all
types of crimes in the U.S. over the past three decades, including
interpersonal ones (i.e., between people who know each other). Those same
attitudes may also have had the companion effect of increasing the reliance of
people on methods of resolving serious disagreements that don’t rely on the
public court system the police are intertwined with. During the last few
decades, for example, the decreasing crime rate in the U.S. has been
accompanied by increased reliance on private dispute resolution techniques,
such as arbitration. [46]
There
are a number of reasons why Hooper Bay is the only civilized city in the U.S., and that
its unarmed police policy points the path towards how easily the entire country
would be a safer and more humane place to live without the expenditure of a
single cent by any government agency:
·
Eliminate all
laws impairing the right of self-defense.
·
Eliminate all
gun control laws.
·
Eliminate all
access to firearms and other lethal and offensive weapons (including stun
guns), by all city, county, state and federal law enforcement officers.
In a few months all state
and federal laws related to those three areas could be repealed, and the people
in this country would reap the heady reward of having a reduced expectation of
being affected by criminal activity. Furthermore, the quality of life of
Americans would improve because local, state, and federal law enforcement
officers who would no longer have firepower at their beck and call, would
become eager students of proven techniques in peaceably de-escalating and
resolving conflicts. Without the latent threat of a gun’s use to instill fear
in the people they encounter, the police would have to rely on persuasion and
moral authority to earn the respect of a person in a confrontational situation.
While today the police can use a weapon to kill or maim that same person
without compunction.
Joyce
Lee Malcolm referred to the period prior to the introduction of any laws
impairing self-defense as “a more civil era,” and ending the barbarous practice
of arming police is an essential step to ensuring we can return to living in a
civilized society that openly recognizes each of us is individually and
collectively the agent of our own, and each others protection from those who
may cause us harm. [47]
[1] Cops without guns, Rachel D'oro (AP), Seattle Times, August 9, 2003.
[3] Id. (The
Hooper Bay PD has five patrol officers and four office support personnel.)
[6] See e.g., Bayley, D.
(1999). The Development of Modern Police, Pp. 59-78 in L. Gaines & G.
Cordner (eds.) Policing Perspectives: An
Anthology. Los Angeles:
Roxbury.
[7] Life of Crime: Part 7, BBC News, 2001,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/English/static/in_depth/uk/2001/life_of_crime/police.stm.
[10] Guns and
Violence: The English Experience, Joyce Lee Malcolm, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, 2002, pp. 130-132.
[11] Trigger Unhappy,
Joyce Lee Malcolm, June 21, 2002, Financial
Times of London, ft.com.
[12] Guns and Violence,
supra, quote at 239.
[13] Trigger Unhappy,
supra.
[19] Id. See also, Guns and Violence, supra, The author, J.L. Malcolm, identifies a cause-effect
relationship of the low crime rate to, “The law on self-defence and the protection
of property … that the householder whose property was invaded could take
vigorous action to defend it.” Id. In 1967 a
revision of the criminal law in England
changed the common law standard for self-defense to what appears “reasonable” after the fact. Id.
One legal observer noted that the revised law “cast doubt on whether
[self-defense] still forms part of the law.” Id.
[20] Trigger Unhappy,
supra.
[21] Life of Crime, supra.
[22] The Bias
Against Guns: Why almost everything you’ve heard about gun control is wrong,
John R. Lott, Jr., Regnery Publishing, 2003, p. 242.
[23] Guns and
Violence, supra, at 132. (This
critical mass theory of firearm ownership is also supported by the fact that,
“In Britain and Canada where few potential victims are armed, almost half of all
burglaries are “hot burglaries,” that is, with the residents at home, whereas
in the United States only 13 percent are “hot burglaries.” Id.
at 244.
[24] Violent Crime
Rates – 1973-2002, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dept of Justice,
August 24, 2003 (from 1973 to 2002 the rate of violent crimes decreased from 47
to 22 per 1,000 persons over age 12); Property
Crime Rates – 1973-2002, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dept of
Justice, August 24, 2003 (from 1973 to 2002 the rate of property crimes decreased
from 525 to 180 per 1,000 persons over age 12).
[25] Carrying
Concealed Weapons Reduces Crime, Morgan Reynolds and H. Sterling Burnett,
p. 30, in Guns and Crime, Tamara L.
Roleff, ed., Greenhaven Press, 2000.
[28] See e.g., Guns
and Violence, supra, at 248
(“When Lott tested counties for the impact of the Brady Act he found it
“associated with significant increases in rape and aggravated assaults.”).
[29] This observation is a sub-set of the idea that the
police do not prevent crime. See e.g., Police
for the Future, David H. Bayley, 1996, esp. 3-5. Professor Bayley also
notes there has been a significant increase in the reliance of individuals and
businesses in both countries on security devices and private security
companies/personnel since the 1960s. For example, there are currently over
three times as many private security guards in the U.S. than police officers. Id.
at 10.
[30] DeShaney v. Winnebago County
Dept. of Social Services, 489 US 189 (1989); 57 U.S.L.W. 190,
195. In the DeShaney case, the Supreme
Court gave its approval to the reasoning of a number of lower state and federal
court cases that had been decided similarly, on a variety of issues concerning
the government’s failure to provide protective services..
[31] Id. at 196. In
the same vein the Court also stated, “nothing in the language of the Due
Process Clause itself requires the State to protect the life, liberty, and
property of its citizens against invasion by private actors.” Id.
at 195.
[33] Town of Castle
Rock, Colorado v. Gonzales, 125 SCt 2796 (U.S. 06/27/2005); 2005.SCT.0000121
¶74 < http://www.versuslaw.com>
[38] Id. at ¶90.
(“Respondent certainly could have entered into a contract with a private
security firm, obligating the firm to provide protection to respondent's
family; respondent's interest in such a contract would unquestionably
constitute "property" within the meaning of the Due Process Clause.” Id.)
See also, “The central question in this case is therefore whether, as a matter
of Colorado
law, respondent had a right to police assistance comparable to the right she
would have possessed to any other service … a private firm might have
undertaken to provide.” Id. at ¶92.
[39] Warren v. District of Columbia,
444 A.2d 1 (D.C.App. 1981).
[40] Warren v. District of Columbia,
444 A.2d 1 (D.C.App. 1981). (Emphasis added to original). It will also be noted
a dichotomy exists between the existence of police in this country who have no
constitutional obligation of “serve and protect” Americans, and who are in fact
legally considered to be the functional equivalent of “part-time” volunteers,
and the supposed purpose for which the federal and state governments exist. It
states, e.g., in the Declaration of Independence
that one of the primary functions of government is to protect the life, liberty
and property of the people. Furthermore, James Madison proposed the following
prefix to the constitution, “The Government is instituted and ought to be
exercised for the benefit of the people; which consists of the enjoyment of
life and liberty, with the right of acquiring and using property, and generally
pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” Joseph Gales and William Seaton,
eds., 1 The Debates and Proceedings in
the Congress of the United
States (Gales and Seaton, 1834, at 451.
However the proposed prefix was rejected, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s
decisions in DeShaney and Town of Castle Rock are indicative that the
concept it expresses is contrary to the Constitution’s philosophical
underpinning. This is also true of state constitutions, since in rejecting the
legal obligation of the police to provide protection to people in distress,
many state courts have relied on reasoning consistent with the Deshaney and Town of Castle Rock
decisions.
[41] Warren v. District of Columbia,
444 A.2d 1 (D.C.App. 1981).
[42] Police For The
Future, David H. Bayley, Oxford
University Press, 1994,
p. 3.
[43] Police For The
Future, David H. Bayley, Oxford
University Press, 1994,
p. 4.
[44] Police For The
Future, David H. Bayley, Oxford
University Press, 1994,
p. 4.
[45] Police For The
Future, David H. Bayley, Oxford
University Press, 1994,
p. 5.
[46] See e.g., Stateless
Not Lawless, Carl Watner, The Voluntaryist, No. 84, February 1997, pp. 1-8.
[47] End of a More
Civil Era, is a sub-chapter in Guns and Violence, supra, that specifically refers to the time in Britain prior to the
codification of the 1903 Pistol Act, which although relatively innocuous in its
requirements, laid the ideological groundwork for all subsequent legislation in
Britain and the U.S. that in varying ways undermines the pro-active
self-defense of a person’s life, liberty and property.