Never give up your life preserver.

Someone posted something on Facebook about a woman that had her home invaded and pulled out a gun on the burglars and ran them off. During the incident she dialed 911 and the dispatcher instanty told her to put her gun down.

She didn't and likely as a result didn't she get hurt.

This isn't the only time a dispatcher at a police station has told a homeowner to disarm themselves and I'm sure it won't be the last. My guess is they do this for officer safety so that when the cop walks in. That way the cop gets to walk safely onto a house to find a dead homeowner instead of a live one that's shaking like a leaf with a gun in their hand.

The system is presently set up to protect the criminal and not the decent citizen.

Let's look at the truth of the situation.

The dispatcher is sitting in a warm, dry, safe police station. They are doing what they are trained to do and will do just that if they want to keep their job. I would not last very long as a police dispatcher because I would likely tell the beleagured home owner to put a couple rounds in the thug's X-ring and refer things to the coroner but I digress.

The next part of the equation is that the courts have stated that the police are not there for anyone's personal safety. They are there for the safety of society as a whole. This means that the police don't even have to show up if they don't want.

From there we look at the police who are not there to prevent this from hapening in the first place. They are generally retroactive and not proactive. They don't come unless called and when they are called it takes time to get there.

It is often said, "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away". This isn't the fault of the average cop, it's just the way it is. I'm not writing this to bash the average street cop. They generally do the best they can with what they have to work with. The average cop is going to get there as fast as he can. The average cop wants to help. However he can only do what he can do.

Still, police response times vary. Where I live it's generally well under 5 minutes. Our local gendarmes are pretty good. However a lot can happen in five minutes. Or for that matter, even one minute.

The bottom line is that when push comes to shove you are on your own. There is nobody there to help you. You have to help yourself. The last thing you should do is put down the one tool that can save your life. 

Hopefully you won't have to use it and the fact that you have it and are willling to is enough to either get an invader to surrender or flee.

If you do you can generally figure that the responding officer that didn't get there on time is going to be a whole lot happier to see a home invader with a hole in them than a homeowner in those shoes.

Truth is, a policeman once confessed to me that he'd rather do the paperwork that goes with 100 bad guys getting shot then ever have to make another murder or sexual assault report.

It's often your choice as to whether to become a victim or not. Don't let some two bit police dispatcher sitting in a warm office with no vested interest in you talk you into becoming a victim.

Never give up your life preserver.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY