“Somebody is going to die tonight,” a visibly agitated Anthony Lord told a close friend on July 16, 2015. Lord, a resident of Benedicta, Maine, was a registered sex offender who displayed symptoms of violent derangement. His anger had been kindled by a voice mail message from the Maine State Police reporting that a woman named Brittany Irish had accused him of sexually assaulting her, and asking him to visit a local barracks to be interviewed about the matter.
Lord’s entirely plausible threat was reported to Jaime Irish, Brittany’s brother. His frantic phone call to Brittany interrupted a conversation in her home with two Maine state troopers. They were discussing both Irish’s sexual assault complaint and her report that the barn at her parents’ home had been set on fire – most likely by Lord, who knew the family well.
Brittany’s initial relief at the presence of two officers sworn to “serve and protect” her was quickly transmuted into incredulity when the troopers refused a request to deploy officers to watch her and her two small children (who were visiting relatives at another location). Protecting a rape victim and her family against a credible murder threat from an assailant who was also suspected of carrying out a retaliatory arson attack was not a priority worthy of the man-hours it would entail.
Frantically grasping for whatever reassurance they could get, Brittany and her mother, Kimberly, asked if the police could leave a marked vehicle parked outside the home as a bluff. Even that was seen as an unacceptable expenditure of precious department resources that could be used for more important undertakings, such as traffic enforcement. Indifferently assuring Brittany that they would “keep an eye on the situation,” the troopers drove away.
The fire that destroyed the Irish family’s barn was not the beginning of Lord’s depredations. A few hours earlier he broke into the home of a Silver Ridge man named Kary Mayo, beat him, tied him to a chair, and stole his guns and pickup truck.
Early the following morning, Lord shot his way into the Irish home, killing Brittany’s boyfriend Kyle Hewitt and wounding her mother, who suffers from multiple sclerosis. Brittany, who suffered a superficial gunshot wound to her arm, exited through a bathroom window and tried to escape, but she was chased down by Lord. When a 60-year-old local resident named Carlton Eddy happened by in a truck, Lord flagged him down -- then shot the driver and stole his vehicle. After strangling her into submission, Lord tied the victim up with a seatbelt and sped away.
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| Future murder victim Kyle Hewitt. |
For reasons yet to be explained, Lord drove to a nearby lumber yard, where he shot two more men – Clayton McCarthy, who survived, and Kevin Tozier, who did not. As he drove away from the scene, Brittany pleaded with him to take her to the home of his uncle Carl, who was a mutual acquaintance. That Lord did so is another mystifying decision on his part. Displaying a flat affect and saying not a word about his actions, Lord “unloaded the gun like it was something that he was bound and determined to do,” his uncle later recalled.
Shortly thereafter, fourteen police vehicles surrounded the home and took Lord into custody. It is important to recognize that the police didn’t actually arrest the offender: That was accomplished by the victim and the suspect’s uncle. There was no official competence displayed in clearing this case, and just as little valor. All of the risks were borne by the victims, at fatal expense to two of them. Once the danger had abated, the police were eager to take credit for delivering the suspect into the care of the criminal “justice” system.
It is a long-established principle that police officers and the agencies employing them face no specific or institutional liability when they fail to protect individuals from acts of criminal violence. Brittany Irish’s ordeal resembles that of the victims in the pivotal 1981 decision Warren v. District of Columbia in which the D.C Court of Appeals ruled that it is a “fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.” (Emphasis added.)
In the earlier case, two women contacted police to report an assault on a mutual friend. Officers were dispatched to the address, but – in the interest of that holiest of all considerations, officer safety -- declined to enter the apartment building. The desperate women called again, and this time the department didn't even bother to respond. Acting in the misplaced hope that help was nigh upon arrival, the women opened an apartment window and called out for assistance. This alerted the assailants, who abducted the women at knifepoint.
“For the next fourteen hours,” the court recounts in a clinical summary, “the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands” of their captors.
The victims were not entitled to civil redress, the court insisted, because “The duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists.”
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| Brittany Irish, with brother Jaime, displays some of her wounds. |
Brittany Irish’s case differs from the one described in that ruling in two significant ways. First, Andrew Lord not only shot, tortured, and sexually assaulted her, he assaulted several other people and murdered two victims after the police had been given detailed, specific advance warning regarding what was about to transpire – and they were in a position to help, but simply could not be bothered to do so.
Secondly, and most importantly, “We contend that the Maine State Police had established a `special relationship’ with Brittany,” attorney Dave Van Dyke told Pro Libertate. “In addition, it is clear that she was seriously harmed as a result of what the case law calls `State-created danger.’”
By contacting Lord and informing him of the sexual assault complaint, and then refusing to provide protection to Brittany, the State Police “acted to increase the threat which existed to Plaintiffs beyond that which otherwise existed,” the lawsuit contends. “Defendants made an implicit and/or express promise to protect Plaintiffs, Plaintiffs relied upon such promise, Defendants failed to fulfill such promise and Plaintiffs were injured thereby, such unfulfilled promise creating a special duty” to protect Brittany and her family.
It should be pointed out that the conflict that led to Lord’s murder rampage had existed for several years, and Brittany had obtained two restraining orders against him. Following the initial July 14, 2015 sexual assault, Brittany received no assistance whatsoever from the police. She went to a hospital to undergo a rape kit examination; she carefully preserved the clothes she had been wearing as evidence. When she reported the rape on July 15, she was told by the State Police to come in the following morning and file a written complaint.
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| Attorney Van Dyke. |
A few hours after the assault, Brittany had received a text message from Lord asking her to meet him to “talk about what had happened.” This prompted her to suggest to the police that she meet him and elicit a recorded confession from him – if an officer would maintain a discreet distance to ensure her safety.
“That’s not the way we do it,” an officer explained to her. The preferred approach in such situations, apparently, is to inform a registered violent sex offender with psychotic tendencies that he had been accused of rape, and suggest that he volunteer to talk about it with the police at his leisure.
After enduring a second rape and witnessing two murders, Brittany delivered the offender to the State Police. The department held a press conference to express perfunctory condolences to the people whom they had failed to protect – and then slammed down the portcullis to prevent critical scrutiny of its actions.
“We made a FOIA request for the official reports and other documents on this case,” Van Dyke told me. “It was denied on the grounds that they are part of an `ongoing investigation.’” Lord’s trial isn’t scheduled until August of 2017, which would give the State Police more than a year to keep those documents from the public. Accordingly, “we decided to file suit and get the documents through discovery,” Van Dyke explained. He is guardedly optimistic that Brittany’s case is strong enough to overcome “the cottage industry in `qualified immunity’” that constantly devises ever more elaborate rationales for failing to hold police officers accountable for their actions – and their derelictions.
If Brittany Irish had been pulled over by a state trooper who demanded to search her vehicle and person for drugs or cash, she would have been under a state-prescribed duty to submit. This is the kind of “general public service” the police are expected to provide – or, more accurately, to inflict. She cannot opt-out of that “service” without being arrested and possibly killed by those providing it. Those same agents of state-authorized violence, however, opted out of helping Brittany when she and her family needed protection.
Over the past century, the state’s “justice” system has created a lengthy series of judicial precedents intended to discourage “self-help” on the part of people experiencing, or threatened by, criminal violence – whether official or private. Self-help was the only kind available to Brittany and her family, and it proved unavailing when the Maine State Police actively collaborated with a deranged man who tore a bloody swath through two counties.
#1: ConservingFreedom To: Deckard (#0)
It's not a "contention" but a plain fact - but that won't stop LF's copsuckers from denying it.
ConservingFreedom posted on 2016-07-23 15:42:49 Reply Private Reply
#2: GrandIsland To: ConservingFreedom (#1)
You might have missed the upper court ruling on whether LE has a duty to "protect" the SHEEP.... and it was ruled they don't (and in reality they can't in almost all occasions). So why do you keep knocking them for not doing it, why do you suggest the impossible... AND WHY CANT YOU PROTECT YOURSELF, YOU FILTHY WEAK PATHETIC SHEEP?
GrandIsland posted on 2016-07-23 16:30:35 Reply Private Reply
#3: ConservingFreedom To: GrandIsland (#2)
You might have missed that the ruling was about "general" duty; you might also have missed how by contacting Lord and informing him of the sexual assault complaint, the State Police “acted to increase the threat which existed to Plaintiffs beyond that which otherwise existed” so the question was no longer one of "general" duty.
ConservingFreedom posted on 2016-07-23 17:11:48 Reply Private Reply
#4: buckeroo To: GrandIsland (#2)
So why do they officially lie with the oft repeated slogan, "to serve and protect?"
buckeroo posted on 2016-07-23 18:50:02 Reply Private Reply
#5: A Pole To: GrandIsland, ConservingFreedom (#2)
Are you suggesting that police should be disbanded and replaced by the local citizen's militia?
A Pole posted on 2016-07-23 18:57:21 Reply Private Reply
#6: ConservingFreedom To: buckeroo (#4)
"To sit on our fat asses eating donuts and occasionally conduct an extrajudicial execution" didn't do well in focus groups.
ConservingFreedom posted on 2016-07-23 18:57:26 Reply Private Reply
#7: GrandIsland To: ConservingFreedom (#3)
lol
GrandIsland posted on 2016-07-23 19:07:23 Reply Private Reply
#8: GrandIsland To: A Pole (#5)
Yeah, when your sheeple peers step up and stop the next active gunman. You counting on 50 faggots arming themselves before they go dancing with Stinky Peter Puffs nephew?
Don't hold your libtard breath, A-hole
GrandIsland posted on 2016-07-23 19:10:24 Reply Private Reply
#9: GrandIsland To: buckeroo (#4)
For the same reason some scumbag lying fuckstain painted all over his signs, " plan to restore America" and he didn't RESTORE SHIT, asshole.
GrandIsland posted on 2016-07-23 19:16:47 Reply Private Reply
#10: ConservingFreedom To: GrandIsland (#7)
I defer to your superior shitbaggery.
ConservingFreedom posted on 2016-07-23 20:05:18 Reply Private Reply
#11: buckeroo To: GrandIsland (#9)
How does a nation become restored when it is totally fractured? HeLL, America doesn't even have any money to "restore' anything.
buckeroo posted on 2016-07-23 20:18:34 Reply Private Reply
#12: GrandIsland To: buckeroo (#11)
Then kill yourself. Stick a barrel in your mouth, create a good seal with your lips.... and squeeze the trigger (do it outside so you don't soil the double wide trailer carpet).
GrandIsland posted on 2016-07-23 21:23:40 Reply Private Reply
#13: Fred Mertz To: buckeroo (#4)
It should be, "to $erve and collect."
Fred Mertz posted on 2016-07-23 21:28:31 Reply Private Reply
#14: buckeroo To: Fred Mertz, GrandIsland (#13)
More like: to steal from the publick coffers and do nothing but eat doughnuts.
Did ya notice, ol' GI didn't answer the question?
buckeroo posted on 2016-07-23 21:41:28 Reply Private Reply
#15: Vicomte13 To: buckeroo (#11)
Sure we do. America is sovereign. We can never run out of money. We print it. It might not be worth much by the end.
Vicomte13 posted on 2016-07-23 21:43:21 Reply Private Reply
#16: buckeroo To: Vicomte13 (#15)
Yeah, the BIG lie the politicians won't tell you about. In order to make all these domestic BS programs/foreign wars, the USA borrowed 20 trillion bucks.
buckeroo posted on 2016-07-23 21:46:53 Reply Private Reply
#17: Vicomte13 To: buckeroo (#16)
Which means that we always can print the money to pay the debt.
Of course this creates inflation and a variety of nasty problems, but we never, ever have to default because we can always print more.
Whenever you read about the threat of "default" by a sovereign that issues its own money, you always know that you are being shined on.
The USA never, ever has to default, because it is a sovereign issuer and can always create more money out of thin air, and will do so too, rather than default.
So, when somebody is telling you about Social Security "running out of money" or giving any other US Federal government default scenario, you need to realize that this person is hysterical and does not really understand how the world works (and therefore, should not be listened to very seriously).
The question for the US government is never, ever default. Not ever. The Federal government of the United States cannot default, and cannot be put into the situation where it will - other than by choice - because the federal government of the US has the sovereign power to simply create the money to pay its debts.
So, if the government is risking default, that merely means that it is making a political decision to refuse to pay creditors, rather than to create inflation by printing money, that is all.
Because the investor class is so very powerful and so very politically connected (witness the Puerto Rico muni bailout and the bank bailouts), the government will almost certainly always just print money, rather than wiping out lenders.
The resulting inflation is the problem, or could be, unless there is a mechanism to hold that down.
In recent years, jiggering around with capital requirements, to force banks to maintain huge reserves, simply creates a pool for all of this extra cash printed to pay debts to go sit inert somewhere and not trigger inflation.
What happens to the money, inflation, all of that, is really quite irrelevant.
The only thing that REALLY matters is the actual existence of the goods. People don't need money - they need food, shelter, clothing, medicine, fuel, etc. - those are the hard points, the actual delivery for use of real things. Money is just a somewhat imaginary medium for the acquisition of those things, including the capital investment in creating the structures to that produce those things.
Stable money is good for private actors who don't have sufficient capital to be able to own the means of production, and who therefore only have money and the buildup of money over time to be able to purchase things. This is the middle class (upper, middle and lower) and the working class. The wealthy own the capital and the land itself, so no matter what happens to the money, they can derive a profit however inflated the currency gets. The very poor, dependent on government largesse, will always be given sufficient money (however inflated) to be able to acquire the necessary material things for survival. Most people live in the unhappy space where inflation hurts them and drives down their standard of living.
So, there are very good reasons why printing money is an unpalatable solution to debt. Nevertheless, as a factual matter, the US can't default on its debt other than by choice, Social Security can never run out of money, money ever, because the government can always create more money out of the air to pay for everything in current dollars. The question is really how much inflation we want to bear.
The legerdemain of recent years has created huge supplies of money without touching off hyperinflation, because of the way those supplies were pooled. It is much like the strategic petroleum reserve, which was always touted as a way to be secure against oil cutoffs, which it was if really needed, but primarily it was a means for the government to use tax dollars to buy oil when the price was high, and pump it back into the ground, thereby transferring government wealth to private oil interests. To have the oil available there was no need to pump it out of the ground at the wellhead and then ship it to another spot to pump it back into the ground. The oil was just as available at the wellhead.
Why, then, do that? Because at the wellhead it produced no profit for the producers, and they are politically connected. Pump it and then sell it to the US government for tax dollars, and you effect a massive ongoing transfer payment from the federal coffers to private enterprise - really, essentially, creating a price and profit stabilization mechanism for oil that was pretty much the same as has been done for agriculture since the 1930s. But the Republican administrations that wanted to subsidize the oil industry could not do that in the open, because it was contrary to their "free market" mantra that got them the votes. Therefore, they slapped the words "Strategic Reserve" on it, and spoke in dark terms of national security. And thereby they were able to devise a system to pump oil out of the ground in one place, back into the ground at another, and use federal money to enrich the private oil companies that created all of the infrastructure to do it and pumped the oil - and without even any real public scrutiny.
The "Strategic Petroleum Reserve" is a marketing name for oil subsidies. Why not call the agricultural subsidies the "Strategic Cheese Reserve"? Exactly the same thing. Different administrations have to put different marketing labels on the same activities, because they have different electorates to convince that they are different.
It's been popular forever for folks on the right, and gold miners, to talk about federal government default. Federal default is impossible, other than by choice - the sovereign can always print money.
Now, truth is, inflation hits the lower and middle classes the most. Default would hit the upper class. It would actually be BETTER for the country at large to default and cancel debt than to inflate the currency to the lira in order to keep the upper class whole. But the upper class have always had a stranglehold on our government, and given its structure, probably always will.
Therefore, any talk of default is absurd. It will never happen, because the government will always print more money.
There are big budgetary problems coming in the future that mean printing money and, probably, eventually, really bad inflation.
Which is why it is a very good idea for working and middle class people to concentrate on buying themselves a piece of real property - because THAT inflates in value with inflation.
Financial assets swoon and become unstable, but the land stays, and you need a piece of land on which to live.
Then, with a piece of land, sweat equity substitutes for hard capital, and can make any piece of land, even a backyard, economically productive if only in the form of a vegetable garden.
Vicomte13 posted on 2016-07-24 07:37:27 Reply Private Reply
#18: Vicomte13 To: Deckard (#0)
Outward submission is a matter of common sense and convenience, not real duty.
Vicomte13 posted on 2016-07-26 14:10:15 Reply Private Reply