Submitted by Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
We’ve read several times on this blog about police reluctance to help drowning victims and even to prohibit family members from leaping into the water to save their loved ones (here) when authorities refuse to help. Seems the policy is now international. Scottish police stood idly by, keeping back onlookers, as a 37 year-old woman thrashed about in the water near Glasgow’s Albert Bridge and repeatedly called for help.
At that moment, three Glasgow University students, Graham McGrath, Rosie Lucey and Rhys Black were walking along the River Clyde and heard the pleas for help. Eschewing official policy, McCGarth and Lucey leapt into the river and pulled out the unidentified drowning woman. Black then waded in to the water and helped pull all three to safety. The three performed CPR until the woman was revived — all without the aid of local Strathclyde Police officers who gave more priority to crowd control.
Before the students arrived, onlookers had tried to throw floatation devices in the river, but to no avail. Moments before the rescue, the near-victim had slipped beneath the water. The actions of the three quick-thinking students clearly saved her life. Said McGrath, “There was a woman in the water shouting for help. There was somebody throwing lifebelts to her, but she couldn’t get to them …nobody was doing anything else ” Lucey added, “‘We realised we were watching someone drown.”
Particularly galling were the words of a police spokesman who sniffed, “‘It is not the responsibility of the police to go into the water – it’s the fire and rescue service.”
One wonders about the police officers responsibilities as human beings.
Source: Mail Online
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
If the cops there are anything like the ones here, they refused to help because they’re too fat to do much of anything but fill out paperwork and sit in their cruisers while they talk on their cell phones. Except when there’s a person of color involved when they can whip out their stun guns and give the “perp” a good dose of the juice.
To protect and to serve indeed.
mespo727272
1, January 3, 2011 at 11:46 pm
Blouise:
“If no one is responsible for protecting me from harm, then is it not my responsibility to protect myself by whatever means I deem necessary?
Once again … just wondering.”
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You have the right to protect yourself and others using all reasonable and necessary (but not unnecessary) force at your disposal taking into account the circumstances of the threat and based upon your actual subjective assessment of harm that is threatened by the attacker. Of course, your subjective belief must be a reasonable one. Thus the jury may “stand in your shoes” as it assesses what is objectively reasonable under the cricumstances as you perceived them to be. (The subjective-objective test)
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(So if I buy a used army tank and point the canon at my neighbor who fails to take in his garbage can for two days after the garbage has been collected, the police don’t have to protect him but I will probably have to find a really good attorney to convince the jury I was acting reasonably?)
I put that in parenthesis so you’d know I was joking.
All kidding aside, this was a very informative thread and I thank you for the education. I will read the link you provided in answer to FFLEO’s request.
You’re a gem!