The police are being targeted and defunded across the nation. The politicians are paying attention, the criminals are paying attention, but they expect you to turn a blind eye to the short term outcomes of this push to demonize our police and make their important job many degrees harder.
What are these short term outcomes? Murder. Assault. Crime. All are on the rise and it all affects you.
Disclaimer: This article is intended for educational purposes only. We are not offering advice or legal counsel in any way. There are serious risks to life and limb as well as legal ramifications when you opt to act in self defense in this modern age. All of these scenarios present unique risks and the decision to act is left entirely up to the individual.
As preppers we are driven to act, based on the analysis of the current situation and some degree of foreshadowing. We are driven to act and that is why we do things like train, store food, buy weapons and network with others like us.
The summer of 2020 changed a lot of people in our nation. The cities were on fire while our major media outlets told us there was nothing to be concerned about.
Related: The Police and Military when SHTF – Friend or Armed Foe?
When the news is quiet about threats to life and dangerous people in our midst, even those outside the prepper ranks start asking questions.
One of the biggest questions is: WHEN TO LET THE POLICE INTERVENE AND WHEN TO TAKE JUSTICE INTO YOUR OWN HANDS?
Home Invasion
The average police response time is estimated at 10 minutes. Though, in rural or even semi-rural areas that wait could be much longer.
Even 10 minutes is an awfully long time to be under siege by someone breaking into your home. This is especially true if you are unarmed.
The gun control advocates are trying to assure that any guns that have are locked up in a safe, in your basement, so you have no possibility of using them when you need them most.
In a home invasion you should call the police. You should have EMS in route as soon as you hear the alarm or the glass break in your home but that does not mean you must cower and wait for the criminals to decide your fate.
Home invasions have become deadly in recent years and you should not count on the mercy of someone who is brazen enough to break into your home. Gather your family and be prepared to defend them if it comes to that.
Active Shooter
The mass shooting is a terrible scar on humanity. The attacks on soft targets like schools and churches also play on our worst fears. Paralyzed by these fears we have given a lot of power to these lunatic shooters. In many ways we are being trained to look at any maniac with a gun as an unstoppable force.
While the standard training for mass shootings tells us to run, hide and fight, there are many who believe otherwise.
Tim Kennedy, green beret, UFC fighter and entrepreneur runs a company called Sheepdog Response which teaches a vastly different line of thinking.
It’s one that centers around outsmarting, attacking, and disabling a shooter using superior numbers, strategy, and violence of action.
In a mass shooting you do not have to lay and wait for your chance to be a victim.
When Life Is At Risk
There are a number of situations that could put a person’s life at risk from a human threat.
Most people don’t realize that a simple street fight can actually end in someone never coming home.
To be knocked unconscious and fall onto the concrete or asphalt is nothing good for the human brain.
Sometimes the trauma is such that it can kill them.
When life is at risk and seconds count, you simply cannot wait on the police. We have to live with our choices, and you do not want to live with your decision to sit back and let someone get hurt or killed when you could have intervened and stopped it.
Related: When To Speak To The Police, And When To Shut Up
Riots And Unrest
Do you want the truth about civil unrest and riots? It’s pretty simple. The cops are busy. They have serious problems to deal with. If massive crowds of people overwhelm the police force, then all bets are off. So, if you round a corner and find yourself in the thick of a violent protest, you are on your own.
Forget about waiting for police to arrive. You have to understand they are not coming. If you are targeted, it becomes a game of survival.
How many people did we see knocked unconscious during the “peaceful” riots in the summer of 2020? Heads bounced off concrete and asphalt and the police were not available to help with any of that.
Natural Disasters
In the short term, it seems that natural disasters bring out the best in people and the worst in the long term. We are watching the state of Texas face something like this as I write this article. God bless them.
There are always going to be bad people who take serious risks during natural disasters.
There were looters who ran into the burning homes in the hills of California to steal valuables. This while the wildfires were closing in or already burning the homes!
Depending on the type of disaster sometimes the police cannot get to you.
However, you need to be prepared to defend yourself and your property if you come face to face with one of these devious opportunists.
What’s More
Sometimes taking action or taking justice into your own hands is about the preservation of human life. It can also be about simply living with yourself. If you know that you could have done more to help someone, you will forever live in guilt that you didn’t act when you could have.
We can never lose respect for our thin blue line. Police do a job that is not only a miracle but one that is less appreciated by the day. They cannot be everywhere all at once so, at times, you must be prepared to take justice into your own hands!
You may also like:
How to Avoid Being Targeted by Looters During a Period of Civil Unrest
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3 Non Lethal Booby Traps From An Army Vet
I can tell you one thing – in a “civil unrest” SHTF that has evolved to include residential – if you follow the law in most jurisdictions regarding protecting home & hearth – your home will be ravaged at the least and your family displaced…
can’t be waiting at the front door for some mob to come your direction – you’ll get a bottle of flaming gas in the puss for that mistake …
show the least little resistance as a unified neighborhood/subdivision/town and you’ll have them backed off – plenty of soft shell peanuts around that a hard hickory will change their direction …
I’d have liked this article a bit more if the author had said “protect themselves” rather than take justice into their own hands. It’s not the police who are responsible for your life, health or safety, even though some politician may assert that. They are the official resource that is tasked with that, which is true, but the bottom line is that you are responsible for you and must provide for your own safety and protection when no police are around.
Actually, the federal supremes have ruled that the police do NOT owe assistance to a single individual. A woman was being attacked in Sacraments, Ca (Wow! Surprise there) she dialed 911 as is suggested by snowflakes everywhere. They never responded (Another huge surprise). She was raped and badly injured in addition to having her personal effects stolen.
She sued the cops and the City of Schizomento for her injuries and loss of property, et, etc. I don’t remember if she won at trial court but anyway the cases meandered through the state appellate courts, CA supremes and finally all the way to the District of Corruption where the federal supremes ruled that like militia means national guard, the duty cops owe to the folks who pay their salaries is a general one and they have no duty to respond to specific citizens who are in need of their services.
There are times when I think that we really should disband the police and fall back to earlier times when armed citizens enforced the law and didn’t depend on “professionals”. Everyone who cares to can carry firearms openly or concealed as they deem appropriate. If a business wants to ban firearms on their property, that is their prerogative however, legally they then assume responsibility for your safety while on the premises and would need to employ multiple armed guard in order to secure that safety.
Not an ideal situation but in lieu of a duty to respond, I don’t see another viable alternative.
Agree with Bandit’s assessment- gun grabbers playing ‘Monday Morning Quarterback’ are the issue in many jurisdictions, STL, NY, DC, Portland etc will prosecute folks lawfully protecting themselves from ‘peaceful protesters’ like last Summer & Fall. Even if a shooting is good and MINDSET will be part of adjudication- you are/were defending yourself with appropriate necessary PERIOD. ‘Take[ing] Justice Into Your Own Hands’ will be the DA, City Attorney etc claim for your mind set and that’s what you will have to defeat post incident.
These days, unless the police are on the scene, their only job is to clean up the mess and try to catch the felon later. They DO try very hard to stop a crime in progress if they are close by or present, but it is next to impossible if they are even 5 minutes away. So, your choice is this: either be judged by 12, or be carried by 6, or if you are thoughtless, just walk away from the victims. There is a fourth option. Oh, you could just shoot the perps, free the victims, and then walk away if the victims are not badly injured and disappear into the night. Don’t run, that attracts attention from anybody nearby, and be like the three monkeys (you saw nothing, you heard nothing, and you will never say anything to anybody for the rest of your life). Go home and then freak out over what you did – alone. Let it be forever an unsolved crime. I’m not telling you to do this, but it is an option. Carry a revolver that does not eject casings all over the place (leaving evidence all over the crime scene), then dump that revolver in the deepest hole you can find so it will never be found. If the SHTF, and police are home defending their own families, you can save someone and never worry about being caught and persecuted by society for stopping a crime. But be prepared to carry that person to your home if they think they owe you their life ( that is just human nature). ” No good deed ever goes unpunished”. Be prepared for this.
Be certain a life is at risk before taking matters into your own hands.
ALSO, you ARE allowed to make a citizen’s arrest, if it is safe to do so.
Try to stay legal even IF the cops cannot respond.
The law never forgets…
The problem with citizen’s arrest is how to enforce it. You are not allowed to use force to insure compliance. You are not allowed to shoot to stop a felony in the Peepuls Demonkratick Reepublic of Kallyforniya. You are only allowed to shoot to prevent serious injury or death to another. And then you had best have the phone number of a lawyer that specializes in self-defense cases readily at hand. That should be the second call you make after 911.
Unfortunately, too many self-defense cases arise long after working hours are over for even the busiest attorney. Not many attorneys maintain around the clock personnel on duty for those oh dark thirty break-ins that result in the bad guy getting perforated.
Even cops have trouble making arrests. How many times do you read about some yo-yo resisting arrest — in the last week?
Every state is different. Some states still allow shooting to stop a fleeing felon. It doesn’t matter to folks in North Dakota what the law is in Texas. Everyone needs to be aware of what the laws are in the particular state you are located in at the moment the event happens. It doesn’t matter what the law is in Texas if you pop a bad guy while visiting in San Francisco.
Even if you are in the right and your life is in imminent danger ( and civilization hasn’t collapsed ), you will still need legal council if lethal force is used. You can still be charged and will be subject to being sued by the family of the deceased (or even confronted by them). Action will have consequences, and you have to be prepared for whatever those consequences may be.
at my age, who cares. I will protect my family and myself. If arrested. I get 3 hots and a cot and am still alive. If not, I have already been promised a mansion in heaven. enough is enough in this crazy world. I am not eager to kill someone, however being a retired police k9 officer, I trained in many tactical skills and survival.
Ummm! The photo of the guy pulling the side-arm out of the small of his back, finger in the trigger guard…did his derriere survive?
Tigermoth: It looks like an early model .32 Beretta. Notice the lanyard loop on the base of the stock. If that is the case, not a problem as the early model Berettas, to the best of my knowledge were single action only and the hammer isn’t cocked on the piece in question.
Not cool to do that with a Glock or you will have to use a cushion for a couple of weeks provided you didn’t sever your femoral artery.
Had a case in the Marine Corps where troops were screwing around with their .45s. One managed to get shot in the buttocks. Everybody thought it was kind of funny except he bled out in under 5 minutes as I recall. It was a shockingly short time. Up until then I also probably would have been laughing. Not any more. A buttocks wound can be deadly. Even if you realize that an artery is severed. It requires quick surgery and suturing to stop the flow of blood. Pressure along usually won’t do the trick.
First you should put up no trespassing signs, Violators will be shot survivors shot again,
Most shooting defense experts strongly recommend against such signs. They are cool and I would love to hang them around my property. That said, I can’t afford even the public defender in a wrongful shooting criminal defense case. Even were I to win the cost of such defense would leave me stripped of all the assets I have worked so diligently all my life to acquire. I’m too old to start over and too mean for the county poorhouse.
Nothing arouses the media and the snowflakes in government, particularly the district attorney’s office as signs such as those. You don’t even need to be in the PDRK in order to have a DA that is a secret gun hater and whose main purpose in life is to put the fear of the DA in the hearts of gun owners. I have read cases of ill-conceived persecutions (not a misused word) in states such as Arizona where even a hung jury with the majority for acquittal resulted in a re-trial with additional added expense.
In this county it used to be that if the jury was in the majority for an acquittal the judge would instruct the Deputy DA to tell the DA not to bother filing for a retrial in the majority of the cases. The thought being that one juror for conviction was a fluke and a second run-through now that all the evidence was laid out would result at best in another hung jury. Why waste taxpayer money on useless exercises?
Since we haven’t had a non-demonokratik governor since Ahnold practically all the judges are snowflakes and I don’t know what the general practice is today.
Read up on the laws regarding use of force in your state. You can find them on line. It is important to review any cases cited in connection with a particular statute.
You may not think what exists in the PDRK influences your state, but unfortunately many state appellate courts still look at decisions from the CA supremes and the NY supremes for guidance in cases of first impression in their state.
In other news, according to spaceweather.com, March is traditionally the busiest month for colonel mass ejections and true to form, February 29 to March 1 saw a G-3 level mass ejection bathe earth creating some interesting northern lights in the far northern latitudes. There is a spectacular photo of northern lights over Anchorage, Alaska on their site.
The sun rotates through 11-year cycles of solar activity; eleven fairly quiet; eleven fairly active. We have just entered an active period. Make sure your prepper supplies are up to date in case we have The Big One as Redd Foxx used to say on his comedy program.
Damn predictive! I turned it off on my phone and amazingly my typos went dramatically down. In case my colonel mass ejection confused anyone. It is not some army c.s. officer having a melt down. It was supposed to be coronal mass ejection, meaning an ejection of a stream of electrons from the corona of the sun.
Reminds me of the Smothers bros. comedy routine where Tommy is going on & on about the wedding inception. His brother Dick finally corrects him by saying “It’s not in -ception but re – ception.” Tommy hesitates and smiles and says “I must have gone into the wrong room”
Ham Radio Operators can follow the Sun’s activity every day if they wish. A large coronal mass ejection from our Sun can screw up most anything electronic or the electrical supply itself as those in Ontario Canada and Northern NY found out several years ago. The best defense is to build a Faraday cage and put your next best electronics into it, especially a good shortwave radio and only take it out AFTER the lights in the night sky have gone away. Most batteries are mostly immune against an EMP from the Sun, so don’t worry about them unless they are LiPo self protecting batteries with the shutoff circuitry in them. Regular alkaline or carbon zinc batteries are safe from EMP unless already installed in unprotected electronics.
Read up on the Carrington event of 1849 to see what a massive EMP strike can do to even the oldest electronic stuff. Telegraphers being killed by their own telegraph keys? We will not talk about man made EMP bombs here, the subject is too “explosive”.
If you find yourself away from home and in the middle of a riot, then your situational awareness skills leave a lot to be desired. There are usually plenty of warning signs that things are about to go south, and this past year points out that going forward it’s safe to assume that any large assembly of people will attract a violent element, especially if it’s at all political in nature. Here are things I personally look for to see if there is a dangerous situation brewing.
You see large groups of people gathering for no previously advertised reason. Most large gatherings will attract at least some local media attention, more so if it’s something like a BLM demonstration or a political rally. Legally organized demonstrations and rallies usually require permits and police assistance for traffic control and will get media coverage beforehand to encourage a larger turnout.
You see random piles of bricks and other items that would be considered projectiles, but no nearby construction work.
You see people piling out of unmarked charter buses, especially if they disperse quickly into the crowd without a certain amount of chit chat and milling around when they first get off.
You see a lot of people who are dressed alike or have walkies who are not police or National Guard.
You see a strong national media presence in spite of the gathering not being mentioned or only underreported by local news stations.
You smell accelerants with no apparent source.
The overall mood of the crowd or an element of it seems out of place, ie people doing a lot of joking between themselves at a somber event like a memorial or vigil. Or people within the group who seem to be trying to whip up people’s emotions and encourage trouble.
People who are actively scouting the area for police presence, potential victims and material targets for looting.
You hear shots fired, sudden yelling or see people start running.
Don’t forget to look up. If you see people in upper story windows and balconies or on surrounding rooftops who seem to be surveiling the area, especially if they have walkies and other comms or appear armed in any way, you should leave the area.. Even if they are police or National Guard, they wouldn’t be in position unless they expected trouble.
I’m sure there are other telltales I’ve missed, but this should do the job. I tend to avoid large groups of people anyway because they creep me out and there is always the potential of a violent situation such as a shooter or a gang fight, but there are occasions where it’s difficult to avoid them.
Be aware of your surroundings at all times and plan out several escape routes in case things do escalate if you must be in the area.
Good post, Miss Kitty. A very good list of telltale markers that something interesting is going to go down that would be better viewed in front of your home TV with a cold beverage in hand.
That is unless the aforementioned activities are in close proximity to your home base, then it’s batten down the hatches time.
Each State is different. In MT for example, you may make a private person arrest and use the necessary force required to make the LAWFUL private person arrest. Still, it is wisest to avoid the situation whenever possible and lethal force is only authorized in the protection of life NOT property.
The Picture in the active shooter section gives me the cold chill, he has his finger in the trigger guard and is in the process of blowing his butt cheeks off. Someone show him how to draw a loaded (not fake)gun.
I was wondering if that picture was supposed to be the good guy or the bad guy. If the good guy, then definitely not a good photo to use as an example of a lawful gun owner. If it is supposed to be the bad guy…well, I kind of hope he shoots himself in the butt. It would serve him right and show that there IS poetic justice in the world and that karma sometimes works in advance.
My state is open carry. But id like to reread current law and court decisions BUT if someone breaks in they’d best know how to pray because they will be meeting eternity quickly. Ive been beaten and shot. I don’t aim for a rerun of either experience.
LCC … and everyone else –
In re: attorneys after hours in case of self defense events… join USCCA or U.S.LawShield, if it is available in your state (if you are in Texas, you need to look for Texas LawShield). Both are reputable, both specialize in providing legal services for gun owners who find themselves in a self defense situation, both have 24/7/365 access. Both have reasonable subscription or membership fees. My DH and I are firearm instructors and belong to both. Full disclosure – my DH is also a sales rep/recruiter for both but we wouldn’t be members of either organization if we didn’t feel they were worth the money.
Do they actually have a real live attorney available 24/7 or do you get an answering service? And I would wonder how much experience he has as a self-defense shooting attorney if he is watching the phone at 0430.
If you recall the O.J. Simpson case, Robert Kardashian, a supposedly experienced criminal defense attorney allegedly told O.J. “Sure, if you are innocent, go on down and talk to the cops and clear it up.”
There was even a so-called certified criminal defense attorney in this county back when anyone who had ever appeared in traffic court got grandfathered in when they put in the specialist ratings for attorney allegedly told his client the same thing.
At least that’s what the defendant told my public defender relative when he inherited the case. The attorney claimed attorney-client privilege and refused to talk to my relative.
Of course, there was a signed 25 page, closely typed statement to the cops that incriminated the defendant totally which put my relative behind the eight ball before he even had a chance to interview the client himself.
The recitation should be something like: “Officer, I am sure you can appreciate that I am too upset to make any kind of statement right now. Let me contact my attorney and have him set up an appointment with you and I will be happy to discuss the facts with you if he authorizes it.”
There is no police protective association in the country that will allow their members to discuss a shooting even under color of the law with investigators until they have the association attorney present for the statement. In the PDRK it is even written into the union contract — no statements of fact until attorney is present and no penalties for following the union advice. Perhaps some small town doesn’t follow that procedure but no metropolitan force of any size allows their officers to talk without the attorney present.