USA: Do 911/PD phone operators have a &#39;duty to rescue&#39;? As I understand it: 'duty to rescue' does not generally exist for regular citizens in the USA. (Some exceptions apply!) Let's say I'm in Europe and I call the general inquiry phone number of a local (city) police department in the United States to report a suicidal individual local to them. Do any of the following entities have a 'duty to rescue' in the following situations?: Police officers answering the phone. Non-police officer employees answering phones at a (local?) PD. The dispatch operators that #1 and #2 connect me to. The dispatch operators I get when I dial 911 while being in the USA myself. The legal entities of either the police department or the emergency services dispatch (or other involved party?) Note: I have tried to keep this question as narrow/focused as possible. Let me know if there's any issues with the question. I'm not familiar with law all that much.
No More generally, government agencies have no duty to protect. In the cases DeShaney vs. Winnebago and Town of Castle Rock vs. Gonzales, the supreme court has ruled that police agencies are not obligated to provide protection of citizens. In other words, police are well within their rights to pick and choose when to intervene to protect the lives and property of others — even when a threat is apparent. In the united-kingdom , the situation is the same with the relevant case being Hill v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, a precedent followed in australia. However, the police, fire fighters, ambulance officers etc. do owe the same common law duty of care as everyone else where such a duty exists if and when they do choose to act, unless specifically exempted by law. For example, they owe a duty to people in custody or innocent bystanders.
Given there was no answer here, I will state what I know about child abuse response, but note I am not a lawyer nor am I in Illinois, so my statements are likely generalized for most US states (individual laws vary by state, and I reside in Pennsylvania). In most US states, the police and child/youth services (that's what it's called in Pennsylvania but all states have similar services) work side by side and a complaint by the child to a police officer will have an emergency action taken to protect the child. The child is identified as a victim and the police and child/youth services have the obligation to protect the child and to keep them from harm. This is the main goal of police and children/youth services - to keep the child safe and act in the best interest of the child. Usually, a complaint to a child abuse center can take time to process. When a police complaint comes in it is more immediate, with police having more 'influence' with CYS (child/youth services). Especially when the child is in deadly danger (they were just stabbed, after all), the police may arrest the mother or abusive sibling or intervene therein to remove the child from the parents care with CYS-equivalent services working to find suitable alternative living situations for the child as a result of a order of removal/protection authorized by a judge. (PA at least had emergency situation response plans for these situations where a judge is just a phone call away). As well, the child will likely be made a ward of the state if the courts determine the mother cannot care for the child or is a threat as such (not caring enough to stop the brother may count), insomuch that the child may be removed from the dangerous situation and placed in the care of a willing relative or if none can be found will be placed in temporary foster care in a safer environment. Note that nothing happens rapidly without the initial complaint to the police. At age 16 the child is likely going to be taken more seriously (compared to a 12 year old, for example), and has the right to be allowed to reach out to hospital staff to ask to speak to a police officer - otherwise it takes a child abuse complaint from someone who knows the child and situation and that can sometimes take longer to process (though, the distance factor in the original question may make a complaint from overseas given a lower priority due to not knowing the person on a more personal in-person level)
In the United States, you can always choose to (try to) flee police. If the police subsequently assert that they tried to detain you, then they can choose to charge you with a number of crimes (which vary by jurisdiction). The assertion that you did not (or could not) in fact hear or perceive a lawful order to stop is a defense that you could raise in response to such charges. It is up to the triers of fact to determine whether, given the specifics of the case, they accept that defense.
The problem with Solution 2 is that government officials in the United States enjoy qualified immunity with respect to actions that they did while acting under color of law. It's not total immunity, but if they do things by the book, they cannot be prosecuted even if something goes wrong (even when doing things by the book, Police deal in very volatile situations and things can still go wrong because of an X factor to specific for the training manual to cover.). In other cases, it may be because multiple officers are working the scene and Office A lied to Officer B about the situation. Consider Officer A pulls over a suspect and realizes it was someone who was suspected of a crime, but couldn't prove it. He calls for back up and Officer B arrives. Upon arriving on scene, Officer A tells B to search the trunk of the car despite the fact that A had not received consent from the suspect nor has a warrant, nor cause to make a search of a trunk of a vehicle. B makes the search and finds [the bloody knife/the stash of drugs/the smoking gun/the match to a child's shoe that was missing from the kidnapping scene/ insert other incriminating evidence]. Under system (2), since it was Officer B who made the illegal search, B would be liable for it, even though Officer A lied about having legal reason for a search of the trunk space. But what's more... if the evidence is gonna be used anyway, what's to stop the cops doing it again? After all, there is very little recourse for those who are illegally searched to contest this in court (If I'm illegally searched and don't have anything on me, I have to take this to civil court, which is a different animal than Criminal Court and exposes me to broader Discovery... aka gives the cops free reign to search my property for a hell of a lot more illegal things.) or just sit back and count my 4th amendment rights (the section of the constitution protecting against unwarranted search and seizures) as worth less than the paper they're printed on. Oh, and by the way... that second word seizure... that means that they will be taking my property (or myself if they arrest me) and will not be giving it back for some time while they process it... if it's a legal to hold item (like my laptop that I do work on) that's going to make it harder for me to do my job which injures me further in lost business and income. In other cases, it could be they have a warrant for a large item (a stolen big screen tv) and while searching for it, open my sugar bowel and find evidence of a crime unrelated to theft of the television (i.e. opening a baggie of weed). This is actually an illegal search because, unless I am a wizard, a Time Lord, or Mary Poppins, there is no reason why a container smaller than a big screen TV should ever be searched when looking for a Big Screen TV and the cops should logically see this as out of bounds of the search warrant. The nature of this is damaging before the legality of the search can be determined, and because the search may have been out of scope of the warrant that was otherwise justified, the rule of making the evidence of a crime inadmissible was held in order to prevent LEOs from doing this because they could. This rule also started to take formation prior to the Revolutionary War. British Law had ruled against compelled confessions being inadmissible as evidence in 1769, a full six years before the Revolutionary war started (1775) and seven years before the publication of the Declaration of Independence (1776). Now there are some exceptions that can get the evidence brought back in, such as plain view (&quot;The suspect's vehicle is a pick up truck with an open bed, the murder weapon was lying in the bed covered in blood&quot;), inevitable discovery (&quot;We have developed evidence by other means that would have lead us to this evidence legally&quot;) and Exigent Circumstances (&quot;We believed someone inside the property was in grave danger if we did not enter the property immediately and that's when we found a cache of stolen Big Screen TVs!) and Good Faith (the Warrant was authorized for the wrong street address of the target but we found the evidence of an unrelated crime in a place the warrant authorized us to search. Everything but the goofed up address was done by the book.).
You are allowed to ask the police whatever questions you like. There is an upper limit that you can't refuse to obey a lawful order on the premise that you want to ask a bunch of questions, but they don't seem to have ordered you to do anything, so you can ask away. They have no obligation to tell you anything or to be truthful, except for certain questions like "am I free to go" when you want to leave and are testing whether you are under arrest. Even then they don't have to answer your questions right away. The police can therefore ignore you, especially if you are asking curiosity questions. It might be that they are restricted from giving information in certain circumstances (pertaining to the privacy of others). If there is an issue of legitimate concern (e.g. Little Billy has been beating up on cats again) and you feel that you need to know this, then you can request the police record on the matter. Certain information will probably be redacted under state law, but you could get a report that states that some [redacted] juvenile was beating up on animals. The Florida records law is one of the first in he nation, dating back to 1909. You can read this, to see if you think the circumstances match one of the exemptions, though all you have to do is make the request and be told that the record is exempt, then you will have some idea what was going on.
The legal hook is reported to be §129 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which authorizes use of force to disperse an illegal assembly, which this sort of is. No statute that I can find states that police can smack lawbreakers who are forced to disperse, but as is common in common law countries, the laws of India are not fully explicit on that which is allowed or forbidden for police to do. As this article indicates, systematic limits on police use of force remain to be developed.
You have no legal duty to inform callers they have the wrong number. Official business is not carried out by telephone, despite the fact that some collection agencies commonly use the tactic that there is service of process forthcoming, or some other legal jargon, to entice a callback. From a non-legal perspective, you may want to call and tell them to take you off their call list and that they have the wrong number; otherwise, they are likely to continue to bother you day and night. It appears to be either a scam or a collections attempt.
The police will order you to stop and then you have to obey. The moment you annoy the police in a way that is hindering their work (such as blinding them with a flashlight), they can demand you to stop. if you don't comply, then you are committing a misdemeanor. For example, Virginia calls this &quot;refusal to aid [an] officer in execution of his office&quot; and it is worded so widely, that the officer asking you to shut up and you don't, then you are guilty. If the order is in any way justifiable, then you not following the order is... well, criminal. Plus, if you did not comply and they pulled out their handcuffs and you still don't comply with their demand, you are now resisting arrest, which at least in Virginia is again, a misdemeanor.