Did Officers Stop For White Castle "Sliders" En Route To 911 Calls? Husband Murdered Ronayle White

NBC5.com ^ | 05.22.02

[adam_az]

huh?

[T.Smith]

Nobody can drive by a White Castle drunk

Nobody should be driving by a White Castle {Krystal} drunk.

[m1-lightning]

I believe JustPiper has the Chicagoland/Illinois ping list.

[Richard Kimball]

The individual officers are to blame, but the department system is also a significant problem. If you read the old Wambaugh book, The Blue Knight, you'll see a lot of the attitude that prevails. Police don't like to be on a leash. Many also believe that you don't nail the bad guys by responding to calls, but by nosing around looking for stuff. If departmental policies aren't strict, they will not notify dispatch of their location, arrival times, etc. At the fire station where I worked, I saw on several occasions officers report responding on their hand-helds and then finish watching a series of downs on a football game. I've also seen them delay answering radio queries for available units to see if they could pass a call onto someone else. The subject call of this article is the classic try to dodge it call, a domestic dispute with estranged spouse. Most police departments have terrible systems for tracking personnel, and many police officers I've known have a serious "the rules apply to everybody but me" attitude. This means that in most departments, if you don't have a strict accountability system, including patrol routes, boundaries of patrol, response time parameters, etc, many officers will spend the shift doing whatever they feel like.

[Houmatt]

Iv'e said it once, I have said it 100 times:

Don't depend on the police! Buy a gun and learn how to use it! Refuse to become a statistic!

[New Horizon]

Where I come from they are not called Sliders, they are called Belly Bombers (in the St. Louis Area).

I always referred to them as "Gut Grenades".

"Whitey One-Biteys" was runner-up.

[dead]

They were "Murder Burgers" in my NJ neck of the woods.

(oddly appropriate to this story)

[Enterprise]

"Many also believe that you don't nail the bad guys by responding to calls, but by nosing around looking for stuff."

This is true. Generally, you don't nail the bad guys by answering calls. However, good officers answer their calls, and THEN fill up their free time, if they have any, looking to nail bad guys.

[1rudeboy]

. . . under the law in most states the police have no legal duty to provide protection to any particular individual under most circumstances.

Maybe in some cases, but in this case, the legal duty was established the moment she called 911.

[FreePaul]

I'm not as willing as NBC to accept allegations by a plaintiff's attorney as fact.

I agree with you on that. However, I didn't see any dispute about seventeen minutes to respond to a 911 call. Who is going to investigate the police department other than a plaintiff's attorney. Certainly not their fellow officers.

[gcruse]

Well, you can also
make some shrewd bets based on who
libertarians

decide to attack
on almost every issue.
(The "Manson" factor...)

I've read gibberish that makes more sense....

[mvpel]

Actually, no - under well-established case law and statutes, a call to 911 does not impose a liability on the police. They'll get there when and if they can, and if you die in the meantime, it's not their fault.

One of the only circumstances where this principle doesn't usually apply in most states is when someone is under police protection for a specific reason, such as being a material witness in a mafia prosecution.

[Mr. Lucky]

...and nobody can eat one sober.

[1rudeboy]

Oops, I mis-spoke. The legal duty was established the moment the city agreed to send a patrol car to the location. “. . . [V]oluntary assumption of a duty to act carrie[s] with it the obligation to act with reasonable care.” Furthermore, it can likely be established that the victim relied to her detriment that the police would promptly respond. In other words, her attorney will likely argue that, for example, the victim did not flee the area because she believed the police were on the way.

The seminal case (where the above quote and reasoning appear) in this regard is a 1982 case, DeLong v. Erie County., 89 A.D.2d 376, 455 N.Y.S.2d 887. It is taught to most first-year law students.

The city will settle out of court.

[mvpel]

It goes to whether they acted with reasonable care, not to the concept of police protection, though. If the cops had acted with reasonable care and it still took them 17 minutes to get there, there'd be no cause of action, yes?

[1rudeboy]

That's the whole issue: was there negligence, or not? No negligence, and your position holds.

[Coleus]

They were "Murder Burgers" in my NJ neck of the woods.>>>

That's what I call them too. As a matter of fact, I think I will get some tomorrow for lunch after all this talk, I'm getting cravings.

More White Castle in the News

400-Pound Ohio Man Dies In Struggle With Police
Officers Placed On Leave During Investigation

Why do White Castles give me Gas?

[mvpel]

The question then becomes is it negligent for them to stop for a bite to eat on the way to a call? It's probably going to depend on the tenor of the victim on the 911 tapes, but it's still a long shot.

Linda Riss in New York asked the police to protect her against her boyfriend due to specific threats he was making against her, and the following day he threw lye in her face, and her lawsuit failed.

In Warren v. DC, police didn't show up after 30 minutes of repeated assurances from a 911 operator to two women, calling to report the screams of the victim downstairs, that the police were on the way. When the screams stopped, they assumed the intruders had left and went downstairs, and were then captured and sexually tortured by the intruders for another 14 hours along with their roommate, and in their subsequent lawsuit against the DC police, they lost.

The court said 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."

See http://home.pacbell.net/dragon13/policeprot.html or the book, Dial 911 and Die.

[walford]

If the White Castle 'sliders' are anything like the Little Tavern 'deathballs' that were available in the DC area back in the day, I could understand the cops' delay. They may not have stopped to eat on the way to the call. They may have already eaten and violated a Cardinal Rule when it comes to these little 'burgers.' NEVER EAT MORE THAN THREE.

[theFIRMbss]

1>huh?
2>I've read gibberish that makes more sense....

1) Classic lib response!
2) I'm sure you -- a lib -- have read
lots of gibberish...