From the
Local6 News website in Orlando:
A Central Florida woman whose 17-year-old daughter was killed in a murder-suicide apparently committed by her ex-boyfriend said the teen was told by police to stop calling for help or she'd be arrested.
Further in the article:
Hall's mother, Sherry, said her daughter was concerned about Coffner and informed police.
In fact, Hall said her daughter called police so much that on Jan. 15 they threatened her.
"The police officer said if you call us one more time on him, I'm going to arrest you both," Sherry Hall said. "So, the day she died, she knew she couldn't talk to police. So, she handled it herself."
The local PD has so far not responded to inquiries.
I'll just bet they haven't.
Florida has some of the best personal defense laws in the country. They have
no duty-to-retreat, and protect defenders from civil suits by their assailants (or the assailants' survivors). Handgun permits are shall-issue, although they are on the expensive side and can take 90 days to process through the system.
But it's too late to start
that slow ball rolling when the police are already telling you to stop bothering them with your violent-ex-boyfriend problems.
Another consideration is how long help will take to arrive even if they
do send it.
According to
statistics published by the US Department of Justice, in 2005, the most recent year with full data available,
police nationwide responded to "crimes of violence" within 5 minutes only 28.9% of the time. If you narrow things down to just "aggravated assault," it improves slightly to 30.5%.
29.7% of the "aggravated assault" calls were handled in from 6 to 10 minutes.
34.8% were handled in from 11 minutes to 1 hour.
The solution is not to wait until you're facing death to prepare to prevent it.
We need to be able to address the Bad Thing ourselves if and when it happens. Violent criminal actors overwhelmingly avoid police presence when they commit their crimes. But that means we
must have the tools, skills, and will to do so effectively. Otherwise, we're just live bait.