New Jersey Dan Roberts at Ammoland.com writes:

The recorded 911 call from the desperate and traumatized wife of NJ Attorney Dustin Friedland, who was murdered just before Christmas in the parking structure of the Short Hills Mall were released last week. Friendland was viciously gunned down while defending his wife from a team of violent criminals who wanted his new Range Rover SUV. The call paints an agonizing and difficult to listen to portrait of the immediate aftermath of the attack, with Friedlands wife frantically begging to know where the Police and EMS units were, while her husband lay dying in front of her . . .

Turns out it took approximately eighteen minutes for the first Ambulance to arrive on the scene, due to a combination of apparent confusion over exactly where the incident was located.  As well as the astonishing fact that apparently no one, not the property owner, not local Emergency Response Officials, not a Planning Board or Construction Inspector, no one had ever considered the possibility of what to do in an emergency event involving the parking garage.  A structure built with a traditionally low roof line of roughly six and a half to seven feet tall maximum, a height that made it impossible for the Ambulance to drive directly to where Mr Friedland was taking his last breaths, and requiring the Ambulance Crew to park their vehicle and race the rest of the way to the scene on foot.

Since the revelation of the delayed response to the incident, there has been rampant speculation over the likely-hood of a potential future lawsuit against the town, the way the response was handled, or the property owner.

While it remains to be seen if a suit will be filed or successful against the Mall property owner, one thing is perfectly clear. No one in any public position in NJ will be held liable. Not the Judge or Parole Board whose choices permitted these vicious, repeat criminals with mile long rap sheets to be on the streets preying on people.

Not the Ambulance crew or 911 Dispatcher , who obviously did the very best they could under exceptionally difficult and stressful circumstances, and certainly not so called “leaders” like NJ Legislature members such as Loretta “we pass laws all the time we know nothing about” Weinberg, or Charles “we will take the vote and then hear comments” Mainor, or Linda Greenstein, or Lou Greenwald or Steve “I would never support Concealed Carry“ Sweeney or their many, many predecessors over the last thirty years who have callously sold their souls and humanity for votes,  in a Faustian bargain with the various Anti Gun Groups and their supporters. The same Legislature and Judicial members who have then conveniently washed their hands of any culpability or responsibility for creating a climate where predatory criminals are well aware that their potential victims are unarmed and defenseless.

As startling as it may seem to ordinary Citizens, the State has taken the indefensible and unconscionable position that they will do everything with in their considerable power to make sure people are defenseless, and then exempt themselves from those laws as well as absolve themselves via Administrative Code. See for yourself.

  • N.J.S.A. 59:2-4. Adoption or failure to adopt or enforce a law. A public entity is not liable for an injury caused by adopting or failing to adopt a law or by failing to enforce any law.
  • N.J.S.A. 59:5-4. Failure to provide police protection. Neither a public entity nor a public employee is liable for failure to provide police protection service or, if police protection service is provided, for failure to provide sufficient police protection service.
  • N.J.S.A. 59:5-5. Failure to make arrest or retain person arrested in custody. Neither a public entity nor a public employee is liable for injury caused by the failure to make an arrest or by the failure to retain an arrested person in custody.

Additionally it is almost never reported, and most people are completely unaware, that the United States Supreme Court, as well as various other State and Federal Courts at all levels have repeatedly ruled for more then 40 years the same thing. That Police Officers are immune from liability or consequences for their failure to protect Citizens, regardless of the circumstances.

This runs completely contrary to the mantra of the assorted Anti Gun Groups and their supporters, various Legislators and even some high ranking Police Chiefs who insist that people should simply rely on the Police to protect them.

Citizens that blindly follow such “advice” from the presumed professionals are essentially entering into a gamble, where the stakes are extraordinarily high, betting with their very lives. The fact is, as I wrote over a year ago, it is the individual Citizen, present at the very moment an attack commences, who is the true “First Responder.”

NJ is well known as being the last State in the Country that forbids the carrying of ANY weapon for self defense in public. That being said, Governor Christie could take a courageous stand in favor of empowering the Citizens he professes to care about by immediately directing his Attorney General to modify the current “justifiable need”wording in the Administrative Code governing the rules for issuing the extremely difficult to obtain Carry Permit, to include two simple words “Self Defense.”

Of course were he to do so, it would draw a cacophony of outraged protest from the Democrats in the Legislature, the media and Anti Gun Groups, but he could easily silence them by raising the issue of the immorality of the State forcing its Citizens to be served up on a smorgasbord of easy prey for criminals.

He wouldn’t exactly be breaking new ground. It was public outrage over the forced defenselessness of the victims of the Lubby Cafeteria Massacre in 1991 that spurred that States Legislature to final pass concealed carry laws for Citizens. At various times in the last twenty years, various Law Enforcement Officials from across the Country, from Captains and Chiefs to County and State DA’s have all found the courage to come out publicly and acknowledge that they simply cannot be everywhere at once and that people should take whatever actions they deem appropriate, including arming themselves, in order to defend against criminal attack.

The uncomfortable truth is that when it comes to protecting themselves and their loved ones, Citizens have no one to depend on but themselves. They should be outraged that, through no choice of their own, they have been denied their rights, as well as the tools necessary to defend their lives based on deception, lies and ideology.

t the very least people need to start asking State Officials how many more innocent people are they willing to sacrifice?

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44 COMMENTS

  1. You are asking Christie and his fellow travelers to exercise serious thought. Not going to happen.

  2. Christie a believer in self-defense of/for/by the people? This should have been posted yesterday in honor of MLK’s “I have a dream”.

  3. I doubt that the mall management company will be successfully sued on the base of lack of effective security. They may be held liable for design flaws in the parking structure that prevented an ambulance from reaching the victim. They would face the same liability risk if someone had a heart attack and died because the EMTs couldn’t get to them in time. The state will always have immunity. Live with it.

    This is exactly why mall management companies post as gun free. Under the current structure of the law the mall management company cannot be sued for failure to protect their customers and neither can the state; but they are liable if either armed security or a private citizen causes collateral death and/or injury during a defense gun use even if it was clear that the actions of the defender prevented a larger loss of life.

  5. In NJ, cops can actually gun down a person without justification and not suffer any liability or consequences, so the fact that they have no liability for doing nothing at all is not a big deal.

    The fact that NJ has a governor who thinks he’s running the Soprano Family has nothing to do with it.

  7. Let’s make it practically impossible for people to defend themselves, and not protect them either. What could go wrong?

  8. How did we get to a place where states are untouchable? To let law makers pass laws that guarantee a person’s death because they are not allowed to protect oneself, or allow permits to be issued that would stop an ambulance from getting to you? And I thought my state of California was the only asinine one besides newyork

    • How did we get to a place where states are untouchable?

      Since we became a Republic, the doctrine has been called Sovereign Immunity. When we were a colony, the doctrine was called Rex non potest peccare (the King can do no wrong) or Crown Immunity.

      Either way, it’s been around forever.

  9. it would be OK with me if the defenseless people of NJ are terrorized. It’s what they deserve for being such fools. Harsh? Maybe. but I didn’t choose this for them.

    • I am from Jersey and you are 100% correct and this highlights why pure Democracy is dangerous as hell. The majority in New Jersey do not like guns and would be happier with even more restrictions. Us few gun owners do not have the voting power to do anything, this on top of the fact that many “gun owners” still support these laws and are against concealed carry. Those who do support conceal carry don’t have the balls to do it anyway. The constitution is the supreme law, if more NJ gun owners disregarded the ban on conceal carry it might make something happen. New Jersey is a lost call without a massive pro-gun campaign. This is why I am moving to PA. New Jersey sucks for more reasons besides guns as well.

        • It mixes with the smell of incinerated waste rather well. You only gag a handful of times while driving down the NJ Turnpike.

        • Sad part is, west of, say, the Garden State Parkway or 287, there’s plenty of perfectly good NJ. It’s just the dang 50%+1 of assholes ruining everything.

          I’m starting to get more and more Heinleinian in my feelings towards Democracy every day.

        • PA has a few dumps right by the shore of the Delaware river so the smell blows over to NJ. Many of the dumps in NJ lack filters and scrubbers for their incineraters, even though they promised to install them they never did. Besides making the smell awlful, it also allow mold spores to be sprewed all over. Mold has become really bad on everything now.

          Besides the smell, we also have very high property taxes which causes a very high cost of living.

  11. And yet, there are still public employees who get all butthurt when we private sector plebes who fund these fools actually want accountability.

  12. The mall here posts no guns. Right. When I go to the mall I am armed. The squard badges are unarmed, mostly fat and useless in a crisis.

  13. I’m pretty sure that even if the widow applied for a permit to carry, she’d be denied for “lack of justifiable need.” No CCW for you, average NJ law-abiding citizen.

    • The widow needs to move out of NJ and then it won’t be an issue. As long as she moves to a free state.

  14. This is the kind of “feel good” thinking I typically expect from liberals. What would happen if those laws were abolished?

    N.J.S.A. 59:2-4. The first time a CCW owner murders somebody (and it does happen), expect personal liability lawsuit for any lawmaker who voted for a CCW law. The end result would be gridlock, as the system would grind down to a halt, due to fear from elected and appointed officials to do (or not do) something.

    N.J.S.A. 59:5-5. Police would be arresting anybody and everybody on the barest pretext of criminal activity, to escape liability for not putting a person in custody.

    N.J.S.A. 59:5-4 Expect MASSIVE increases in police staffing and surveillance levels, to avoid a situation where somebody is injured. Either that, or equally massive reduction in areas serviced by law enforcement agencies. “No, your honor, Millburn PD does not provide protective services to Short Hills Mall. We only patrol the area within 2 miles radius of City Hall.”

    • I think what Mr. Farago is promoting is reasonable liability for officials instead of blanket immunity.

  15. “a team of violent criminals”…not sure how many bad guys constitutes a team but this adds reinforcement to the notion that if forced to use a weapon in self defense (or defense of property in my state) you might want to have a hi cap with a reload handy. Just added Pearce +3 grips to my Glocks and will be adding them to the reload mags as well. More in more it seems that when things go to $#!% you have multiple assailants to deal with. Has happened several times in my area on urban “greenways” involving roving gangs (“teams?”) of young thugs. I would expect this sort of crime in NJ but I’m sad to say it’s everywhere now.

    • Check function carefully: when I put +2 baseplates on my Glock 21’s magazines, I found that a previously faultless weapon started giving me failures to feed. Took them off again, no more stoppages. That was fifteen years ago and the new versions are probably better, but still worth checking if you’re going to rely on the weapon.

        • Same here. The +2’s are awesome in my Glock 27. Some extensions require longer / stronger springs. The Glock Store has decent stuff.

        • Early design, maybe (this was 1996, even longer ago than I thought) and back then it was just click the flat baseplate off, push the angled extension in, and your 13-round magazines now held fifteen (and sometimes wouldn’t feed them – maybe one stoppage every two mags, enough to be noticeable and annoying on the range). No spring change, no other mods. The mags were pretty much new, and the weapon otherwise functioned flawlessly even with my dodgy handloaded ammunition.

          Wouldn’t surprise me at all that the designs (of the mag extensions, the magazine spring, et cetera) have improved further since then, of course.

  16. So what this pretty much boils down to is money. The powers that be in NJ don’t want to be sued or held liable for anything, and they will not legally allow their citizens to defend themselves. Must be nice to have a position where you can pretty much do whatever you want or don’t do whatever you want, and not be held accountable for your action/in-action. Most places in the real world have consequences, but not in NJ. I feel awful for the widow, that guy never had a chance.

    • FYI, sovereign immunity is recognized and applied in all fifty states and by the federal government. Moreover, in most circumstances, sovereign immunity does not bar actions against a governmental entity when the entity was negligent in some fashion (negligence being defined by law as the breach of a duty resulting in damages). Governmental entities get sued all the time, often successfully, with respect to acts that are outside the scope of applicable immunities. For example, if a police officer negligently rear-ends you, collecting damages will not be barred by immunity. No state that I know of asserts sovereign immunity as a complete bar to any and all claims. In fact, in most states it is easier to sue the local municipality or state entity than it is to sue the feds.

      Sovereign immunity is a necessary concept; without it, any legislator, judge or administrator could be sued for any decision that anyone else disagreed with–resulting in a government unable to govern, courts unable to decide cases, and administrative agencies unable to carry out their duties, thus total anarchy. Now I must admit that I know a few people who would relish such anarchy (as an expression of total freedom from “government”) but I can’t say I agree with them. Man is not an island; as long as we live together in groups, government is a necessary function (or evil if you prefer).

      The other side of Robert’s rant, that I simply do not understand and categorically reject, is the concept that the government should somehow be responsible in damages for a criminal act of a third person. Don’t we all say that you can’t blame the gun, only the person wielding it? So why do we even consider imposing liability on entities that had nothing to do with the illegal act, and that as far as the evidence shows, were not even negligent? In this case, we could argue that NJ (as do a bunch of other states) issue CCWs on a discretionary basis, but what evidence do we have that this young man had applied for and been rejected from receiving such a license? That he owned a firearm that might have been used to defend himself? That these bad boys didn’t just walk up behind him and cap him before he had a chance to react? We cannot just jump to these unsupported “conclusions” without facts so that our assumptions may serve as a springboard for our political goals. This is what the anti-gun crowd does , and we almost uniformly condemn them for these tactics. Unless you condone their tactics, Robert, I’m calling the kettle black. Instead, let us not fall prey to the same weakness.

  17. This does bring up an interesting. In Chicago, at least, there are countless parking structures which are only just big enough for a mid-sized SUV. Forget about a large pickup or truck with rack, let alone an ambulance. And some of those things are pretty big, too. Even if you get a cell phone signal inside of what amounts to a concrete bunker, it can be hard to find your car when you’re the one who parked it and you’re not in a hurry, let alone for an emergency responder dealing with a justifiably hysterical individual.

    Just one more reason to provide for your own protection.

    • Look at the bright side. If you are in one of those structures during an EMP attack all your electronic devices will work.

      • This is why I installed copper mesh in all the walls, ceilings, and floors of my place, with a hard antenna line linking me to the outside. I also have a tinfoil hat for my phone.

        🙂

  18. “the very least people need to start asking State Officials how many more innocent people are they willing to sacrifice?”

    the answer to that question, in all 50 states has been answered by state officials over and over again. In word and deeds.

    Every single citizen (except themselves, of course).

  19. Well, they have the right bare arms according to the 2nd. So, what is the problem? I guess criminals should keep that right and not lose it.

  21. I thought if a business posted a no guns sign then they become legally responsible for your safety.I should have known better.

    Even if liable the person/company/city you sue will have a better financial ability to fight you in court.

    My local police station is maybe 3 minutes down the road.A lot can happen in three minutes.911 can help, but you really need to help yourself first.

  22. Democraps are the vast majority in NJ, do to the large union presence. Even though many union guys are progun/gun owners, they (and their families) vote the
    way the union tells them to (which is ALWAYS Democrap). Also, LEOs in NJ make
    an average salary over $100k, with lots of free benefits to boot. Just like union guys, (oops, they are union guys), they keep their mouths shut, as not to piss off the people signing their paychecks.

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