gas gasoline price sign
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You’ve heard the old aphorism before. ‘When seconds count, police are only minutes away.” Or this one: ‘You are your own first responder.” And then there’s this: “The problem with political jokes is that a lot of them get elected.”

Oh, wait. That last one was meant for another post.

Anyway, those old saws are oft repeated because, well, they’re true. When bad things happen, dialing 911 means — at best — waiting five to eight minutes. A lot of bad things can and do happen in that amount of time.

And depending where you live, the wait can stretch out much more. Here in Austin, it’s over nine minutes. In Salt Lake City, it’s 17 minutes. Seattle: 10.5 minutes. Fort Worth: 29 minutes. And those are the “official” numbers being reported. If you live in a more rural area, expect to wait even longer.

There are a lot of factors that have made response times climb in the last two years, including soaring crime rates, defunded police departments, and cops leaving urban police jobs in droves. In other words, more and more Americans are seeing reports of the latest crime statistics and undermanned police departments and they’re deciding they need to have the ability to defend themselves and their families.

Now, though, there’s another factor that’s sure to further slow police response times — the price of gasoline.

From the New York Post . . .

An Ohio police chief said Wednesday his department is being forced to cut back on patrols as gas prices surge above $5 a gallon.

South Zanesville Police Chief Mark Ross told “Fox & Friends” that he’s instructed his department to conserve gas by conducting “stationary patrols” in neighborhoods.

Instead of driving around looking for potential crimes, Ross said his officers will now just have to park their cruisers in one spot and shut off the engines.

“We’re not as visible as we normally want to be,” the police chief said, adding that the lack of patrols brought safety concerns.

Zanesville isn’t alone. There’s this from Michigan . . .

In a since-deleted Facebook post from last week, [Isabella County] Sheriff Michael Main wrote that deputies have been told to “manage non-in-progress calls, non-life-threatening calls, [and] calls that do not require evidence collection or documentation,” via phone calls rather than actual visits by the sheriff’s department. Main explained that the reason for this was because the county had “exhausted what funds were budgeted for fuel with several months to go before the budget reset.”

There are undoubtedly scores more departments just like these that are cutting back on the number of patrols to try to stay within their budgets as fuel costs skyrocket. They just haven’t made the news. Thanks Putin Joe!

Biden I did that sticker gas gasoline price
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Barely affordable fuel means fewer cops on the streets and less visibility. That translates into more crime and longer response times. Which means, when the worst happens, average citizens are going to need to be able to handle the situation themselves.

Any questions?

 

 

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68 COMMENTS

  1. What was that joke, something like this;
    Farmer John called police, “help there’s 5 guys breaking into my barn again”!
    Police: “just stay in your house, we will send a car in the morning, we have no one available now”
    Farmer John hangs up. Calls back breathless ; “ I shot all of them” .
    Minutes later 5 cars arrive and a helicopter and find five confused thieves unharmed. They yell, “ you lied ! You said you shot them!”
    Farmer John; “ you lied, you said you had no manpower”.

  2. Where can one buy the Biden “I did that.” sticker??

    Traveling to NRA Convention – Houston, gas was obviously very expensive. Made a point each stop of going into the store to pay, taking the opportunity to ask each clerk, “Where is the button for Slo Joe to pay for the up charge.” Of course, they always replied, ‘There isn’t one. Setting up my comment, “Yeas, there was Nov 3,2020……there’ll be another one Nov 2022 and 2024. You just made the wrong choice. Don’t fuck up again.” Expressions on their faces confirmed their voting pattern. Nothing more fun than tweaking a Libturd’s small mind.

  3. “If you’re in a more rural area, expect to wait even longer.” That’s why I always said, “You are responsible for your own safety. Act accordingly.” I worked a rural area. Even on a slow night, unless I was sitting on top of you, you had a 15 minute wait time. That’s a long time.

    • Where I lived in WV we had one deputy on patrol at night. He could be as much as 2 hours away in a real life or death. Our elected sheriff, a dem, advised everybody to have a gun available.

      • jwm, when I got into it there were no deputies on duty between 0300 and 0900 hrs. Six hours. If I only had a $100 bill for every time my PX rang. I never showed up in a bath robe, but sometimes, it was close.

        • I once had a radiologist show up at the hospital in his pajamas at around 0400. Not kidding. That was in Defuniak in 1980. I had a bone sticking out of my hand.

    • Faulkner County (664 square miles, one third the size of Joe Biden’s home state), here in Arkansas, has 2 sheriff’s deputies on duty at night, maybe 1 state trooper to cover multiple counties. If they’re working an accident on end of the county, and you need some assistance…you better be prepared for a wait.

      Yeah, Joe. Can’t imagine why I’d need more than a shotgun.

      Wish all those “high” capacity mags hadn’t fallen out of my boat on Lake Conway.

      • As some here have already heard me say, not long ago we had a shooting on my street (SoCal, northern L.A. County in a nice upper middle class neighborhood). Parents from three houses scrambled to get their kids inside as I called 911. The operator even caught the muzzle reports of several rounds being fired while recording the call, and fast tracked it to the local LASD station.

        Three very bored Deputies showed up thirty minutes later (station is only five miles away), and only one bothered to even engage and ask me what turned out to be only two questions: (1) were we certain we heard gunfire? and (2) did we have any video evidence? We said we had no video but were all eye witnesses and not only described the men involved, but pointed them in the direction they left. In the absence of video, the Deputies said there wasn’t much they could do.

        Lesson learned that day…LASD only cares if there’s a dead body or video to do their investigative job for them.

        • Things are bad in NY with bail reform, sentencing and prison reduction, and creeping communism but even the most overworked officer (can’t hire enough to keep up with retirement and burnout) would investigated a shots fired call video/victims or not.

  4. And the demorats figure the police will go house to house to confiscate weapons. They really don’t think anything out.

    • Solzhenitsyn, in his book, “ The Gulag Archipelago” described his belief that if just a small portion of people resisted the arrest and slow death by police, the police would have begun to abandon their posts.

    • I expect more than a few gentlemens’ agreements would be made, on the order of, “They come for one of us, they come for ALL of us.”

  5. People need to learn they are on their own: for their finances, their education, their health, and their protection. That’s just the nature of reality. The kicker is, yes, you are on your own, but reality provides no guarantees. You could do everything “right,” and things could still turn out negative. Such is the human condition.

    But if you depend on others to provide these things, those that provide them have power over you. They may not exercise that power at first, but eventually the tyrants will put the squeeze on you.

  6. Oh, the funny lights and loud noise only sped things up a little. Occasionally. Most people just won’t get out of the way. I always wondered, “If was them, how long would they want to wait?” Ask a Paramedic, or a Firefighter. They’ll tell you the same thing.

    • A mid sized town I lived in had a cop on the night shift that was a local legend. When he was in an area that ambulances or fire trucks were responding through he would black his cruiser out and ghost along behind them.

      If you held up their progress you were in for a bad night.

    • the manhattan videos… actively cutting off bambalances. crazy.
      work truck (def diesel pos) hit $150 before the gas card shut down. had a tiny bit more room in the van tank when the pump restricted me to a hondo…

  8. Once again thank you to the gun owners who refused to vote for Donald Trump for re-election. Back when gasoline was way under $2 a gallon. And there were nearly 12,000 new oil worker jobs in the United States. And America became the number one exporter of oil in the world. But not anymore.
    I know that you much prefer paying three or four times more for gasoline. And in your mind Joe Biden is much better on gun civil rights than Donald Trump.

    And since Donald Trump would never legalized drugs. Perhaps you will get your wish under President Joe Biden.

    • feels too abrupt to be a transition.
      still cheaper than europe.
      got a fiat panda or daihatsu midget for sale?

      • No cars for sale here. But I understand the Democrats can easily afford the $50,000 to $80,000 the latest electric car. They’re not concerned about the price of gasoline. And the coal mines that they rely on to provide their electricity, the Democrats plan on closing those mines.

        They will figure it out too late. When they wake up in the morning and their car batteries have not recharged. Because of the coal-fired electrical plant that they forced to close.

        • Germany deliberately shut down good nuclear reactors and set up coal burners. This is so stupid it makes my blood boil.
          USA can’t frack its way out of energy shortage. USA wants more nuclear and less lobbyists. Example ; if USA mandated all heavy trucks to have high efficiency diesel as they run in Europe, national burn drops 15%. Lobbyists blocked that as the usa engine makers didn’t want to re-tool for more complex and higher pressure diesels.

        • Kudrna – you are an idiot. This is NOT eurp where a “LONG” drive is 100mi. And there is PLENTY of oil in the ground to power a modern Western world.

          The neutered Germans can sit in the dark playing with themselves. They sold out to the KGB with their antinuc BS 40yrs ago. To hell with them.

        • “They will figure it out too late. When they wake up in the morning and their car batteries have not recharged. Because of the coal-fired electrical plant that they forced to close.”

          Figure it out?! They know it! It’s the plan! They want to destroy western civilization and usher in Orwell’s 1984. Orwell was describing what the communists he knew and talked to thought the world should be like.

  9. Hey I’ve called the local po-leece exactly once. In 20 years. Shots fired across the street on Halloween 2019. A young boy & a chick cop showed up about 10 minutes later. Didn’t believe me(wife & son witnessed it too!). I had my AR at the ready when 3 young black youts crossed the street from the gunfire. I am my own 1st responder. I got more stories about my local 5-O keystone kops…

  10. A lot of people need to make sure their shoes are in good shape, because if gas prices keep going up like this they will be doing a lot of walking.

    • Lambourfeetie. .
      .
      I bet theres a bicycle shortage in the near future.
      So damned dumb, let’s get the covid vaccine so we can start spending money again, going to restaurants, theaters, amusement parks, blah blah.
      Now all you gotta do is spend $300 in gas to get there.
      Food or gas, food or gas. Ah shucks kids tails it is, drink more water. Daddies gotta drive to work.

  11. If I were a police force I’d do the same with gasoline prices so high… everything else also. The cut budgets must be even more strained. Not to mention the disrespect of PD’s may have contributed to the Uvalde “why should I risk my life for you” situation. Would you blame them?
    The left has systematically destroyed police departments and their moral.
    So, donut patrol time. Sit in the AC and wait for a call, then roll.
    Maybe the best of a bad situation.

    Yes, we are responsible for our own security.

    They have been incentivized to care more about their own lives than yours. Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the results.

    If PD were treated better, I believe they would be better, and treat us better. Let’s hope we incentivize them to be the hero’s they are.

  12. If it’s not democRats and RINOs trying to take away rights it’s violent criminals who’ll take your rights and your life. So unless you are a Jet Li type you need something that will make a bad person fall down and not ever get up.

    Most DIYers pick up basic firearm use easily whereas the general do it for me crowd takes much longer. All sorts of things factor in with owning firearms like kids in the home, friends of kids in the home, etc. Having electronic security, gun safe, etc. No one buys their way into this game…It takes time and work, shooting is a discipline.

    If someone plans on spending $500 on a firearm it’ll take another $500 to cover adequate ammo, related accessories, range time if applicable, etc.

    • Cheat or not a win is a win.
      And America is real lucky to have Mr.Biden as president now, just think what it would be like with Trump.
      If we wouldn’t have exported all that oil our gas prices wouldn’t be this high now. Thank goodness we can still import oil from OPEC, America would really be screwed without that.
      Import as much as you can, thats what builds a strong country, China is going to export itself right into the poor house.
      theBiden has it all figured out and America is prospering under his leadership.

  14. Higher prices are going to be a classic “two-for”, as in “two for the price of one.”

    First:

    Soaring fuel prices translate to law enforcement agencies cutting back significantly on their patrols and even dispatching vehicles to calls for assistance.

    Second:

    Soaring prices (of everything) will translate to more burglaries, thefts, armed robberies, and home invasions.

    Sadly, there could actually be a third effect looming in the next several months which could be much more severe and significant than simple soaring prices. A frequent commenter on this site mentioned a couple days ago that a relative who owns a “large-ish farm” in the Midwest will only plant crops on 1/3rd of that farm this year–prices are so high that they only have enough money to pay for fertilizer, seed, and tractor fuel to cultivate a mere fraction of their land. I live in a semi-rural area and just yesterday I noticed a lot of crop land that farmers are not cultivating this year. Add the fact that the Russia-Ukraine war will seriously reduce their significant production of world corn and wheat supplies this year and we are potentially looking at a major famine in large parts of the developed world, including the United States.

    If that famine comes to fruition, violent crime will skyrocket, police response times will degrade even further, and households who do not have firearms will be in dire straits.

    • Sadly I think you are correct.

      Countries like Mexico and India are addicted to cheap carbs like corn meal. You can avoid hunger on corn meal for little cost (mind you not healthy ). When price doubles now what? Soylent green?
      Prices of wheat and corn will rise. If I had farmland I’d borrow the money to plant betting on the high sale price.

      • Barrowing money to plant is what gets the farm sold off to somebody living in china.
        I reckon a loaf of bread will cost around $8 before to long. Maybe we can import sawdust?

        • Good point.
          I had a buddy that simplified his life by leasing his land to a cattle guy nearby. The cattle guy planted alfalfa, watered a few times, then let in the cattle later.
          Small money but zero cost and zero effort for landowner.

        • “…..a buddy that simplified his life by leasing his land to a cattle guy nearby…. ”

          The friend who owns the land where we shoot long distance rifles does this.
          We just have to be careful not to shoot cattle or step in the landmines.

    • @uncommon_sense
      Okay sure, but at least the sea will stop rising and we’ll stop having natural disasters, right? I mean, we aren’t going through this level of pain just to make a select few people wealthy are we?

      • Dude,

        “… we aren’t going through this level of pain just to make a select few people wealthy are we?”

        Well, some people will certainly profit handsomely (at the significant expense of the populace) from rising prices and the push to be “green”.

        What is less obvious is that many people in the Ruling Class will be giddy over their increase in power and control. And a non-significant number of people in the Ruling Class will also be drawing sadistic satisfaction in causing all of the suffering and strife that is part-and-parcel of rising prices and going “green”. (That fraction of the Ruling Class is analogous to an arsonist who “enjoys” watching a building burn.)

        That last part is the most insidious of all.

  15. Why don’t the police just switch to EV’s?
    Shit, that’s the advice we get everyday from the beautiful people. Seems like they should be willing to print up some of that funny money for their own cities and throw up a charging station or two for their municipal police.

    It’s so easy we’re supposed to go out and do it with our $50k salaries surely the people who tax us with one hand and run the money printer with the other can manage to do it.

  16. One day we who survive will fondly remember the days when a food fight meant throwing food at other.

  17. Bring back foot patrols and beats. Great way to get know your community. Quite a few officers could use the exercise.

  19. Unbelievable … I’ll turn 61 this Fall and I’ve never seen this before anywhere in my lifetime.

  20. Dear Dan, loved your comment in today’s email, especially the comment, “The problem with political jokes is that a lot of them get elected.” Very appropriate for our present governmental leaders. My favorite is this: What do you have when you have a room filled with democrats neck deed in cold water?
    The Answer: Not enough water.Q
    That’s the way I r feel about the democrabs . I think we need more water.

  21. Looked over some more wheat fields today, sad.
    Corn looks like it will do good though. Also noticed some fields had milo( chickenfeed), looks like it’s going to do good.
    And there was around 600 acres of last years corn stubble, 300 acres that got flooded, had soybeans on it growing cockleburrs now. Bottom ground around here is good for growing however it’s gotten flooded twice.
    More turmoil and strife.
    That’s the way my beloved President likes it.

  22. Just waiting for our two resident Leftist/fascist morons (dacian and MinorIQ) to show up and tell us how we are all just “Reich-wing gun nuts”, and that Senile Joe, the Serial Child-molester, is really doing a GREAT job, and how terrible the “Bad Orange Man” was. Idiot spew in 3, . . . 2, . . . 1.

  23. In outdoor sports the saying is “You are your own first best source of rescue.” There are a lot of outdoor sports mistakes that won’t even allow you to call 911, nevermind wait for them to show up.

  24. I come from the other side of the pond {UK] and even I can access the statistics that tell us the NON-PROFESSIONAL first resonders are more likely to become victims themselves that any good they do. THat’s why we have professionals PROFESSIONALS in the first place. What you are suggesting is a kind of vIGILANTE setup and that invariable leads to un warranted DEATHS In fact if t already has with the FIRST RESPONDERS [read SELF all pointed vigilantes just waiting forn the chance to slot some poor bugger!] mistakingly shooting dead and innocent AFRO-AMERICAN THere were around 30 incidents of MASS SHOOTINGS [ I believe the test is more than three victims] in the USA in the first sx months of 2022. How many were stopped by non-professionals?
    Seeiing the number of just HANDGUNS available and carried in the USA statistically it is a CERTAINTY that at least some of those incidences would have been witnessed by included persons who, in their self-delusional state would have described themselves as FIRST RESPONDERS.
    The Police Response times as quoted in the opening comment I do NOT see as unreasonable given the ration of Police-to-public [which incidently America has one of the highest, if not THE highest such ration innthe CIVILISED WORLD] distances involved and the restrictions now placed on Police intervention by the ver public they are sworn to protect.
    Meanwhile it’s all too easy to forget the Police Officers ARE ALSO CITIZENS and have the SAME rights and restrictions every other citizen and act with the consent of the public or not at all. They are NOT bloody well paid to go out and get themselves shot unnessessarily. Neither do they have a ‘license to kill’ like some bloody JAMES BOND figure. Every shot discharged by the police has to be tested against the law.
    Do not forget either than any non-professional First Responder IS subject to the law and is responsible for any mistakes made and any collateral damage. Get the wrong person and you will face at the very least MANSLAUGHTER CHARGES Especially if you are one of those clowns using a 357 MAGNUM which might just penetrate, maim or kill multiple unintended persons. [A.357 MAGNUM will penetrate maybe half a dozen lined up human bodies at a range of up to 50 mtrs

    • My .357 with hollow point will invert a 12” block of plactecene and the bullet stops (except for fragments).
      I don’t think it will penetrate as much as you wrote.

    • Albert the Subject, I call Bull Shi*! Those “statistics” are as false as your Leftist ideology. Hundreds of incidents occur each month where a good guy with a gun overcomes the bad guys and never gets a scratch. It is not “vigilantism” to exercise your God given right to self defense. For your EDIFICATION everyone in the US whether a police officer or a civilian are subject to the SAME laws concerning the “Use of Force”. The ONLY difference is that a police officer is REQUIRED to take action where the civilian is not.
      You see here in the US, we do not “slot people for the lack of something more interesting to do. 99.9999% of citizens who carry follow the law. And for your further edification, we do not believe in being a vigilante. Aside from that, a vigilante operates AFTER the fact to exact revenge. .Apparently you have a lacking in understand of what a vigilante is?
      If you need assistance NOW and the police are minutes away, you are much better off protecting yourself and your family than waiting to get killed or wounded while the police respond. I am sure you don’t see it that way but sucks to be you. I would rather be judged by 12 than carry by 6.

  25. It does worry me when people buy a gun for protection, never shoot it, never work out in their heads how they might use it, maybe never fired a gun.
    I really prefer the idea of getting used to the gun and developing reflexes like clearing a jam.
    A nightmare is the person actually needs it and it’s not loaded or he doesn’t rack the slide or there’s no nag etc.
    something to be said for a side by side external shotgun or double action only revolver.

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