Can the police save you from becoming a victim?

TCS: Tech Central Station - 911 Is a Joke... or Is It? Let's Find Out. Before we give up on self defense, shouldn't we know if calling 911 will stop crimes? To even get an inkling of whether or not 911 is effective, you have to go back to studies done in 1977. (Jimmy Carter was President, the Shah was still in Iran.) The finding - people did not call before a crime was committed.

A 1981 study doesn't reflect well on 911.

[I]f the crime was reported while still in progress, the arrest rate was 35 percent. If the crime was not reported while in progress, and the victim took 60 seconds to get to a phone, the arrest rate dropped to 10 percent.

Look at that another way: about 2/3 of the time, calling 911 during a crime-in-process failed to do anything. Always assuming you could call. (And arresting someone does not mean you prevented the crime - it means the police got there before the criminal got away.)Via [NRA-ILA]