Police Force: Is a Law Enforcement Officer Mandated to Risk His Life?

Adapted from the writings of Dayan Yitzhak Grossman

January 22, 2026

Jacob Sullum writes in Reason:

After the 2022 shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, police officers were widely condemned for failing to act in time to prevent those deaths. The gunman was not stopped until 77 minutes after the assault began, when members of the U.S. Border Patrol Tactical Unit breached a classroom door and shot him dead.

Outrage at the timid, desultory response to that attack resulted in criminal charges against Pete Arredondo, the school district’s police chief, and one of his officers, Adrian Gonzales, whose trial began this week in Corpus Christi. Gonzales, who was suspended along with the rest of the department after the shooting and had officially left his job by the beginning of 2023, faces 29 counts of child endangerment—one for each of the 19 fourth-graders who were killed and one for each of the 10 students who survived. Since each count is a state jail felony punishable by six months to two years of incarceration, Gonzales could receive a lengthy sentence if he is convicted. But while the anger underlying this case is understandable, the legal basis for it is dubious.

…According to the indictment, Gonzales did that by failing to intervene in a way that might have impeded or stopped the gunman…All of that, if true, is reprehensible and ample cause for dismissal. But is it a crime?…[1]

Three years ago, inmates at a detention center in Mexico set a fire in their cell. The guards walked away and made no attempt to release the men, resulting in the deaths of 38 detainees. In a pair of articles at the time, we explained that according to halacha, although the guards’ behavior would (if they were Jews) violate the mitzvos deOreisa of “vahasheivoso lo (and you shall return it (a lost object) to him)”[2] and “lo sa’amod al dam reiecha (you shall not stand over the blood of your friend),”[3] they would almost certainly not be criminally liable, and likely not even civilly. But they would be obligated bedinei Shamayim (under the laws of Heaven) to compensate the heirs.[4] In this article, we consider whether Gonzales had a moral duty to confront the shooter if he believed that would endanger his own life.

As we discussed here six years ago, there is considerable debate among the poskim whether one should, or even may, risk his own life in order to save someone else from certain death:

Some poskim maintain that one is generally obligated to risk his own life in order to save another from certain danger; others hold that doing so is permissible but not mandatory; still others maintain that it is improper to do so.[5]

We noted that

This dispute notwithstanding, the consensus of contemporary poskim is that medical professionals may and should treat patients with contagious illnesses.

We cited a number of rationales offered for this, at least some of which are clearly applicable to police officers:

• The great merit of treating the sick will protect them.
• Because treatment of the sick by medical professionals is normal and customary, and its absence would engender terrible chaos, it is not considered improper self-endangerment. A remarkable precedent for this cited by the Tzitz Eliezer (R’ Eliezer Yehudah Waldenberg) is a ruling by the Maharam Ash (R’ Meir Eisenstadter) permitting voluntary military service even in wartime.
• It is permitted to assume some risk to earn a livelihood. Precedents for this include the Noda Bihudah’s tolerance of professional—as distinct from recreational—hunting,[6] and R’ Menachem Mendel Krochmal’s justifying hiring people to perform dangerous tasks.

We continued:

These arguments merely support the position that medical personnel may provide treatment even at risk to themselves, and Rav Waldenberg indeed concludes that it is permitted and a great mitzvah but not necessarily mandatory. R’ Yehoshua Neuwirth and R’ Avraham Sofer Abraham, however, go further and argue that because medical professionals understand the risks involved when they accept their positions, they thereby commit themselves to do their duty even when it entails some low level of risk, and are thus obligated to do so. In a situation of great risk, however, they are not required to endanger themselves, although they may do so if they wish.

R’ Shmuel Wosner also rules that it is forbidden for physicians who are able to help the sick to shirk their duty…

Rav Neuwirth and Rav Abraham’s position should certainly extend to police officers as well (though as we noted in a footnote there, the halachic logic of their position is puzzling).

In another article, we discussed Rav Waldenberg’s similar position that a soldier may and even must risk his life to save that of a comrade:

Although many poskim rule that in general, it is wrong to risk one’s life to save someone else’s, R’ Eliezer Yehudah Waldenberg maintains that the rules of war are different, and a soldier is indeed permitted and even obligated to risk his life to save that of a comrade who lies wounded on the battlefield exposed to the enemy and will certainly die if he is not promptly removed. The ordinary rules prohibiting voluntary self-endangerment do not apply in war, because war inherently entails the risking of lives in the service of some objective. He adduces various precedents in support of this thesis that war is not governed by the standard rules of pikuach nefesh, one of which is the aforementioned ruling of the Maharam Ash…

Rav Waldenberg subsequently cites an interpretation by R’ Dovid Pardo of a passage in the Sifri according to which a soldier must risk his life in order to save his fellow from death at the hands of the enemy. He concludes that the principle that chayecha kodmin (your life takes precedence) does not apply in the context of war, and that this is among “the halachos of the tzibur for the benefit of the state and the good of the people.”

It should be noted that Rav Waldenberg is discussing a soldier risking his life to save that of another soldier; it is unclear how this would apply to saving a civilian. His arguments for allowing a soldier to risk his life apply equally to doing so to save civilians, but it is difficult to say whether his assumption that a soldier must risk his life would extend to saving civilians, because he never fully explains or justifies this assumption. Perhaps a soldier’s duty to civilians is even greater than to fellow soldiers, because they are noncombatants—or perhaps his duty to soldiers is greater, because they face danger together in mutual reliance.[7]

While much of Rav Waldenberg’s analysis there may be limited to soldiers in wartime, some of it may extend to police officers, particularly Rav Pardo’s assertion of the existence of “halachos of the tzibur for the benefit of the state and the good of the people.”

[1]Jacob Sullum. A School District Cop Allegedly Did Nothing To Stop the Uvalde Mass Shooting. Was That Failure a Crime? Reason.com.

[2]Dvarim 22:2.

[3]Vayikra 19:16.

[4]Under Fire: Must Someone Be Saved from a Danger of His Own Making? Part I, Apr. 13, 2023; Part II, Apr. 20, 2023.

[5]Ill, Prepared: Avoiding Something like the Plague, Part II, Mar. 12, 2020 (see the notes there for some of the prominent sources on this question, and cf. Organ Meets: The Changed Landscape of Living Kidney Donation, Mar. 18, 2022).

[6]See Moral Hazard: When Risky Behavior Is Permitted, Nov. 28, 2024.

[7]Living Dangerously: Pikuach Nefesh in War. Sep. 10, 2021.