This was my google search:
http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...ted+to+protect
Just a few tidbits:
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"Ruth Brunell called the police on 20 different occasions to beg for protection from her husband. He was arrested only one time. One evening Mr. Brunell telephoned his wife and told her he was coming over to kill her. When she called the police, they refused her request that they come to protect her. They told her to call back when he got there. Mr. Brunell stabbed his wife to death before she could call the police to tell them he was there. The court held that the San Jose police were not liable for ignoring Mrs. Brunell's pleas for help. Hartzler v. City of San Jose, (1975) 46 Cal.App. 3d 6. The year after winning the Hartzler case, the San Jose government appointed Joseph McNamara Police Chief. Chief McNamara has since become the leading police spokesman for Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI)." Excerpt from "The Law Abiding Individual and Personal Protection", by John Brophy.
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"fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen." [Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981)]
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Consider the case of Linda Riss, in which a young woman telephoned the police and begged for help because her ex-boyfriend had repeatedly threatened "If I can't have you no one else will have you, and when I get through with you, no-one else will want you." The day after she had pleaded for police protection, the ex-boyfriend threw lye in her face, blinding her in one eye, severely damaging the other, and permanently scarring her features. "What makes the City's position particularly difficult to understand," wrote a dissenting opinion in her tort suit against the City, "is that, in conformity to the dictates of the law, Linda did not carry any weapon for self-defense. Thus, by a rather bitter irony she was required to rely for protection on the City of New York which now denies all responsibility to her." Riss v. New York, 240 N.E.2d 860 (N.Y. 1968).
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This one is especially good
The seminal case establishing the general rule that police have no duty under federal law to protect citizens is DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services (109 S.Ct. 998, 1989). Frequently these cases are based on an alleged ``special relationship'' between the injured party and the police. In DeShaney the injured party was a boy who was beaten and permanently injured by his father. He claimed a special relationship existed because local officials knew he was being abused, indeed they had ``specifically proclaimed by word and deed [their] intention to protect him against that danger,'' but failed to remove him from his father's custody. ("Domestic Violence -- When Do Police Have a Constitutional Duty to Protect?'' Special Agent Daniel L. Schofield, S.J.D., FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, January, 1991.)
The Court in DeShaney held that no duty arose because of a "special relationship,'' concluding that Constitutional duties of care and protection only exist as to certain individuals, such as incarcerated prisoners, involuntarily committed mental patients and others restrained against their will and therefore unable to protect themselves. ``The affirmative duty to protect arises not from the State's knowledge of the individual's predicament or from its expressions of intent to help him, but from the limitation which it has imposed on his freedom to act on his own behalf.'' (DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 109 S.Ct. 998 (1989) at 1006.
About a year later, the United States Court of Appeals interpreted DeShaney in the California case of Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Department. (901 F.2d 696 9th Cir. 1990) Ms. Balistreri, beaten and harassed by her estranged husband, alleged a "special relationship'' existed between her and the Pacifica Police Department, to wit, they were duty-bound to protect her because there was a restraining order against her husband. The Court of Appeals, however, concluded that DeShaney limited the circumstances that would give rise to a "special relationship'' to instances of custody. Because no such custody existed in Balistreri, the Pacifica Police had
no duty to protect her, so when they failed to do so and she was injured they were not liable.
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Anyway, that was just from the first search page.