Is it true The Supreme Court ruled law enforcement agencies don't have a constitutional duty to protect citizens?
Bill Caffrey, studied Administration of Justice - Policing & U.S. Constitutional Law at San Jose State University
Short answer: Yes.
The court has ruled that the primary purpose of the police is to protect society, not individual members of that society. The duties of the police are to deter crimes through visible patrols, investigate crimes, collect evidence and to arrest those who commit crimes and aid in the prosecution of those persons.
If you call police for assistance and they either fail to arrive in time to prevent harm to you or others — or they fail to arrive at all — you cannot sue them for those failures. Even if the 911 operator assures you cops are on the way or they’ll send someone shortly, you still cannot sue the agency.
One of the earlier cases I know of was this one.
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)
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.)
Many states, however, have specifically precluded such claims, barring lawsuits against State or local officials for failure to protect, by enacting statutes such as California's Government Code, Sections 821, 845, and 846 which state, in part: "Neither a public entity or a public employee [may be sued] for failure to provide adequate police protection or service, failure to prevent the commission of crimes and failure to apprehend criminals.''
With all that said…
Most police officers I’ve known or even chatted with, would much prefer to arrive at the caller’s location in time to stop a crime or be able to arrest the person who is the threat. But the system is reactive in principle. People have rights so police cannot just “shake down” anyone they feel like in an attempt to prevent crime. We rely on things like citizen calls, alarms, good police work and sometimes just dumb luck.
Most often, police are called at the outset of an incident and arrive after all the action is over. At that point, they’re going to get aid for the injured, investigate the crime, collect evidence and witness statements. That’s usually frustrating to the officers who would much prefer make the arrest of the criminal.
Have you ever been driving on a main arterial road and see a police car zoom past with his lights off except when he reaches an intersection? Some calls are urgent but police don’t want to scare off the perpetrators with approaching sirens or cause them to injure the victims for alerting the police.