You make it sound much worse than it actually is. The court ruled "a government and its agencies are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen." If the opposite were held true any person who was ever the victim of a crime could sue the government agency with jurisdiction for damages. Warren does not hold that the police have no duty to protect you if they are witnessing a crime being perpetrated upon you.

I disagree.

This ruling, and others like it hint at a fundamental flaw in constitutional law and how most people perceive their relationship with the state, particularly in regard to social contract theory. These rulings call into question the very legitimacy of state authority.

Let's assume for a moment there is a social contract with the state. Then, as in all contracts, there is a reciprocal obligation. Specifically, as a citizen, I have a duty of allegiance (obey state laws, pay taxes, etc.) in return for the duty of protection, from my government. Since the state itself has ruled it has no constitutional duty to protect, then the contract is inviolate, and long since void. In other words, there is no duty of allegiance to the state per the rulings of the courts if one takes social contract theory to be valid.

In my opinion, police corruption is one example of a foundational flaw in our current institution of governance: rule by means of coercion.

I disagree.

I think you are assuming Warren has a broader impact than it does. The state does have an obligation to protect the public at large, and to do so uniformly (unless a special relationship is created). The state has not ruled it has no constitutional duty to protect you, it has ruled it has no constitutional duty to prevent every crime that occurs. Again, if the opposite were held true the state could be sued out of existence in its own court. There was no other way for this case to be decided.

Essentially the state has ruled it cannot be perfect in terms of crime prevention, and considering the backlash against the NSA wiretapping that much of HN has been extremely concerned about, it seems that the state is not frequently rewarded for attempts to get closer to proactively preventing crime. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I don't disagree with you about police corruption, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Warren.

Actually, our cake was taken away, and we can't eat it, or whatever.

The public is caught in a catch-22: it is illegal to defend ourselves physically against attackers (we can be held liable for harming an attacker, and often for posessing a self-defense weapon, and so criminals are emboldened, knowing we are defenseless), and yet the police provide no guarantee of protection against crime, and in fact are frequent perpetrators of violent accidents against civilians.

Like sheep to slaughter we go.

<quote>This ruling, and others like it hint at a fundamental flaw in constitutional law and how most people perceive their relationship with the state, particularly in regard to social contract theory. These rulings call into question the very legitimacy of state authority.</quote>

State protect property. There's nothing ambiguous about that.

Only problem with society is that you watch much super man cartoons and thing the state is there to protect the oppressed.

You mean say a cop is hiding behind a steel door while you go toe to toe with a knife wielding crazy?

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/to_serve_but_not...

Nah, never happens.

My point is that Warren does not address that situation, you'd need other case law to discuss it.

So your point is not that police actually do have a duty to protect you, but the legal precedent cited to show this did not do so? I have to wonder why even bother to argue that point? It strikes me as debating whether the link currently hitting you with a 10gbps DDOS uses optic or electric signal transfer, it doesn't change the facts of the issue at all.

Politics and law are sideshows to the material facts of physical reality, watching people constantly debate the edicts of hopelessly out of touch political figureheads and their bureaucratic lackeys as if it had an effect on fixing the problems they cause constantly mystifies me.

I think you need to read about the case a little more before you start arguing. Warren, and many cases before it, have held that the police have a responsibility to protect the public at large, and to do so uniformly.

The police do not have a duty to protect you specifically unless they have told you they are going to protect you. This means they are not liable for preventing a crime from happening to you. That's all it means. It does not touch on the issue of whether or not an officer who witnesses a crime being perpetrated upon you is responsible for intervening, which is what the case you linked to is about. I don't know much about that, and from what I understand that particular case has not been decided yet.

>Politics and law are sideshows to the material facts of physical reality, watching people constantly debate the edicts of hopelessly out of touch political figureheads and their bureaucratic lackeys as if it had an effect on fixing the problems they cause constantly mystifies me.

I agree with you that it is a frustrating situation. I would ask you, as an engineer, to consider the enormous complexity of a system required to provide social structure for 300 million people, and that doing so may require some very specific decisions to be made, that while seemingly small have a massive impact.

I'm with ethereal, that's arguing a point without a distinction

No, but they do have a legal obligation to not shoot me for no reason, or to not lie on the stand under oath, et c.

When not enforced, such obligations are meaningless.

So does everyone.

But guess what cops are human too ergo they will on occasion make mistakes, lie, steal, cheat etc.

And when they lie, steal, and cheat, they should be punished. In fact, they should be punished much more harshly than the general public, because it is their duty to prevent lying, stealing, and cheating. They should be held to a higher standard.

This cannot be stressed enough. Anyone who enforces a rule through violence but is not subject to that rule is nothing more than a thug.

This made me laugh. Applying this rule to the US is hilarious. The collection of Gitmo detainees, drone victims, the tortured, the extraordinary rendered, bombed, shot and otherwise victimised non-US citizens that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when Uncle Sam came knocking over their countries probably aren't smiling with me.

You're really surprised that citizens of a country expect to be treated better by their own government (which, in essence, is the expression of their own will) than non-citizens are? For examples of this, see literally every society that's ever existed in the history of mankind.

That's not to say that any of the things you mentioned are ethical or that I agree with them at all, but it's not too difficult to see the difference between being victimized by an external force (which is essentially just garden-variety "humans are shitty"-ness) and being victimized by an entity that is supposed to represent you.

The main difference with the US is that the public image and repeated, vehement rhetoric is freedom and peace and equality for all humankind. Yet dig a little deeper and the double standard about citizens and non citizens and how they are treated becomes very apparent, far more so than in (say) some of the european countries.

Having no obligation to protect is quite different to having the right to shoot and kill.

I just read this article and it blew my mind. What type of "special relationship" are they referring to in the decision?

Well that's the joke.

They can construe, manipulate and torque that to mean whatever they want or rather the lack of whatever they want.

No they can't. It's pretty defined actually. A really simplified way to understand it is: the police have specifically said "we will protect $PERSON from $THREAT." Take for instance a hypothetical domestic violence case. Say the victim reports an incident, and then is later murdered. Because the victim reported the first incident does not imply a special relationship under the law. But, if the police told the victim specifically that they would protect him/her from the alleged perpetrator of the crime and then another crime occurs they would be liable. This is why you very rarely would find an officer promising protection: it creates that special relationship. For more info check out this source: http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseac...

> This is why you very rarely would find an officer promising protection:

Then we must update the motto: <strike>protect and</strike> serve.

What is a "special relationship" in this context?