The Supreme Court, responding to numerous lawsuits brought about by harmed citizens, has affirmed -at the behest of all law enforcement communities- that the police have no “affirmative duty -or- responsibility” to protect any individual citizen from harm.
Quite simply, Law Enforcement is only statutorily bound to enforce laws; and/or respond to violations of law *after* an incident has occurred.
The absence of an affirmative duty to intervene prior to criminal conduct gives rise to the common concept of self defense.
It is our right to self-protection, in conjunction with our right to form associative arrangements, which gives rise to our right to form internal security agencies such as the police.
This is an essential part of the social contract with law enforcement.
However, contained within that right is the right to oversight of those agencies, and the right to alter or abolish them if they become destructive or oppressive.
This oversight is just as central, if not more so, as the establishment itself.
A fundamental unwavering principle behind the construct of internal security agencies which we create, permit and accept, is the duty to oversee such agencies within the formation of our Constitutional Republic.