The Supreme Court has consistently ruled from as far back as 1981 that Police Officers and other government agents have no duty to protect individual citizens from harm. The cases brought before the Supreme Court and their rulings are listed below:

Warren v. District of Columbia (1981)

The Supreme Court ruled in the Warren v. District of Columbia case of 1981 that police have “no specific legal duty” to protect individual citizens from harm but instead had a broader “public duty”.

“the fundamental principle that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen.” See p. 4, infra. The duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists. Holding that no special relationship existed between the police and appellants in No. 79-6, Judge Hannon concluded that no specific legal duty existed. We hold that Judge Hannon was correct and adopt the relevant portions of his opinion.

DeShaney v. Winnebago (1989)

The Supreme Court ruled in the DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services case of 1989 that Social Service agencies have no specific duty to protect children from abusive parents.

Judges and lawyers, like other humans, are moved by natural sympathy in a case like this to find a way for Joshua and his mother to receive adequate compensation for the grievous [489 U.S. 189, 203] harm inflicted upon them. But before yielding to that impulse, it is well to remember once again that the harm was inflicted not by the State of Wisconsin, but by Joshua’s father. The most that can be said of the state functionaries in this case is that they stood by and did nothing when suspicious circumstances dictated a more active role for them. In defense of them it must also be said that had they moved too soon to take custody of the son away from the father, they would likely have been met with charges of improperly intruding into the parent-child relationship, charges based on the same Due Process Clause that forms the basis for the present charge of failure to provide adequate protection.

The people of Wisconsin may well prefer a system of liability which would place upon the State and its officials the responsibility for failure to act in situations such as the present one. They may create such a system, if they do not have it already, by changing the tort law of the State in accordance with the regular lawmaking process. But they should not have it thrust upon them by this Court’s expansion of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Castlerock v. Gonzales (2005)

The Supreme Court ruled in the Castle Rock v. Gonzales case of 2005 that police officers had no duty to protect three children who were abducted and murdered by their father who violated a restraining order.

We conclude, therefore, that respondent did not, for purposes of the Due Process Clause, have a property interest in police enforcement of the restraining order against her husband. It is accordingly unnecessary to address the Court of Appeals’ determination (366 F. 3d, at 1110-1117) that the town’s custom or policy prevented the police from giving her due process when they deprived her of that alleged interest. See American Mfrs. Mut. Ins. Co. v. Sullivan, 526 U. S. 40, 61 (1999).

Hernandez et al v. Peterson et al (2020)

The Supreme Court in 2020 upheld a ruling that police could not be held liable for failing to protect students during the Parkland, Florida school shooting (in 2018) in which 17 were murdered.

An official has a “duty to protect individuals from harm by third parties” only when the individuals are in the official’s custody. White v. Lemacks, 183 F.3d 1253, 1257 (11th Cir. 1999). And individuals who are not in an official’s custody must allege that his conduct was “arbitrary, or conscience shocking, in a constitutional sense.” Id. at 1258 (quoting Collins, 503 U.S. at 128). Because the students were not in the officials’ custody and failed to allege that the officials committed any “arbitrary” or “conscience shocking” conduct, we agree with the district court that the students failed to state a substantive-due-process claim.