The Police, Protectors Or Victimizers?

One of my favorite scenes in the 1995 French film La Haine [Hate] is the one in which a plainclothes cop tells Hubert, a black youth from a Paris housing project that the police are there to protect him and his friends. "Who protects us from you?" asks Hubert. A great question in light of the stop and frisk policy of the New York Police Department which targets mostly African-American and Latino young men.