> Given this context, I do not think the police should honor his request [to protect him]

I vehemently disagree on this. Regardless of what you think of a person, no one should be subject to the violence of a vigilantist mob. Anything else is a huge step back into the middle ages.

It saddens me to no end that the kind of inhuman sentiment that is displayed in comments like the above is becoming more and more en vogue in modern civilization.