In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 99-3727

Eyrle S. Hilton, IV,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

City of Wheeling, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 99 C 860--Charles P. Kocoras, Judge.

Argued March 27, 2000--Decided April 20, 2000

 Before Posner, Chief Judge, and Flaum and Williams,

Circuit Judges.

 Posner, Chief Judge. Eyrle Stuart Hilton, IV

sued the Village of Wheeling (a Chicago suburb)

and members of its police force (plus two social

workers employed by the Village) for injunctive

relief and damages, alleging violations of his

constitutional rights to petition the government

for redress of grievances and to enjoy the equal

protection of the laws. 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983. The

district court granted summary judgment for the

defendants.

 For the last seven years Hilton and his

neighbors in an apartment complex in a bluecollar district of Wheeling have been locked in a

feud that began when Hilton was seen beating a

Rottweiler puppy (appropriately named "Rommel")

with what a neighbor who called the police

described as a baseball bat, though Hilton claims

that it was merely a rawhide chew stick. When the

police arrived he explained that he had broken

his arm (Hilton’s arm, not the dog’s) beating

Rommel the previous evening. Hilton was cited for

cruelty to animals and fined $500. The subsequent

history of Rommel is interesting, though perhaps

not strictly germane. Hilton tired of Rommel,

took him to a veterinarian, and told the

veterinarian to kill the dog. The vet refused,

saying that the dog was healthy (Hilton’s savage
beatings had failed to injure Rommel) and that he

wanted to put him up for adoption. Hilton agreed,

but later decided he wanted Rommel back, and when

he could not get him back protested at an open

hearing of the Wheeling village council, dragging

the empty leash behind him to punctuate his plea.

 Since the initial contretemps with his neighbors

over Rommel, Hilton has been cited or arrested

some fifteen times by the Wheeling police on

neighbors’ complaints for such transgressions as

disorderly conduct, battery, and violating noise

ordinances by yelling or by playing his stereo

too loud. Hilton does not deny that there was

probable cause for each of these arrests or

citations. His argument rather is that the police

have not been evenhanded in arbitrating, as it

were, his feud with his neighbors. He has

complained to the police about them many times.

One neighbor, he complained, had kicked and

broken his door. Another had thrown a rock at his

house. Others had made loud noise. One called him

an "idiot" in front of a police officer, which he

describes as "verbal harassment." And so on. The

police responded to all these complaints--they

have responded some eighty times over the past

seven years to complaints arising out of the

feud. But only once have they taken any action

against a neighbor complained of by Hilton. That

was when he complained to them that a neighbor’s

dog was barking loudly--and the police cited him

for disorderly conduct as well as the neighbor.

They have enforced the law one-sidedly.

 The right to petition the government for redress

of grievances is found in the First Amendment to

the Constitution but has been held to be

enforceable against the states by virtue of the

due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Edwards v. South Carolina, 372 U.S. 229, 235

(1963); Grossbaum v. Indianapolis-Marion County

Building Authority, 100 F.3d 1287, 1294 n. 5 (7th

Cir. 1996). The right (on which see McDonald v.

Smith, 472 U.S. 479, 482-85 (1985)) has never

been understood to be a right to police

assistance, or for that matter to any

governmental assistance, services, or largesse.

As the Supreme Court held in DeShaney v.

Winnebago County Dept. of Social Services, 489

U.S. 189, 195-97 (1989), and we have repeated

many times, the Constitution, insofar as it

creates or protects liberties, is (with

immaterial exceptions) a charter of negative

liberties. River Park, Inc. v. City of Highland

Park, 23 F.3d 164, 166 (7th Cir. 1994); K.H.

Through Murphy v. Morgan, 914 F.2d 846, 848-49

(7th Cir. 1990); Jackson v. City of Joliet, 715

F.2d 1200, 1203-04 (7th Cir. 1983); Bowers v.

DeVito, 686 F.2d 616, 618 (7th Cir. 1982); Pinder

v. Johnson, 54 F.3d 1169, 1174 (4th Cir. 1995)
(en banc); Alston v. Redman, 34 F.3d 1237, 1247

(3d Cir. 1994); David P. Currie, "Positive and

Negative Constitutional Rights," 53 U. Chi. L.

Rev. 864 (1986). It creates areas in which the

government has to let people alone; it does not

entitle them to demand services, such as police

protection.

 The reasons are historical, Jackson v. City of

Joliet, supra, 715 F.2d at 1203, but also

practical: it is not a feasible undertaking for

the federal courts to direct the allocation of

public resources to particular public services.

So while the government may not interfere with

the right to petition, California Motor Transport

Co. v. Trucking Unlimited, 404 U.S. 508, 510

(1972); Harrell v. Cook, 169 F.3d 428, 432 (7th

Cir. 1999); Vasquez v. Hernandez, 60 F.3d 325,

328 (7th Cir. 1995), it need not grant the

petition, no matter how meritorious it is. Cf.

Linda R.S. v. Richard D., 410 U.S. 614 (1973).

Nor, by the way, does the right to petition for

redress of grievances imply a duty of the

government to make every government employee a

petition receiver. Although we cannot find a case

on the point (there are few cases construing the

right-to-petition clause), we think it plain that

the right is merely a right to petition the

appropriate government entity, in this case the

local prosecutor rather than the police on the

beat. We point this out to remind Mr. Hilton that

he may have other avenues of redress.

 A complaint of unequal police protection in

violation of the equal protection clause is less

easily disposed of. On the one hand, the clause,

concerned as it is with equal treatment rather

than with establishing entitlements to some

minimum of government services, does not entitle

a person to adequate, or indeed to any, police

protection. On the other hand, selective

withdrawal of police protection, as when the

Southern states during the Reconstruction era

refused to give police protection to their black

citizens, is the prototypical denial of equal

protection. Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. (16

Wall.) 36, 70 (1873); David P. Currie, The

Constitution in the Supreme Court: The First

Hundred Years 349 (1985). Hilton, and so far as

appears his neighbors, are all white; there is no

suggestion that he is being discriminated against

because of his race, religion, gender, or some

other attribute that defines a group

traditionally protected by the equal protection

clause. But now that the Supreme Court has

affirmed our decision in Olech v. Village of

Willowbrook, 160 F.3d 386 (7th Cir. 1998), aff’d,

120 S. Ct. 1073 (2000) (per curiam), we know that

a person doesn’t have to be a member of a

protected group to invoke the clause. If the
police decided to withdraw all protection from

Hilton out of sheer malice, or because they had

been bribed by his neighbors, he would state a

claim under Olech. See also Esmail v. Macrane, 53

F.3d 176 (7th Cir. 1995), and other cases cited

at 160 F.3d 387; Forseth v. Village of Sussex,

199 F.3d 363, 371 (7th Cir. 2000); Levenstein v.

Salafsky, 164 F.3d 345, 352 (7th Cir. 1998); cf.

Friedrich Duerrenmatt, The Visit. But there is no

suggestion of this. For reasons that Hilton has

not attempted to discover, the police exercised

the broad discretion that custom gives them in

enforcing minor public nuisance laws, in favor of

the neighbors. For all we know, they did so

simply because the neighbors were always in the

right and Hilton always in the wrong. But maybe

not; maybe the Wheeling police are inept, or have

been deceived by the neighbors. It doesn’t

matter; what matters is the absence of evidence

of an improper motive.

 The role of motive is left unclear by the

Supreme Court’s decision. On the one hand the

Court recited the standard formula that the equal

protection clause forbids intentional differences

in treatment for which there is no rational

basis. On the other hand it said that the claim

that the difference in treatment was "irrational

and wholly arbitrary" (emphasis added) was

sufficient and that the Court was not reaching

our "alternative theory of ’subjective ill will.’"

120 S. Ct. at 1075. If a merely unexplained

difference in police treatment of similar

complaints made by different people established a

prima facie case of denial of equal protection of

the laws, the federal courts would be drawn deep

into the local enforcement of petty state and

local laws. Repeating what we said in our opinion

in Olech, and Justice Breyer in his concurring

opinion in the Supreme Court, 120 S. Ct. at 1075,

we gloss "no rational basis" in the unusual

setting of "class of one" equal protection cases

to mean that to make out a prima facie case the

plaintiff must present evidence that the

defendant deliberately sought to deprive him of

the equal protection of the laws for reasons of a

personal nature unrelated to the duties of the

defendant’s position. We described the class of

equal protection cases illustrated by Olech as

"vindictive action" cases and said that they

require "proof that the cause of the differential

treatment of which the plaintiff complains was a

totally illegitimate animus toward the plaintiff

by the defendant." 160 F.3d at 388. No evidence

of such an animus was presented in this case.

 Amplifying our earlier point about other

remedies, we note that if the neighbors have

committed torts against Hilton, he has civil

remedies under state law. He has no remedy under
the U.S. Constitution.

Affirmed.