A state or local agency’s failure to protect may give rise to a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim under the state-created danger exception when the state affirmatively places the plaintiff in danger by acting with deliberate indifference to a known or obvious danger. Deliberate indifference is judged by a subjective standard. Here, defendant arguably displayed deliberate indifference in not keeping watch over the plaintiff’s disabled son when he entered the pool to which the school group had taken a field trip.