I watched the 20/20Showlast night about the Columbine HS massacre-it was very disturbing that NOBODY caught these psychopaths before the killing spree. Klebold and Harris were two very disturbed young men…and they gave ample warning of what they wanted to do! (Posting their murder plans on a website!)
Anyway, the parents of some of the vistims sued the county sheriff’s dept…and won some significant awards. How come the town and FD of Warwick RI (of the nightclub fire disaster) were not similarly liable?
On what basis were these suits made? Is a policeman liable if he fails to prevent amurderer for commiting his crime? :eek:
What was disturbing about Columbine, was watching hundreds of police hiding behind fire trucks, and thousands of parents, aunts, uncles, brothers, grandparents, all hearing their children get shot for hours, with no one, not one, not one policeman, not one mother, going in to stop it.
Even the cop that was assigned to the school, ran away when he heard gunshots.
Shame, shame, shame.
Are the police liable? No the supreme court ruled long ago that the police are not required to save/protect anybody. But that does not make them less of the cowards that they were.
If my child was in a school where someone was killing the children, no one, no police line, could stop me from going in and either getting my child out, or stopping the killing myself.
In Isreal, armed mothers, fathers, grandparents, etc, are assigned/allowed to volunteer to sit in the school hallways to protect the children. The jews will NOT run away to safety if they hear their children in trouble, rather, they rush in to stop it as soon as they can - result - no more school shootings in Isreal.
A homemade bomb had earlier been found in the neighborhood of one of the killers. Since they had already made themselves known as violent nutjobs, a search warrant was issued to search one of their houses.
For reasons that have never been made clear, the search was never made. If it had been, things would have been quite Different.
Think like a lawyer asking the Sheriff on the stand:
Lawyer: “Let me get this straight. You found a bomb, you had suspects, you went to all the trouble to get the search warrant, but you don’t actually do the search, and as a result, a bunch of kids died. Do I have this straight?”
Sheriff: “Umm, well, aaaah, yeah, I guess so.”
And that’s just one thing made public. Presumably during discover other crap was found. So the Sheriff’s dept. decides to pay out taxpayers’ money rather than suffer even more embarrassment.
In short, they were worse than a bunch of bumbling Barney Fifes. Add in 20/20 hindsight and they are lawyer food.
Policemen are generally not liable for failing to prevent a crime. However, certain circumstances exist in which the govt. can be held liable for its failure to prevent the acts of private individuals. Knowledge of specific threats, police promises, or negligent supervision of a person in custody can all give rise to liability.
Without seeing the actual complaint in the Columbine case, I can’t say for sure which theory the Plaintiffs pursued. It’s even possible that they didn’t have any valid basis, but the city settled out of fear or sympathy. It’s not clear from the OP whether the lawsuit was resolved by settlement or a jury verdict, and if the latter, whether it has survived all of its appeals.
To answer your specific question about the club in R.I., the state/fire department neither did nor failed to do anything that would amount to negligence giving rise to liability.
There were MANY lawsuits, and many were thrown out. Some made it through. Not just one suit.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/South/11/07/school.raid/
They should have had these guys in charge of the Columbine High shooting. I’ll bet these brave guys would have rushed right in, with no thought to their own personal safety, :rolleyes: to save the kids.
And people wonder where lack of respect for authority starts. 
“During that time some of the officers did unholster in a down-ready position, so that they would be able to respond if the situation became violent.”
A bit off topic from the OP, but this quote from the article is a blatant lie. Watched a recent episode of Penn & Teller’s “Bullshit” series and they showed the surveilance footage from this raid, along with a police representative saying the guns were in the down-ready position the entire time (aka, aimed at the floor).
They were aimed correctly most of the time, at least on what was shown on the BS show. But they also showed a moment where a cop CLEARLY was pointing their gun DIRECTLY at a student’s head! There was no mistaking it, this gun was ready to kill the kid.
All that, and not a single joint was found.