Police have a duty to protect individuals. (Nope, not another gun control thread.)

[Freedom]

Buy a “Back The Blue” bumper sticker and put it on your car. And when a cop hauls you over for speeding, don’t be a jerk about it.

Damn!!

I thought those stickers were supposed to PREVENT you from getting pulled over:)

[minty_green]

*Originally posted by 71-Hour Achmed *
[T]he courts have consistently ruled that they don’t have a duty toward individuals, only toward society as a whole, and they base their planning around that.

Do you have any cites for that, Achmed? I don’t know a whole lot about this area of the law, but I would be very surprised if courts “consistently” ruled that the police only have a duty to society as a whole, and not to the individual members of that society.

Actually, it seems a bit silly to me to think that the whole issue of police liability should revolve around the existence of a duty. “Duty” is only one part of the requirements for a tort–you also have to breach that duty to be liable. Their duty is not to be a 24-hour, armed bodyguard service, so any claim based on such reasoning is bound to fail. But when police officers do have the opportunity to prevent a crime and unreasonably fail to do so, I’m betting that many jurisdictions

Why the NRA types want to use tort law to define a police officer’s duty is beyond me. It’s a dumb argument. Here’s an analogy to show you why: Members of the armed forces are sworn to defend the United States from its enemies. But let’s say Castro gets uppity and invades Florida. Successfully. Mickey Mouse now sports a Che Guevara t-shirt, and South Beach is a re-education camp. But you can’t sue the military and collect damages for losing the war, even if they threw down their weapons and handed over the nukes at the first sight of the Cuban invasion force paddling ashore on their fruit-crate-and-styrofoam rafts. So are you claiming that because they can’t be sued, the military has no duty to defend the country? Is it “strictly luck and a bonus” when the Marines reduce Havana to a smoldering pile of ruins?

[71-Hour_Achmed]

*Originally posted by minty green *
**

*Originally posted by 71-Hour Achmed *
[T]he courts have consistently ruled that they don’t have a duty toward individuals, only toward society as a whole, and they base their planning around that.

Do you have any cites for that, Achmed? I don’t know a whole lot about this area of the law, but I would be very surprised if courts “consistently” ruled that the police only have a duty to society as a whole, and not to the individual members of that society.

**
Well, gosh, demise provided three near the top of this thread. Here’s a link to a cite for one of them, found in about ten seconds on Google by typing in “Bowers DeVito Appeals”, clicking the search button, and clicking the first link that showed up. It’s not hard, really.

**Why the NRA types want to use tort law to define a police officer’s duty is beyond me. It’s a dumb argument.
**

Huh? mangeorge, who started this thread, very clearly ISN’T an “NRA type”, seeing as how he/she/whatever specifically says that he/she/whatever doesn’t want to have to own a gun and that it’s the cops’ responsibility to defend him/her/whatever. Sounds like it was the non-“NRA types” who were trying to define the cops’ duties. . . .

**
So are you claiming that because they can’t be sued, the military has no duty to defend the country? Is it “strictly luck and a bonus” when the Marines reduce Havana to a smoldering pile of ruins? **

My, what an adorable strawman you’ve built. But I dislike playing such silly games.

Seeing as how you admit you “don’t know a whole lot about this area of the law”, why don’t you go out and learn instead of creating silly analogies that hold (out) about as much water as a Cuban boat?

[71-Hour_Achmed]

http://www.healylaw.com/cases/bowers.htm

Didn’t make it the first time for some reason. Hopefully this time. BTW, how come I can’t edit my own posts??

[minty_green]

*Originally posted by 71-Hour Achmed *
Huh? mangeorge, who started this thread, very clearly ISN’T an “NRA type”, seeing as how he/she/whatever specifically says that he/she/whatever doesn’t want to have to own a gun and that it’s the cops’ responsibility to defend him/her/whatever. Sounds like it was the non-“NRA types” who were trying to define the cops’ duties. . . .

In case you missed it, this thread started as an offshoot of another, substantially pro-gun poster’s thread arguing that we need lots of guns because the police have no duty to protect the public. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=66727 When asked to explain why he felt the cops had no such duty, he explained that it was because they could not be sued for failing to protect the public. It’s a glurge argument I’ve seen several times in the last year or two that is factually incorrect (as far as I can tell) and logically crapulent. I mean, what twisted reasoning leads from the premise that you can’t sue the police in tort to the conclusion that the public must have unfettered access to guns?

My, what an adorable strawman you’ve built. But I dislike playing such silly games.

You want to explain how my military/police analogy is a strawman? The proposition at issue is that if you can’t sue 'em for civil damages, they don’t have a duty. Is there some flaw so that my analogy fails to illuminate the silliness of the proposition?

Seeing as how you admit you “don’t know a whole lot about this area of the law”, why don’t you go out and learn instead of creating silly analogies that hold (out) about as much water as a Cuban boat?

Perhaps you ought to read your cites before you start making blanket statements about the law based on a single case that you clearly have not read or do not understand. The single case you provide, Bowers v. DeVito, is not even about the duty that police officers owe to members of the public. It is about what duty the Illinois Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities, its employees, and its contractors owed to a member of the public under section 1983 of the federal Civil Rights Act. Not surprisingly, it decides that

there is no constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen. It is monstrous if the state fails to protect its residents against such predators but it does not violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or, we suppose, any other provision of the Constitution. The Constitution is a charter of negative liberties; it tells the state to let people alone; it does not require the federal government or the state to provide services, even so elementary a service as maintaining law and order. Discrimination in providing protection against private violence could of course violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But that is not alleged here. All that is alleged is a failure to protect Miss Bowers and others like her from a dangerous madman, and as the State of Illinois has no federal constitutional duty to provide such protection its failure to do so is not actionable under section 1983.

This issue utterly fails to address, much less answer, the question of whether police officers may have a duty to protect the public under state tort law.

But wait, there’s more! It seems the court does address the possibility that police might be civilly liable for failing to protect somebody:

• If the state puts a man in a position of danger from private persons and then fails to protect him, it will not be heard to say that its role was merely passive; it is as much an active tortfeasor as if it had thrown him into a snake pit. It is on this theory that state prison personnel are sometimes held liable under section 1983 for the violence of one prison inmate against another. See, e.g., Spence v. Staras, 507 F.2d 554, 557 (7th Cir. 1974). But the defendants in this case did not place Miss Bowers in a place or position of danger; they simply failed adequately to protect her, as a member of the public, from a dangerous man. That failure may be actionable under the common law of Illinois. The tendency in the common law has been to impose ever greater liability on officials who negligently fail to protect the public from dangerous criminals and lunatics. See, e.g., Homere v. State, 48 App. Div.2d 422, 370 N.Y.S.2d 246 (1975); Leverett v. State, 61 Ohio App.2d 35, 40-41, 399 N.E.2d 106, 109-10 (1978); Williams v. United States, 450 F.Supp. 1040, 1044-45 (D.S.D. 1978); but see Cady v. State, 129 Ariz. 258, 630 P.2d 554 (App. 1981). But the district court, having dismissed the plaintiff’s federal claim before trial, quite properly declined to exercise jurisdiction over the plaintiff’s pendent claim. See United Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 726, 86 S.Ct. 1130, 1139, 16 L.Ed.2d 218 (1966).

We express no view on the plaintiff’s rights under the tort law of Illinois. A state may if it wants recognize positive duties of care and make the breach of those duties tortious. But the only duties of care that may be enforced in suits under section 1983 are duties founded on the Constitution or laws of the United States; and the duty to protect the public from dangerous madmen is not among them.*

It’s always a good idea to read your own cites, Achmed.

As for Demise’s other cite (there are only two, not the three that you state), I can express no opinion because it apparently does not exist. Try for yourself to find 59 U.S. 396 over at Findlaw. You may also wish to do a party name search on “South” and/or “Maryland.” I have already done so, and found nothing at all entitled “South v. Maryland,” much less such a case name from 1856.

Originally posted by 71-Hour Achmed a little bit up the page
[T]he courts have consistently ruled that they don’t have a duty toward individuals, only toward society as a whole, and they base their planning around that.

So once again, I ask: Do you have any cites for that, Achmed?

[minty_green]

I stand corrected on the existence of South v. Maryland, having just been in the library and read it with my very own eyes. I have no idea why Findlaw does not recognize its existence. I still can’t find it anywhere online, so if somebody has a good link to the case, feel free to post it.

Nevertheless, now that I’ve read the case, I can report that the gun nuts don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re just repeating the same old glurge over and over again without ever bothering to read or understand the case law themselves.

Not only did the gun lobby have to go back 145 years to find a halfway decent case, but the only issue before the Court in South was whether a sheriff was liable on his bond for allowing a mob to beat up a guy trying to foreclose on somebody else’s mortgaged property. The suit failed because the defense of the public is not a “ministerial duty,” and “The specific enumeration of duties in the bond in this case includes none but those that are classed as ministerial.” So South is great authority if you’re trying to defend a sheriff’s bond, but lousy authority for defense of a modern day tort suit.