Police officers enjoy qualified immunity against civil suits. This is in an effort to decrease the number of frivolous lawsuits brought before a court and also to protect officers' discretion concerning the actions of their job. Some of the more tragic cases that courts have to decide concern violence by an individual against the victim. Courts must determine if the state is responsible for the harm to these victims. Often, the answer is no. However, the state-created-danger exception rules that an officer or the state can be found liable in some cases when a special relationship is involved or if the case involves violence, affirmative action on the part of the officer, and indifference for the victim.

A woman was briefly detained at a protest of police brutality when officers determined her behavior got too unruly. While she was detained, she got into several verbal altercations with officers and people who had shown up who were against the protest. After determining they weren't going to arrest the woman, the officers let the woman go, and she was attacked by some of the people whom she had been fighting with while in detention. Now, she intends to sue the officers for contributing to her injuries in a court of law.

You work with the City Attorney's office and are assigned to help investigate this case for the police department. The City Attorney wants to determine if the injured woman can argue for the state-created-danger exception in court by proving a special relationship between herself and the officers.

Briefly Reply to this post. Cite relevant case law.

Student's Post:

I work for the City Attorney's Office and am specially assigned to discover and investigate for the police department what really happened in this case where the woman now is presenting a lawsuit against the officer because she argues that the police officer is responsible for such damages caused by the attack for the opposed individuals of such protest. After such investigation, we have determined that the lawsuit doesn't apply to the state-created-danger-exception. I mean with that there is no relationship found where the officers seem involved with the people who were against the protest. This woman was declared under liberty, not arrested, because protests are considered legal when citizens accomplish the rules of being disciplined. This woman was acting unruly and that's why they just decided to give her a piece of advice because there were no physical injuries, only verbal bad words. Once she gets liberated the other people that she was fighting attack her, then the lawsuit should be to the individuals that attacked her, not to the police officers.

Reference

Wilson v. Gregory,3 F.4th 844 (2021)

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