While police officers may believe that they will be exposed to liability for all of their actions, both proper and improper, the fact of the matter is that most courts have avoided second-guessing police actions and have only sanctioned the [...]
An Agency or Individual Officer’s Response to Misconduct by Others May Create Agency or Individual Liability In many federal lawsuits against police officers and agencies, attorneys bringing the suit will look beyond the officer who is alleged to have violated [...]
Police agencies have an obligation to train its police officers for the recurring tasks that officers will face during their career. Where it is foreseeable that a police officer will face a particular task that may result in harm to [...]
On a daily basis police officers have contacts with citizens that are consensual and thus do not implicate the Fourth Amendment. These contacts do not require the police to have any level of suspicion to justify the contact. Since police [...]
On May 8, 2003 the United States Court of Appeal for the 8th Circuit joined a number of other sister circuits in deciding that a warning prior to the use of a police canine is an essential component of the [...]
While police officers may believe that they will be exposed to liability for all of their actions, both proper and improper, the fact of the matter is that most courts have avoided second-guessing police actions and have only sanctioned the [...]
Most discussions on law enforcement’s use of deadly force focuses on those circumstances where an officer is faced with an imminent threat of serious bodily harm or death to him or herself or some third party who is present at [...]
Samuels v. Cunningham et al., 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14479 (Dist. Del. 2003) Jones v. City of Hartford, 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17340 (Dist. CT. 2003) How should an officer react when he or she observes a colleague commit an [...]
Law enforcement administrators throughout the country have long recognized that a small percentage of officers are responsible for a disproportionate share of complaints, which can tarnish the reputation of the entire agency. Since the early 1980’s, many large police agencies [...]
Another aspect of pepper-spray that leads to litigation is deaths resulting from positional asphyxia. Positional asphyxia involves the improper placement of individuals who have violently resisted causing physical exertion and sometimes exacerbated by the effects of pepper-spray which inhibits breathing. [...]