Lawsuit Tossed

Looks like the Courts (some courts) are recognizing the hamstringing of the CPD is pretty much complete:

• A federal judge has dismissed Dakotah Earley’s lawsuit that tried to hold the city and a handful of Chicago police officers responsible for not pursuing a carload of armed robbers who later shot and nearly killed Earley during a holdup in Lincoln Park.

  The lawsuit, U.S. District Judge LaShonda Hunt recently summarized in her order dismissing the case, sought to hold the city responsible for “a policy that chills and hampers police officers from pursuing fleeing suspects.”

Remember - current policy is that an Officer cannot be punished for refusing to chase. It's not what most of us signed up for, but an out-of-control system of ambulance chasers, crooked pols and complicit judges has made the tort system too costly for cops to do anything but observe crime.

Notice however, that didn't stop the lawsuit from being filed:

• Shortly before [plaintiff] Earley was robbed and shot, CPD officers found the BMW on Museum Campus Drive and tried to pull it over. But the driver sped away, and the cops let it go.

  “It took off. We tried to put a stop on it,” an officer radioed. “We’re not following. We’re not chasing. Show us heading into [the station] to do an eluding” report.

  Almost exactly an hour later, that BMW rolled up to the corner of Webster and Wayne in Lincoln Park. A gunman got out of it and ambushed Earley. Police believed the crew responsible for robbing the BMW’s owner and Earley may have robbed 20 people on the North Side in three days. Most of those occurred after police ended their pursuit of the BMW downtown.

While we can all feel bad for the plaintiff (who lost his leg in the ensuing robbery), this is the culmination of years of (what we believe to be) poorly thought out law:

• Warren v. District of Columbia
• DeShaney v. Winnebago County
• Castle Rock v. Gonzales

These cases (and others) hold that police have no specific or affirmative duty to protect an individual from a situation that the police did not create. In this case, the police did not create the robbery or aggravated battery that resulted in plaintiff's loss of a leg. But we do see how police could be - rightly or wrongly - deemed partly responsible for not breaking the chain of events that led to the physical harm. 

Personally, we'd argue that the politicians hamstrung the police department's ability to break the chain of events by making it financially dangerous for the cops to do anything, but when was the last time you ever saw a politician held responsible for making bad law? 

The best way to level the playing field is stop imposing restrictions on citizens from carrying guns. A few dozen wounded and dead robbers would do far more than the Department ever could.