Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/04pdf/04-278.pdf
Page Number: 17.0

14 

CASTLE ROCK v. GONZALES 

Opinion of the Court 

Hanna,  No  Right  to  Choose:  Mandated  Victim  Participa-
tion in Domestic Violence Prosecutions, 109 Harv. L. Rev. 
1849,  1860  (1996)  (“[T]he  clear  trend  in  police  practice  is 
to arrest the batterer at the scene . . .” (emphasis added)). 

As  one  of  the  cases  cited  by  the  dissent,  post,  at  12, 
recognized,  “there  will  be  situations  when  no  arrest  is 
possible,  such  as  when  the  alleged  abuser  is  not  in  the 
home.”  Donaldson,  65  Wash.  App.,  at  674,  831  P. 2d,  at 
1105 (emphasis added).  That case held that Washington’s 
mandatory-arrest statute required an arrest only in “cases 
where the offender is on the scene,” and that it “d[id] not
create an on-going mandatory  duty to conduct an investi-
gation”  to  locate  the  offender.    Id.,  at  675,  831  P. 2d,  at 
1105.  Colorado’s  restraining-order  statute  appears  to 
contemplate  a  similar  distinction,  providing  that  when 
arrest  is  “impractical”—which  was  likely  the  case  when 
the  whereabouts  of  respondent’s  husband  were  un-
known—the officers’ statutory duty is to “seek a warrant” 
rather than “arrest.”  §18–6–803.5(3)(b). 

Respondent  does  not  specify  the  precise  means  of  en-
forcement  that  the  Colorado  restraining-order  statute 
assertedly  mandated—whether  her  interest  lay  in  having 
police arrest her husband, having them seek a warrant for 
his  arrest,  or  having  them  “use  every  reasonable  means, 
up  to  and  including  arrest,  to  enforce  the  order’s  terms,” 
Brief  for  Respondent  29–30.9   Such  indeterminacy  is  not
the hallmark of a duty that is mandatory.  Nor can some-
one  be  safely  deemed  “entitled”  to  something  when  the 
—————— 

9 Respondent  characterizes  her  entitlement  in  various  ways.    See 
Brief  for  Respondent  12  (“ ‘entitlement’  to  receive  protective  services”); 
id.,  at  13  (“interest  in  police  enforcement  action”);  id.,  at  14  (“specific
government benefit” consisting of “the government service of enforcing 
the  objective  terms  of  the  court  order  protecting  her  and  her  children 
against her abusive husband”); id., at 32 (“[T]he restraining order here 
mandated the arrest of Mr. Gonzales under specified circumstances, or 
at  a  minimum  required  the  use  of  reasonable  means  to  enforce  the 
order”).