Case Name: Billy Floyd KNIEPP, et ux., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF SHREVEPORT, Defendant-Appellee; S. DIG, INC. and Sam Digilormo, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF SHREVEPORT, Defendant-Appellee; Billy Floyd KNIEPP, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF SHREVEPORT, Defendant-Appellee
Court: Louisiana Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Decision Date: 1992-12-02
Citations: 609 So. 2d 1163
Docket Number: Nos. 24,216-CA to 24,218-CA
Parties: Billy Floyd KNIEPP, et ux., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF SHREVEPORT, Defendant-Appellee. S. DIG, INC. and Sam Digilormo, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF SHREVEPORT, Defendant-Appellee. Billy Floyd KNIEPP, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF SHREVEPORT, Defendant-Appellee.
Judges: Before LINDSAY, BROWN and STEWART, JJ.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 609
Pages: 1163–1173

Head Matter:
Billy Floyd KNIEPP, et ux., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF SHREVEPORT, Defendant-Appellee. S. DIG, INC. and Sam Digilormo, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF SHREVEPORT, Defendant-Appellee. Billy Floyd KNIEPP, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF SHREVEPORT, Defendant-Appellee.
Nos. 24,216-CA to 24,218-CA.
Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Second Circuit.
Dec. 2, 1992.
Writ Denied Feb. 19, 1993.
Daryl Gold, Shreveport, for plaintiffs-appellants.
Jerry Jones, City Atty., Lydia M. Rhodes, Asst. City Atty., for defendant-appellee, City of Shreveport.
Before LINDSAY, BROWN and STEWART, JJ.

Opinion:
STEWART, Judge.
Plaintiffs, S. Dig, Inc. and Sam Digilor-mo, who owned Sack-N-Pack Grocery, and Billy F. Kniepp, who owned B & R Liquor and Buster's Liquor, sued the City of Shreveport for negligent acts and omissions by the Shreveport Police Department (SPD) at the scene of a homicide which allegedly triggered the "Cedar Grove riot."
After trial on the issue of liability, the trial court found that the acts or omissions of the police department were neither a legal cause nor a cause in fact of plaintiffs' damages. The trial court further found that Chief Charles Gruber's decision to redeploy the officers to the perimeter of the crime scene was a discretionary act which rendered the City of Shreveport immune under LSA-R.S. 9:2798.1. Plaintiffs appeal.
FACTS
About 9:45 p.m. on September 20, 1988, Cynthia Johnson and Tamala Vergo, both white females, drove to a Sack-N-Pack Grocery, a convenience store, which was owned by S. Dig, Inc. and operated by Sam Digilormo. The store was located next to A.B. Palmer Park on Line Avenue in Shreveport, a predominantly black area of Shreveport known as Cedar Grove. Johnson and Vergo attempted to complete a drug transaction with some black males while stopped on the store parking lot. The drug sale ended abruptly with Vergo pointing a pistol and firing two shots towards the males who began to run toward the park.
One of the shots fatally wounded William David McKinney, a young black man who was a bystander in the line of fire. An unknown person or persons in the park fired shots at the automobile, which then stalled. Both females ran from the vehicle and into the Sack-N-Pack store yelling for somebody to call the police. The police arrived within minutes and detained Johnson and Vergo. A crowd gathered outside the store, and threw rocks and bottles at the police officers, firefighters, and vehicles which were at the scene. After about an hour, the females were removed by police from Saek-N-Pack Grocery at approximately 10:45 p.m. and taken to SPD for further interrogation. The two females were later booked and charged with second degree murder in connection with this shooting incident.
The crowd continued to grow both in number and in violent activity protesting the fatal shooting of McKinney. Groups of people gathered in the park, in the parking lot of the grocery store, and in the street. Shortly before 11 p.m., a patrol car windshield was broken. The crowd threw rocks which shattered glass in other vehicles. At 11 p.m., there was a report of bricks being thrown. Shortly after 11 p.m., a brush fire erupted behind the park in which the murder victim had been shot. At about 11:15 p.m., while Shreveport Fire Department (SFD) firefighters were working on the brush fire, the police officers received an order from Chief Gruber to move out of the area of the disturbance. SPD officers pulled back into the area surrounding the disturbance and firefighters were attacked with rocks. In response, the firefighters pulled back as well.
Periodically, there were reports of gunfire. As the evening progressed, people began looting Sack-N-Pack Grocery, B & R Liquor, and Buster's Liquor. Someone set fire to Sack-N-Pack Grocery. The fire spread next door to B & R Liquor, and destroyed both buildings. The events of this evening became known nationally as the "Cedar Grove riot."
Plaintiffs, who owned the businesses which were destroyed by fire, sued the City of Shreveport, alleging that it had breached its duty to plaintiffs as citizens and as property owners in the manner in which the city, through its employees, responded to the incident. Plaintiffs contended that the city's response (i.e., its actions and omissions) resulted in their loss of property. The parties presented testimony and other evidence at trial on the issue of liability.
In written reasons for judgment, the trial court found that the actions of the police officers who initially responded at the scene were operational and therefore not covered by R.S. 9:2798.1. The trial court found that, although there was evidence which indicated that SPD could have handled the crowd more efficiently, there was no basis to conclude that the actions of the responding officers were either a substantial contributing factor or a cause in fact of the subsequent events.
The trial court further determined that the decision by Chief Gruber to withdraw from the crowd was based upon the policy to not jeopardize the life and safety of the individuals involved in order to protect or. salvage unoccupied property. The court found that the city's choices were reasonably related to the governmental objective at issue and, in this situation, were grounded in social, economic and political policy. Accordingly, the trial court concluded that the decision to withdraw was a discretionary decision which rendered the city immune from civil liability. Plaintiffs appeal.
DISCUSSION
At issue is whether (1) the decisions of Chief Gruber regarding protection of the plaintiffs' property, and/or (2) the actions of the responding officers with regard to the two females, give rise to liability on the part of the City of Shreveport. We shall examine the applicable principle of immunity prior to discussion of these two issues.
LSA-R.S. 9:2798.1 provides as follows:
§ 2798.1. Policy-making or discretionary acts or omissions of public entities or their officers or employees.
A. As used in this Section, "public entity" means and includes the state and any of its branches, departments, offices, agencies, boards, commissions, instrumentalities, officers, officials, employees, and political subdivisions and the departments, offices, agencies, boards, commissions, instrumentalities, officers, officials, and employees of such political subdivisions.
B. Liability shall not be imposed on public entities or their officers or employees based upon the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform their policy-making or discretionary acts when such acts are within the course and scope of their lawful powers and duties.
C. The provisions of Subsection B of this Section are not applicable:
(1) To acts or omissions which are not reasonably related to the legitimate governmental objective for which the policy-making or discretionary power exists; or
(2) To acts or omission which constitute criminal, fraudulent, malicious, intentional, willful, outrageous, reckless, or flagrant misconduct.
D. The legislature finds and states that the purpose of this Section is not to reestablish any immunity based on the status of sovereignty but rather to clarify the substantive content and parameters of application of such legislatively created codal articles and laws and also to assist in the implementation of Article II of the Constitution of Louisiana.
Immunity from liability for discretionary acts, pursuant to LSA-R.S. 9:2798.1, is essentially the same as the immunity conferred on the federal government by the exception in the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). Chaney v. National R.R. Passenger Corp., 583 So.2d 926 (La.App. 1st Cir.1991). In Berkovitz v. United States, 486 U.S. 531, 108 S.Ct. 1954, 100 L.Ed.2d 531 (1988), the United States Supreme Court developed the following two-step inquiry to examine immunity under the FTCA: (1) whether a statute, regulation or policy specifically prescribes a course of action; and (2) whether the challenged action is grounded in social, economic or political policy. The Louisiana Supreme Court has adopted this Berkovitz inquiry to analyze the applicability of the LSA-R.S. 9:2798.1 discretionary exception. Verdun v. State Dept. of Health & Human Resources, 559 So.2d 877, 879 (La.App. 4th Cir.1990); see also, Fowler v. Roberts, 556 So.2d 1, 13-16, on rehearing, (La.1990).
The application of this two-pronged inquiry was explained in Fowler, supra, 556 So.2d at 15-16, as follows:
Discretion exists only when a policy judgment has been made. Judicial interference in executive actions involving public policy is restrained by the exception. Thus, the exception protects the government from liability only at the policy making or ministerial level, not at the operational level....
If there is no room for an official to exercise a policy judgment, the discretionary function exception does not bar a claim that an act was negligent. When the government acts negligently for reasons unrelated to public policy considerations, it is liable to those it injures. [Citations omitted and emphasis ours.]
Having outlined the test for LSA-R.S. 9:2798.1 immunity, we turn to the strategy and decisions of Chief Charles Gruber. After the two females were removed from the area and the crowd exhibited increased hostility, Chief Gruber ordered the police officers to pull back from the homicide area and secure the perimeter. Plaintiffs complain that firefighters left the area because they were unprotected when SPD "withdrew" from the scene. They assert that SPD's "withdrawal" therefore caused their property to burn unchecked.
The record, as a whole, indicates that the strategy chosen by Chief Charles Gruber was to protect the lives of both civilians and law enforcement officers, by (1) establishing a perimeter within which the disturbance would be contained, and (2) allowing the disturbance to die out on its own. Testimony revealed that, although some officers believed the police could have dispersed the crowd at various points during the night, Chief Gruber chose not to confront the crowd in order to avoid violence between the crowd and the officers.
Faced with a similar issue arising from a civil disturbance in the 1960's, the Florida Supreme Court stated the following in Wong v. City of Miami, 237 So.2d 132, 134 (Fla.1970):
While sovereign immunity is a salient issue here, we ought not lose sight of the fact that inherent in the right to exercise police powers is the right to determine strategy and tactics for the deployment of those powers. In the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, issued pursuant to Executive Order 11365 in 1967, the point was frequently made that police visibility was often an operative factor in the raising of tensions, and that withdrawal from an area could be a highly useful tactical tool for the relaxing of tensions in certain situations. The sovereign authorities ought to be left free to exercise their discretion and choose the tactics deemed appropriate without worry over possible allegations of negligence. Here officials thought it best to withdraw their officers. Who can say whether or not the damage sustained by petitioners would have been more widespread if the officers had stayed, and because of a resulting confrontation, the situation had escalated with greater violence than could have been controlled with the resources immediately at hand? If that had been the case, couldn't petitioners allege just as well that that course of action was negligent? [Emphasis in original.]
Chief Gruber elected to pull officers back to establish a perimeter within which the disturbance could be contained so that it did not spread into the neighboring community. Faced with increasing violence and unrest from unpredictable groups of citizens, Gruber redeployed the officers to various areas surrounding the crowd. Some officers agreed with his decisions, and some officers did not.
Lieutenant Don Ashley described the situation most candidly in his response to plaintiffs' counsel regarding whether the crowd would have dispersed if a large group of police officers had moved in and requested that they leave:
A. You know that's a hard to question [sic]. Just to say, yeah, they would disperse. I've been in situations at other scenes where we've had crowds when the crowds wouldn't just disperse. And with that crowd and the situation that you had there, I couldn't honestly say that yeah, if we all approached them, all the innocent people, all the crowd, would calmly just disperse. If you confront that situation, you have a lot of variables that you do not have not [sic] control over as far as what the nucleus of the rioters, how are they going to respond. If they fire on the officers, an officer has to defend himself. And then to return fire by the officer, you've got a lot of innocent people that could be injured. And so you know it's a tough situation. We've been in it before, been in it since, since this happened, you know, not so much that you would term a riot situation, but just at any homicide scene, you know, normal thinking and normal responses don't always hold true when you're involved in a homicide type situation at a homicide scene. And it's very difficult to sit in the sterile environment of the courtroom and say, yeah, this is what people will do. It's hard to say how people will react in those types of situations.
Chief Gruber described the situation in his answers to questions by plaintiffs' counsel in this excerpt from his deposition:
A. After I arrived there, the crowd continued to grow. They had redirected their anger, I guess, if you will, or whatever you could call a mad crowd, redirected their anger toward property and started a fire behind, in A.B. Palmer Park way up on Thornhill. At least we think they started the fire. We don't know who started the fire.
Q. A fire did get started in the park?
A. Yes. Back up in the park. We called for the Fire Department to come and put it out.
Q. Did they put it out?
A. They were working it. They finally put it out. In the process, the crowd was getting extremely angry, even though I went into the crowd and tried to get them calm and tried to get them back, they were becoming — it was uncontrollable. You could feel the rise in the temperature of the crowd. It was easily getting out of control. And the rocks and bricks were starting to come hard and heavy at police officers, at our vehicles and everything else. And having police officers in the crowd in that close of contact, I felt it was would [sic] not be too long before someone else would get hurt, where they would pull at a police officer or jump a police officer or where we would not be able to control what would happened [sic]. So we pulled back, pulled out. Told everyone to pull back and told them we would reorganize over at 79th and Fairfield.
The order to pull back occurred at approximately 11:15 p.m. By 11:20 p.m., there were reports of vandalization in the area. Plaintiffs' buildings were not set on fire until after 12:30 a.m. — well after the crowd was out of control. Gruber explained that to allow officers to leave the perimeter to arrest looters would have weakened his control of the perimeter. Chief Gruber testified by deposition that he considered protection of property secondary to the protection of life. He also noted that many arrests were made for looting, arson, and other offenses, because many of those who committed the offenses had to leave the area through the controlled perimeter.
Prior to giving the order to move back, Gruber had observed the crowd first hand when he went into the crowd. His car had been hit by a bullet. SPD and SFD personnel and vehicles had been attacked by the crowd with bottles, rocks, bricks, etc. At the time the decision to pull back was made, the number, identity, and location of the officers was not known. The record indicates that the crowd included active participants in the disturbance, as well as groups of people who were mere observers. Testimony revealed that several officers were ready and willing to confront the crowd — with firearms, if the crowd were to respond with continued violence.
The record as a whole supports the trial court finding that the city's choices were reasonably related to a public policy-based governmental objective to protect life. We find that the decision Chief Gruber made was the type of discretionary tactical decision described in Wong, supra, which the Chief of Police for the City of Shreveport should be able to make without worry about allegations of negligence.
Plaintiffs contend that Chief Gru-ber's decision to pull back from the crowd was merely an operational decision which implemented the city's policy to "protect and serve". We disagree. The discretion which Gruber exercised in assigning priorities to life and property was grounded in socio-economic policy. The cases cited by plaintiffs in support of their contention are inapposite because they involve discretionary application of policy, rather than discretionary choice of policy. We distinguish the instant decision from operational decisions and from discretionary decisions which do not involve policy choice.
For the foregoing reasons, we find no error in the trial court's determination that the decision to withdraw from the crowd involved a discretionary policy determination for which'the City of Shreveport is immune under R.S. 9:2798.1.
Plaintiffs also challenge the trial court's determination that the actions of the initial responding officers do not give rise to liability on the part of the City of Shreveport. The officers who initially responded to the Sack-N-Pack Grocery secured the crime scene and detained the two females. There is no indication that they made discretionary policy decisions. The trial court properly found that the conduct of these officers was operational in nature, and that the R.S. 9:2798.1 immunity does not apply to their conduct. Accordingly, we turn to the question of negligence via the duty/risk analysis.
As this court stated in Nichols v. Nichols, 556 So.2d 876, 878 (La.App. 2d Cir.1990), writ not considered, 561 So.2d 92 (La.1990),
A defendant's conduct is actionable under the duty/risk analysis of LSA C.C. Art. 2315 where it is both a cause-in-fact of the injury and a legal cause of the harm incurred. The cause-in-fact test requires that "but for" the defendant's conduct, the injuries would not have been sustained. The legal causation test requires that there be a "substantial relationship" between the conduct complained of and the harm incurred. [Citations omitted.]
Each element of the duty/risk analysis is dispositive, in that, if any one element is not present, liability cannot result. Therefore, even if a defendant owes a duty to a plaintiff, defendant is not liable for damages unless the act or omission is a cause-in-fact of plaintiff's loss.
Plaintiffs assert that, if SPD had not kept the two females in the grocery store for an hour, plaintiffs would not have sustained their losses. In support of their contentions, plaintiffs offered testimony from several officers who believed that the crowd was manageable prior to the removal of the two females from the store. Mr. Digilormo repeatedly requested that the officers remove the two females from his store. The crowd grew in numbers and in hostile activity while the two females were in the store.
The evidence shows a correlation between the removal of the two females from the store and an increase in the crowd's hostility. Although the record contains evidence which shows some córrela tion between the length of the detention and the increased size of the crowd, there is no proof by a preponderance that the time factor was a substantial cause of either the expressed hostility or of the subsequent burning of the properties by unknown individuals.
In its duty-risk analysis, the trial court determined that the one hour detention of the two females inside Sack-N-Pack probably contributed to the crowd's hostility, but noted that the crowd was hostile and threw objects when the initial responding officers arrived on the scene. The trial court found that the conduct of the initial responding officers was not a cause-in-fact of plaintiffs' losses.
We agree with the trial court that it does not automatically follow that, if the initial responding officers had removed the two females earlier, then plaintiffs would not have sustained damages. We find no error in the trial court determination that plaintiffs did not prove by a preponderance the necessary causation between the action or inaction of SPD and plaintiffs' loss. Plaintiffs did not establish that but for the length of time the two females remained in the Sack-N-Pack Grocery, the buildings and their contents would have been saved — or that the conduct of the initial responding officers was a substantial factor in the loss sustained. See and compare, McCorkle v. Eltek, Inc., 572 So.2d 215, 216-217 (La.App. 1st Cir.1990).
Plaintiffs also argue that SPD created a specific duty to these plaintiffs by its initial acts and omissions in detaining the two females. We have already found no error in the trial court determination that the department's conduct was not a cause-in-fact of plaintiffs' losses. Thus, even if (1) R.S. 9:2798.1 immunity were inapplicable, (2) SPD owed a duty to plaintiffs, and (3) the department breached its duty, such breach does not give rise to liability under the instant facts. For this reason, we do not reach the question of whether SPD owed a duty to plaintiffs.
Assuming, arguendo, that SPD had a specific duty to these plaintiffs, we note the following: Because the duty of a policeman under these circumstances is not specifically delineated by statute, we find no one-to-one duty which constitutes an exception to the public duty doctrine. See Smith v. City of Kenner, 428 So.2d 1171, 1174 (La.App. 5th Cir.1983). Likewise, we find no personal or individual relationship between SPD and plaintiffs, and hence no transformation of the public duty into an individual duty. See and compare, Kendrick v. City of Lake Charles, 500 So.2d 866, 870 (La.App. 1st Cir.1986).
We distinguish Bloom v. City of New York, 78 Misc.2d 1077, 357 N.Y.S.2d 979 (1974), cited by plaintiffs in support of their argument that SPD created a specific duty to plaintiffs. In Bloom, the court noted that a municipality can be held liable where it assumes a duty to provide police protection but does so in a negligent manner. Plaintiffs alleged that they were restrained from protecting their property by the police who assured them that proper police protection would be provided. The court found that plaintiffs alleged an affirmative series of acts by defendant which, if proven, could constitute creation or assumption of a duty to plaintiffs. Accordingly, the court denied defendant's motion to dismiss for failure to state a cause of action.
By contrast, the instant plaintiffs argue that the length of time during which the two females were detained in the grocery store by the police created a specific duty to plaintiffs. The instant case involves no allegations of affirmative acts, such as assurance of protection, by which the city assumed a special duty. Thus, although we do not reach the question of whether the city owed a general duty to plaintiffs, we note that we are not persuaded by plaintiffs' argument regarding the city's voluntary assumption of a specific duty.
Having found that the trial court was neither clearly wrong, manifestly erroneous, or in error as a matter of law, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.
AFFIRMED.
BROWN, J., dissents with written reasons.
. See State v. Vergo, 594 So.2d 1360 (La.App. 2d Cir.1992), writ denied, 598 So.2d 373 (La.1992), where Tamala Vergo's conviction for manslaughter in the death of William David McKinney was affirmed.