Opinion ID: 728963
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Officer Farr's Conduct

Text: 13 We turn first to Officer Farr's conduct. 3 In Medina v. City & County of Denver, 960 F.2d 1493, 1496-97 (10th Cir.1992), we concluded that a police officer could be held responsible under section 1983 for harm caused by a third person if the officer acted in reckless disregard of the rights of a limited group as opposed to the public at large. See also Webber v. Mefford, 43 F.3d 1340, 1343 (10th Cir.1994) (relying on Medina ). We nonetheless concluded that the law predicating liability on such reckless disregard towards a limited group and on the acts of third persons was not clearly established when the events at issue in Medina took place. We accordingly concluded that the individual defendants were entitled to qualified immunity on that basis. Id. at 1498-99. 14 We subsequently examined the elements of a substantive due process claim in light of Medina and Collins. See Uhlrig v. Harder, 64 F.3d 567 (10th Cir.1995), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 1118, 116 S.Ct. 924, 133 L.Ed.2d 853 (1996). In Uhlrig, we held that a plaintiff asserting such a claim must show that the challenged conduct was reckless as defined by Medina, 4 and must further show that such conduct, when viewed in total, is conscience shocking. Id. at 574 (citing Collins, 503 U.S. at 126-30, 112 S.Ct. at 1069-71; Medina, 960 F.2d at 1496). 15 [T]o satisfy the shock the conscience standard, a plaintiff must do more than show that the government actor intentionally or recklessly caused injury to the plaintiff by abusing or misusing government power. That is, the plaintiff must demonstrate a degree of outrageousness and a magnitude of potential or actual harm that is truly conscience shocking. The level of conduct required to satisfy this additional requirement cannot precisely be defined, but must necessarily evolve over time from judgments as to the constitutionality of specific government conduct. We do know, however, that the shock the conscience standard requires a high level of outrageousness. 16 Id. We recently applied Uhlrig in Liebson v. New Mexico Corrections Dep't, 73 F.3d 274 (10th Cir.1996), to require that a plaintiff asserting a substantive due process violation must assert  'conduct that was so egregious, outrageous and fraught with unreasonable risk as to shock the conscience.'  Id. at 276 (quoting Uhlrig, 64 F.3d at 576). 17 We recognize that Medina contains language which could well be read to hold that a substantive due process violation may be predicated on conduct that is only reckless, as opposed to conscience-shocking. Medina was decided virtually simultaneously with Collins and did not discuss the holding in Collins under which deliberate indifference must be conscience-shocking to state a denial of substantive due process. As we have subsequently made clear in Uhlrig and Liebson, however, under Collins a substantive due process violation requires (1) that the defendant act with reckless intent, and (2) that the defendant's conduct shock the conscience. 18 We must now assess the evidence Ms. Williams offered in light of this standard. Ms. Williams presented evidence that Officer Farr was driving at least 60 m.p.h. in a 35 m.p.h. zone on a main metropolitan thoroughfare at night without his emergency siren. The backup request to which Officer Farr was responding was not designated an emergency, nor did the requesting officer indicate he was in danger. The collision occurred when Officer Farr ran a red light without reducing his speed. Under Colorado law, 19 [t]he driver of an authorized emergency vehicle, when responding to an emergency call ... may ... [p]roceed past a red or stop signal or stop sign, but only after slowing down as may be necessary for safe operation; [and may] [e]xceed the lawful speeds ... so long as said driver does not endanger life or property. ... 20 Colo.Rev.Stat. § 42-4-108(2) (1995 Supp.) (emphasis added). 5 Significantly, the driver of an emergency vehicle is authorized to undertake the above-described conduct only when responding to an emergency call, id. § 42-4-108(2), and even then only when the vehicle is using its emergency lights and siren, id. § 42-4-108(3). Under the Denver Police Department Operations Manual in effect at the time, a driver responding to an emergency was similarly required to use the vehicle's flashing lights and siren, and when approaching a red light to reduce speed, yield if necessary to the right-of-way, and enter the intersection only when it is safe to do so. Aplt.App., vol. II, at 515-16. 21 In holding as a matter of law that Officer Farr's conduct was not unconstitutional, the district court compared the instant facts with those at issue in Apodaca v. Rio Arriba County Sheriff's Dep't, 905 F.2d 1445, 1446-47 & n. 3 (10th Cir.1990), in which we concluded that the conduct did not rise to a constitutional level. Although comparison with other cases may be helpful, the existence of unconstitutional conduct requires a court to assess the totality of the circumstances in a particular case to ascertain whether a plaintiff has set out a claim. Apodaca presented distinguishable circumstances. 22 In Apodaca, the fatal collision occurred when a deputy sheriff responded to a silent burglar alarm by speeding around a blind curve at 55-65 m.p.h. in a 35 m.p.h. zone after midnight when it had been raining and sleeting. The officer, who was not using his siren or flashing lights, rounded the curve and struck the decedent's car broadside as she was making a left turn out of a restaurant parking lot. Id. at 1446. We held the allegations that the officer was driving too fast for road and visibility conditions to be grounded in negligence. Id. at 1446-47 & n. 3. Apodaca should not be interpreted as holding that every law enforcement officer who drives too fast for the road and the weather without his flashing lights and siren is merely negligent. The presence of additional or distinguishing factors can clearly elevate such conduct from merely negligent to unconstitutionally reckless and conscience-shocking. 23 Apodaca is distinguishable in significant respects. First, although the officer in Apodaca was speeding, he had the right-of-way when he collided with the decedent turning left out of a parking lot. Here, to the contrary, Officer Farr sped into the intersection against the light without reducing his speed and without the warning sound of his siren. An officer who speeds through a red light without his or her siren decidedly disregards a much more obvious risk of serious harm than does a speeding officer who has the right-of-way. 6 Moreover, here Officer Farr was driving in violation of both state law and Department requirements governing emergency driving. While certainly not dispositive of the constitutional issue, this fact is relevant to whether his conduct could be characterized as conscience-shocking. Second, the officer in Apodaca was responding to a burglary in progress, whereas Officer Farr had been requested on a non-emergency basis to back up the arrest of a suspected car thief who was hiding in the car in a parking lot. 7 Third, the record of Officer Farr's prior driving history supports the inference that he was a scofflaw who deliberately operated his vehicle in a manner that imperiled the lives of those in his path. No such evidence appears in Apodaca. 24 The dissent asserts that the facts here are no more egregious than those in the cases it cites in which the conduct at issue was determined to fall short of a constitutional violation. We disagree. The dissent has focused only on the manner in which the police vehicle was being operated. In assessing whether the official conduct at issue is arbitrary or conscience-shocking in a constitutional sense, however, the risk of harm must be weighed against the justification for creating that risk. Conduct that is justified and therefore not arbitrary in one circumstance may be so unjustified as to be unconstitutional under different circumstances. 25 In the cases cited by the dissent, the reasons justifying the official conduct that caused the harm were of greater importance than in the instant case. For example, in Fagan v. City of Vineland, 22 F.3d 1296 (3d Cir.1994) (en banc), the court held the police officer was justified in pursuing a car that posed a substantial risk of harm to the community. The car was being operated at a high speed without its lights, running stop signs, and swerving at another police vehicle. In Temkin v. Frederick County Comm'rs, 945 F.2d 716 (4th Cir.1991), the police officer chased a car using his lights and siren after the officer observed the car spin its wheels out of a gas station and learned over the police radio that a theft had occurred. In Roach v. City of Fredericktown, 882 F.2d 294 (8th Cir.1989), the officer chased a car seen leaving the scene of several recent break-ins after learning that the license plates on the car had been issued to a different vehicle. The car had refused to stop and had fled. In Jones v. Sherrill, 827 F.2d 1102 (6th Cir.1987), the police pursued a car that they observed being operated in an unsafe manner and which they learned had just been involved in an accident. The court there observed that the chase was undertaken to protect the public from an obviously unsafe driver. In Cannon v. Taylor, 782 F.2d 947 (11th Cir.1986), the police officer hit another vehicle while responding to a disturbance at a pool hall. The officer was going about fifteen miles over the speed limit because he was concerned for the safety of the first officer who arrived at the scene of the disturbance. In none of these cases did the operation of the vehicle pose a greater risk of harm than in the instant case; in all of them the operation was justified by a greater police concern than the slight justification present here. 26 In every decision concerning a person's state of mind, inferences must be drawn from objective facts. Unlike the cases cited in the dissent, the objective facts here support a reasonable inference that this is not merely a case in which a police officer has carelessly or recklessly put the public at risk by speeding in the performance of his duties. Rather, the evidence here of Officer Farr's response to the non-emergency situation he was dealing with, coupled with the extensive record of his extraordinarily disturbing background, supports an inference that Officer Farr was speeding for speeding's sake, deliberately engaging in unjustified conduct that posed a great risk of harm to those in his path. 8 27 In sum, we conclude that Officer Farr's alleged conduct, particularly his decision to speed against a red light through an intersection on a major boulevard in Denver without slowing down or activating his siren in non-emergency circumstances, all in violation of state law and police regulations, could be viewed as reckless and conscience-shocking. Accordingly, we hold the district court erred in ruling on a summary judgment motion that Officer Farr did not act unconstitutionally.