Opinion ID: 6931624
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Chief Anderson

Text: Chief Anderson had no direct contact with Mr. Belcher. Mrs. Belcher seeks to hold him hable for failing to provide a written pohcy or training to his officers in the proper handhng of mentally ih and suicidal inmates, and for failing to cover the bars of the jail cell doors. 6 “Supervisory officials are not liable under section 1983 on the basis of respondeat superior or vicarious liability.” Hardin v. Hayes, 957 F.2d 845, 849 (11th Cir.1992). They may, however, be hable under section 1983 “when there is a causal connection between actions of the supervising official and the alleged constitutional deprivation.” Brown v. Crawford, 906 F.2d 667, 671 (11th Cir.1990). At the time of Mr. Belcher’s death in August 1991, Chief Anderson had been the City’s police chief for two-and-one-half years. As such, he had a duty to train police officers and to establish policies governing their conduct. Pursuant to an unwritten policy, Foley police officers were required to check on jail inmates every hour, unless the inmate was “unstable.” Officers were to check “unstable” inmates more frequently. When an inmate needed medical treatment, an officer either took him to a hospital or called a local ambulance service to the jail to administer care. If an inmate had prescription medication, an officer or a dispatcher administered it. When an inmate was suicidal, officers were expected to place him alone in a cell, without other inmates. Further, officers had the discretion to put the inmate in a cell that had been stripped of furnishings to reduce the possibility of suicide. In July 1991, only a month before Mr. Belcher’s death, Chief Anderson had written and distributed a new set of police department policies, but those policies did not address any aspect of the jail, such as the handling of mentally ill or suicidal inmates. Even before Anderson became Chief of Police, he was aware that an inmate had committed suicide in the Foley jail in 1984. He had investigated that suicide while serving as Chief Deputy Sheriff of Baldwin County, Alabama. Chief Anderson’s awareness of the risk of jail suicides was further heightened eight months before Mr. Belcher’s suicide, when Walter Cygan, a representative of the Alabama Municipal Insurance Corporation, inspected the Foley jail as part of a loss control evaluation for the City. In January 1991, Cygan sent a letter to Fred Mott, the City Administrator, that stated: “[Y]ou [should] consider some type of protection over the jail bars, so that ... a smooth surface can be created; thus eliminating the potential exposure from tying some material on to these bars and committing suicide.” Chief Anderson received a copy of that letter and asked Mr. Mott for funds to cover the bars; he did not receive that funding until after Mr. Belcher’s suicide.
Mrs. Belcher contends that Chief Anderson acted with deliberate indifference to her son’s life by not providing a written policy for the handling of suicidal inmates. In Schmelz v. Monroe County, 954 F.2d 1540 (11th Cir.1992), a case decided after Mr. Belcher’s death, this Court held that a sheriff who had an unwritten policy that “made an effort to identify and protect potentially suicidal inmates from self-harm” was not guilty of deliberate indifference. Id. at 1544. Chief Anderson’s unwritten policy for the handling of “unstable” inmates met the Schmelz standard. Our decisions prior to Mr. Belcher’s death do not require any more, in the way of a policy, than does Schmelz. Therefore, it could not have been clearly established at the time of Mr. Belcher’s death that a police chiefs failure to have a written policy for the handling of suicidal inmates constituted deliberate indifference.
Mrs. Belcher contends that Chief Anderson’s failure to train his officers in the handling of suicidal inmates constituted deliberate indifference to her son’s life. A supervisory official is not liable under section 1983 for an injury resulting from his failure to train subordinates unless his “failure to train amounts to deliberate indifference to the rights of persons with whom the subordinates come into contact” and the failure has actually caused the injury of which the plaintiff complains. Popham v. City of Talladega, 908 F.2d 1561, 1564-65 (11th Cir.1990); Greason v. Kemp, 891 F.2d 829, 837 n. 15 (11th Cir.1990); cf. City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 388, 390, 109 S.Ct. 1197, 1204-05, 103 L.Ed.2d 412 (1989) (addressing the analogous situation of municipal liability under section 1983). Only when the failure to. train amounts to “deliberate indifference” can it properly be characterized as the “policy” or “custom” that is necessary for section 1983 liability to attach. City of Canton, 489 U.S. at 389, 109 S.Ct. at 1205. Failure to train can amount to deliberate indifference when the need for more or different training is obvious, id. at 390, 109 S.Ct. at 1205, such as when there exists a history of abuse by subordinates that has put the supervisor on notice of the need for corrective measures, Greason, 891 F.2d at 837, and when the failure to train is likely to result in the violation of a constitutional right, City of Canton, 489 U.S. at 390, 109 S.Ct. at 1205. Mrs. Belcher contends that Chief Anderson’s failure to train his officers in the handling of suicidal inmates amounted to deliberate indifference to the constitutional rights of suicidal inmates with whom the officers came into contact. She argues that the 1984 suicide and the recommendations of Cygan, the representative of the Alabama Municipal Insurance Corporation, put Chief Anderson on notice of the need to train his officers in the handling of suicidal inmates. In response to Chief Anderson’s qualified immunity defense, Mrs. Belcher contends that, at the time of her son’s death, Greason v. Kemp, 891 F.2d 829 (11th Cir.1990), clearly established that a reasonable supervisory official who knows of a previous suicide in his facility, but who fails to train his subordinates in the proper handling of suicidal inmates, acts with deliberate indifference. Mrs. Belcher’s contention requires too much of an inductive leap to defeat Chief Anderson’s qualified immunity. Although Greason denied qualified immunity to two supervisory officials who, among other things, failed to establish procedures to help subordinates in their facility to identify inmates having suicidal tendencies and to prevent suicides, that case did not clearly establish the law applicable to Chief Anderson’s conduct. To a large degree, Greason involved the practice of medicine. The two Greason supervisory defendants were the clinical director and the warden of a state mental health evaluation facility. 891 F.2d at 833. They supervised psychiatrists, support staff, and guards, who dealt routinely with inmates likely to inflict self-harm. Id. at 837, 839. The inmate who committed suicide in Greason did so after his medication was discontinued by a staff psychiatrist who visited the facility only once a week for six-and-one-half hours, during which time he saw twenty-five or thirty inmates for less than fifteen minutes each. Id. at 832. Only one year before the Greason inmate’s suicide, at the same facility, another inmate whose medication had been discontinued by the same psychiatrist had committed several acts of self-mutilation. Id. at 838, 840. The clinical director and the warden of the mental health facility who were defendants in Greason were in positions materially different from Chief Anderson’s. On a daily basis their principal responsibility was to coordinate the provision of medical and psychiatric services to prisoners who were patients in a mental health facility. By contrast, Chief Anderson’s principal responsibility was to supervise the enforcement of laws and to arrest suspected violators in his community. Additionally, the previous incident of self-harm at the facility in Greason is distinguishable from the previous Foley jail suicide. The Greason inmate committed suicide only one year after an incident of self-harm by another inmate at that facility who had been treated by the same psychiatrist and in the same manner as the Greason inmate. After that first incident of self-harm, nothing at the facility in Greason was changed to prevent the same thing from happening again. By contrast, the previous suicide in the Foley jail occurred seven years before Mr. Belch-er’s and that inmate had hung himself with a sheet tied through a cement block above the cell door. After that first Foley jail suicide, officials had filled holes in the cement blocks and had removed all of the furnishings, including sheets, from one cell; Mr. Belcher was placed in that cell as a precautionary measure. Mrs. Belcher cites no decisions other than Greason to clearly establish that Chief Anderson’s failure to train his officers amounted to deliberate indifference, and we find none that do. Therefore, we conclude that, at the time of Mr. Belcher’s death, the law was not clearly established that Chief Anderson’s failure to train his officers in the handling of suicidal inmates amounted to deliberate indifference to Mr. Belcher’s constitutional rights.
Mrs. Belcher also contends that, at the time of her son’s death, it was clearly established that a reasonable jail official, who knew that an inmate could hang himself by tying some material to the bars of a jail-cell door and yet who failed to prevent that possibility, was acting with deliberate indifference to an inmate’s taking of his life. She cites no decisions supporting her contention. Instead, she relies upon the National Commission on Correctional Health Care’s 1987 “Standards for Health Services in Jails” and the requirements of the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. Such non-legally enforceable standards are not the law and cannot clearly establish it. Our research reveals no decisions clearly establishing that a police chief who fails to cover the bars of the jail-cell doors is acting with deliberate indifference to inmates who seek to take their own lives. Therefore, we conclude that, at the time of Mr. Belcher’s death, this contention was not clearly established law.
Because at the time of Mr. Belcher’s death no decision had clearly established that Chief Anderson’s actions or inactions constituted deliberate indifference, he is entitled to qualified immunity.