Opinion ID: 518482
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: County's Failure to Train

Text: 32 Maricopa County may be liable under section 1983 if it had a practice of gross negligence in training or supervision, and if Gobel and DeFranco can establish an affirmative link between the inadequate training and their alleged constitutional deprivations. See Perez v. Simmons, 859 F.2d 1411, 1417 (9th Cir.1988); Bergquist v. County of Cochise, 806 F.2d 1364, 1370 (9th Cir.1986). We held in Bergquist that an allegation that the county had failed to properly train and instruct its police officers in the necessity to verify informant data before seeking a search warrant stated a valid section 1983 claim. Bergquist, 806 F.2d at 1367, 1370. 33 Gobel and DeFranco alleged in their complaint that Maricopa County fail[ed] to provide any supervision or procedures to be followed by Collins, Stoller, and Gary prior to requesting or causing the arrest of an individual for allegedly violating the bad check law. At oral argument, the plaintiffs asserted that Maricopa County had failed to insure that the persons seeking arrest warrants had adequate training and supervision regarding the proper methods and standards for verifying the information used to determine that probable cause to arrest existed. They also asserted that a county investigator, who had no training or supervision, recklessly decided to seek an arrest warrant for Gobel after doing a handwriting comparison. If Gobel and DeFranco can prove that their mistaken arrests were caused by this failure to train, they will have made out a valid section 1983 claim against Maricopa County. See Perez, 859 F.2d at 1417-18 (directed verdict for city reversed because evidence showed that city had no written guidelines on searching a third person's home in which the subject of an arrest warrant is believed to be staying and two officers testified that they believed, as a result of their training and indoctrination as to department policy, that a search of a third-party home was legal if the subject of the arrest warrant had been staying temporarily at the residence.).