Opinion ID: 1725466
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Shooting of Russell

Text: Every conceivable discharge of a gun in possession of an off-duty law enforcement officer will not be found to be within the scope of employment. Roberts, 605 So.2d at 1038. Even when the law enforcement officer is required to be armed at all times, the departmental employer will not always be held liable. Id. Officer Noullet admitted that the Department rules gave him the option of carrying a firearm when off-duty; that he could discharge his weapon only if he was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm; and that he was forbidden to fire warning shots or to fire into a crowd. However, he claimed that he fired his gun into the crowd because he was in fear of being killed by the unruly mob. The crowd was pursuing Officer Noullet at the time, not because of his intervention into his brother's fight under arguable color of police authority, but because of his physical beating of an innocent bystander that was totally unrelated to his duties as a policeman. On this record, Officer Noullet's fear of injury by the crowd, however reasonable, was brought on by a forseeable reaction to his attack on Miller and not by a reaction to his efforts to restore peace in the earlier fight. We conclude that Officer Noullet's shooting into the crowd to protect himself from the pursuing mob was not proved to be sufficiently related, for purposes of establishing vicarious liability, to his earlier effort under police authority to restore peace, which was Officer Noullet's only arguable police-related activity in this record. Therefore, considering Officer Noullet's general activities and his specific tortious acts, we conclude that the conduct was not in the exercise of the functions in which [he was] employed. La. Civ.Code art. 2320.