Opinion ID: 2794598
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Reasonableness of seizures

Text: The Fourth Amendment does not protect against all seizures; it only protects against those that are unreasonable. sufficient under the “show of authority” prong to constitute a seizure, as discussed below, see infra pp. 11-17, any such seizure was reasonable. Vargas also contends that the District Court erred in concluding that Tabitha was not seized because, in her unconscious state, she could not submit to the officers’ show of authority. Again, because any seizure that may have occurred was reasonable, we do not need to resolve whether there was a seizure. 13 United States v. Sharpe, 470 U.S. 675, 682 (1985). Reasonableness is determined by balancing “the need of law enforcement officials against the burden on the affected citizens and considering the relation of the policeman’s actions to his reason for stopping the [individual].” Baker v. Monroe Twp., 50 F.3d 1186, 1192 (3d Cir. 1995). While declining to concede that any seizure occurred, the City Defendants argue that, to the extent there was a seizure, it was reasonable under the community caretaking exception to the Fourth Amendment. In Cady v. Dombrowski, the Supreme Court introduced the “community caretaking doctrine” when it held that a police search of a particular police officer’s private vehicle for the officer’s missing service revolver was not a Fourth Amendment violation because the search was undertaken not for a law enforcement purpose but out of “concern for the safety of the general public who might be endangered if an intruder removed a revolver” from the vehicle.10 413 U.S. 10 We have previously given a synopsis of the relevant facts in Cady, as follows: In Cady, a Chicago police officer named Dombrowski was visiting in Wisconsin and reported to the local police that he had been in an automobile accident. The police picked him up and returned to the scene of the accident. Dombrowski had been drinking, appeared intoxicated to the officers, and offered conflicting versions of the accident. He informed the local officers that he was a Chicago policeman. The local officers believed that members of the Chicago police force were 14 433, 447 (1973). The Court noted that law enforcement officers often exercise “community caretaking functions, totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute.” Id. at 441. That community caretaking doctrine, as described in Cady, is an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment and allows police with a non-law enforcement purpose to seize or search a person or property required to carry a service revolver at all times, so, when no gun was found on Dombrowski’s person, an officer checked the front seat and the glove compartment of the wrecked car, but to no avail. The effort to find the weapon was motivated by the obligation of the police “to protect the public from the possibility that a revolver would fall into untrained or perhaps malicious hands.” The police had the vehicle towed to a privately owned garage, where it was left parked outside. After taking Dombrowski to a local hospital for treatment of injuries he sustained in the accident, one of the Wisconsin officers returned to Dombrowski’s car to again try to recover the service revolver … pursuant to standard departmental procedure “to protect the public from a weapon’s possibly falling into improper hands.” Upon opening the trunk, the officer discovered various items that linked Dombrowski to a murder. Ray v. Twp. of Warren, 626 F.3d 170, 174-75 (3d Cir. 2010) (citations omitted). 15 “in order to ensure the safety of the public and/or the individual, regardless of any suspected criminal activity.” United States v. King, 990 F.2d 1552, 1560 (10th Cir. 1993). Many courts, including our own, have considered the limits of the community caretaking doctrine. In Ray v. Township of Warren, Ray’s estranged wife had gone to Ray’s house to pick up their daughter for court-ordered visitation. 626 F.3d 170, 171-72 (3d Cir. 2010). Upon seeing someone moving inside the home, but receiving no response to her ringing of the doorbell or knocking on the door, the wife called the police. Id. Once the police arrived, she described the situation to them and expressed concern for her daughter’s well-being. Id. The officers, some of whom were aware of the acrimonious divorce proceedings and child-custody dispute between the couple, also knocked on the door and called the telephone number for the residence, but received no response. Id. Thereafter, and without a valid warrant,11 the officers entered the house to check on the child’s well-being. Id. To justify their actions, the officers asserted the 11 Prior to entering, the responding officers contacted a municipal court judge for guidance as to whether the officers could enter the home and look for the child without a warrant, and they received approval. Although the specifics of that conversation were unclear, the officers testified that they only sought advice regarding entering the home out of concern for the daughter’s well-being; they did not regard the call as a request for a warrant. The magistrate judge however, understood the officers to be asking for an arrest warrant and issued such a warrant, though it was later voided. Ray, 626 F.3d at 172. 16 community caretaking exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. We ultimately held that the officers’ actions were protected by qualified immunity, id. at 179, but we declined to extend the community caretaking exception to cover the officers’ conduct. Instead, we indicated that Cady’s outcome depended on the distinction in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence between automobiles and homes, and we concluded that the community caretaking doctrine “cannot be used to justify warrantless searches of a home.” Id. at 177. We expressly noted in that case, however, that we were not deciding “[w]hether that [doctrine] can ever apply outside the context of an automobile search.” Id. Some of our sister courts of appeals have, by contrast, decided that question and have upheld under the community caretaking doctrine not only evidentiary searches and seizures outside the home, but also the effective seizure of persons. See, e.g., Lockhard-Bembery v. Sauro, 498 F.3d 69, 75-76 (1st Cir. 2007) (applying community caretaking exception when officer ordered motorist to push her disabled car out of the roadway for the safety of the general public); Samuelson v. City of New Ulm, 455 F.3d 871, 877 (8th Cir. 2006) (applying community caretaking exception when officers transported to a psychiatric hospital an unwilling individual who appeared to be hallucinating); United States v. Rideau, 949 F.2d 718, 720 (5th Cir. 1991) (applying community caretaking exception when officers stopped defendant for his own safety and the safety of others after observing him standing in the middle of the road at night, dressed in dark clothes, and apparently intoxicated), vacated on other grounds, 969 F.2d 1572 (5th Cir. 1992) (en banc). 17 We agree that the community caretaking doctrine can apply in situations when, as is arguably the case here, a person outside of a home has been seized for a non- investigatory purpose and to protect that individual or the community at large.12 The undisputed facts show that the actions of Officers Blaszczyk and White were reasonable. They were responding to a volatile situation which they did not initially know involved a medical emergency, and any brief seizure that may have occurred was a result of the officers’ concern for the safety of everyone involved. The officers were sent because of a dispatcher’s report of a 911 call from a “person screaming” (App. at 152-54), which was an apt description. According to Vargas, when the officers pulled up next to Diaz’s car, the occupants of the car began “screaming” at them (App. at 85), but the screaming did not immediately reveal the nature of the emergency. Once the officers realized that Tabitha needed medical attention, it was reasonable for them to direct Vargas to wait because an ambulance was within earshot and its arrival was apparently imminent. 12 The City Defendants have not invoked the “emergency aid doctrine,” which the Supreme Court describes as a subset of the exigent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement. Brigham City, Utah v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 403 (2006) (“One exigency obviating the requirement of a warrant is the need to assist persons who are seriously injured or threatened with such injury.”). We thus do not have occasion to evaluate that doctrine’s applicability here. 18 Officer White testified that they intended to take Tabitha to the hospital, but then heard and saw an ambulance approaching “within a minute or two minutes.” (App. at 175.) He further testified that he waited for the ambulance because paramedics are “better trained” for the type of situation the officers faced. (App. at 175.) Sergeant Starrs of the Philadelphia Police Department, who works for the Department’s Research and Planning Unit and is responsible for writing policies and procedures used in the training of police officers, explained that officers are trained to wait for paramedics in certain situations because “medics … have the equipment and they have the personnel to ride in the back” with the patient, whereas when officers transport a patient, they “are in the front of the car driving” and “there is no nobody to attend to the patient in the back.” (App. at 186.) It is undisputed that Tabitha did in fact receive medical care on the scene and on board the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Finally, it is important to note that the encounter outside the Vargas home transpired within a few minutes. Although Vargas estimated that the police officers were on the scene for 6 to 8 minutes before the ambulance, Franklin – one of her witnesses – testified that the time between the officers’ and the ambulance’s arrival was “maybe a minute, two minutes.” (App. at 132-33.) And the police dispatch records tend to confirm Franklin’s testimony, showing that the officers were on the scene just over a minute before the ambulance arrived. (Compare App. at 158 (officers arrived at 12:13:56), with App. at 277 (ambulance arrived at 12:15).) Even accepting the longer time-span as the historical fact, though, the entire episode happened quickly. In such 19 circumstances, even if Vargas and Tabitha could be considered seized, the seizures were reasonable.13