Opinion ID: 734164
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: A Position Of Danger

Text: 29 The second special relationship possibly implicating the protections of the Due Process Clause under DeShaney is where the state creates a dangerous situation or renders citizens more vulnerable to danger. See Reed v. Gardner, 986 F.2d 1122, 1125 (7th Cir.) (DeShaney, however, leaves the door open for liability in [such] situations ....) (citing DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 201, 109 S.Ct. at 1006), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 947, 114 S.Ct. 389, 126 L.Ed.2d 337 (1993). 30 The magistrate judge and district court concluded that the officers placed Stevens in no worse position than if they had not acted at all. Stevens' estate had argued that the officers placed Stevens in danger by not letting his friends take him home. Considering the conflicting testimony from Stevens' friends, the trial court accepted Stevens' assertions that his friends were available to drive him home. Even given that, both the magistrate judge and the district court found that the police officers had provided meaningful alternative sources of aid. 31 The estate asserts that the district court focused on the wrong facts. It points to numerous inferences it would draw from the facts which it believes the district court overlooked. It argues vociferously that the district court ignored Stevens' high blood alcohol level in the medical examiner's report, from which it should be concluded that Stevens' judgment, coordination, and perception were so impaired at the time of the encounter that he was incapacitated. The estate submits that an offer to a judgment-impaired person to make his own travel arrangements home is not a reasonable alternative to allowing that person to ride home with friends. The estate argues that once the officers took over Stevens' freedom to act, reasonable alternatives existed--transport Stevens to a hospital, a detox center, his residence, the city jail, or even hand him over to the tribal police--other than dropping him off at a gas station. For Stevens' estate, the deprivation of due process rights occurred when the officers took Stevens into custody but then abandoned him: if Officers Laux and Buckley had not exercised control over the scene, restrained Stevens' and his friends' freedom to act, physically removed Stevens and then left him alone, Stevens would not have ended up staggering down a dark and curving highway to be struck from behind by a car in the early morning hours of October 28, 1993. 32 But-for causation cannot be laid on the shoulders of the police officers in this manner. Various other factors contributed to this tragedy, primarily Stevens' intoxication. The estate's argument that Stevens' drunken state necessarily renders the officers' actions unreasonable is a red herring. The officers did not test Stevens' blood alcohol content in the Colors parking lot. The medical examiner's report, the only fact in the record on this point, said that Stevens tested at .237g/100ml at the time of his death. Because little is known about Stevens' exact whereabouts and actions during the 90 minutes between when the officers dropped him off and he was killed, including whether he drank more during that interval, possibly at Jessica Brooks' apartment, we do not know if he was more or less intoxicated at his death than at the time of his encounter with the police. Giving Stevens' estate the benefit of the doubt on this argument, it means only that it was reasonable to conclude that Stevens was legally drunk in the Colors parking lot. Any other facts come from eyewitness testimony. Neither his friends nor the officers said Stevens was incapacitated. 33 To recover under this theory, the estate must demonstrate that the state greatly increased the danger to Stevens while constricting access to self-help; it must cut off all avenues of aid without providing a reasonable alternative. Only then may a constitutional injury have occurred. See Ross v. United States, 910 F.2d 1422, 1431 (7th Cir.1990) (quoting Archie v. City of Racine, 847 F.2d 1211, 1223 (7th Cir.1988) (en banc), cert. denied, 489 U.S. 1065, 109 S.Ct. 1338, 103 L.Ed.2d 809 (1989)). 34 As the magistrate judge and district court concluded, the facts are in dispute as to whether any of his friends were ready, willing, and able to take Stevens home. The versions offered by the friends and the officers are irreconcilable. Julie King said she was told to stay in the bar, and that Stevens would be waiting in a car when they left the bar. Jason King said he was told to stay in the bar and that the matter would be taken care of. Michelle Powless said an officer told her Stevens would be taken to his home or the hospital. Nicole Lasilla also said she was told to stay in the bar. The officers said that in their trip inside the nightclub they spoke only with male acquaintances of Stevens who declined to give him a ride. Given these contradictory versions of these few key minutes, we must, as did the magistrate and district court, adopt the estate's version that the police officers prevented Stevens' friends from taking him home. The officers' argument that Stevens' friends did not actively seek to give Stevens a ride, were content to permit him to remain in the squad car, and thus that they were not a private source of aid must be rejected. 35 Assuming the estate is correct that Officers Laux and Buckley prevented Stevens' friends from driving him home, the question is whether having precluded one reasonable alternative, the officers gave Stevens another. Archie, 847 F.2d at 1223. The officers twice offered Stevens medical assistance, which he refused. The officers offered to arrange a cab ride for Stevens, which he also refused. The third offer from Officer Laux--a ride to a nearby service station to use a telephone to arrange for a ride home--Stevens accepted. These options were not unreasonable. To conclude to the contrary would mean that only a ride home from friends could defuse a potentially confrontational situation involving an intoxicated patron such as existed at Colors; any police-initiated solutions would be inherently unreasonable. We easily reject this idea. Unlike the county sheriff in Ross who stood by awaiting official rescuers while a boy drowned, 910 F.2d at 1424-25, Officers Laux and Buckley listed for Stevens his choices for leaving, each reasonable, and allowed him to choose. He voluntarily accepted one alternative. 36 The estate offers another version of this liability theory. It argues that by abandoning an intoxicated Stevens at the Grand Central service station, the police officers rendered him more vulnerable to danger and are thus liable under DeShaney. The officers had no involvement in Stevens' intoxication or car accident. The extent of their interaction with him was to give him a gauze pad for his bleeding ear and a ride away from the site of a fight to a place where he could arrange for a ride home. Viewing the record from the estate's perspective, the officers rendered Stevens beneficial treatment rather than making him more vulnerable to harm. This case is not like White v. Rochford, 592 F.2d 381 (7th Cir.1979), a pre-DeShaney case relied upon by the estate, in which Chicago police officers abandoned three children at night in a car on the Chicago Skyway after arresting the automobile's driver. The children left the car, crossed eight lanes of freeway traffic, and wandered around the expressway looking for a telephone. In White, we found the officer's conduct shocking and violative of the children's constitutional rights. Here, unlike in White in which children were left in manifest danger, the officers dropped Stevens off at a place probably safer than where he had been. Grand Central Station is merely 1/2 block from Colors on the same street. Regardless, the accident occurred 1 1/2 miles from where Officer Laux dropped Stevens off. 37 This case is similar to Sellers By and Through Sellers v. Baer, 28 F.3d 895 (8th Cir.1994), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 1084, 115 S.Ct. 739, 130 L.Ed.2d 641 (1995). Larry Deuser was intoxicated and harassing women at a state fair. National park rangers and officers transported him ten blocks away from the fairgrounds and dropped him off in a parking lot located behind the nearest police station, and asked him before they released him to promise he would not return to the fair. Ninety minutes later, Deuser was struck and killed by a motorist on an interstate highway approximately 1 1/2 miles from the police station where he had been dropped off. The Eighth Circuit rejected Deuser's relatives' substantive due process claim that the rangers placed him in a dangerous situation he would not have otherwise faced, and granted the officers qualified immunity. Id. at 900. 38 In short, no special relationship was created between Stevens and the officers. This case does not fall within the narrow substantive due process protections recognized in DeShaney. Having determined that the police officers did not violate Stevens' constitutional rights, we need not reach the second step of the qualified immunity inquiry, whether the constitutional standards violated were clearly established at the time in question. See Marshall v. Allen, 984 F.2d 787, 793 (7th Cir.1993) (If a plaintiff's allegations, even when accepted as true, do not state a cognizable violation of constitutional rights, then the plaintiff's claim fails.... Courts are not required to examine the clearly established law at the time of the offense if the plaintiff's allegations do not assert a violation of constitutional rights.).