Court Opinion

ID: 9475559
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:31:11.103322+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:47.248085
License: Public Domain

WISDOM, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
The decision of the majority goes too far in protecting police officers who fail to take reasonable precautions to protect detainees.
The poor guy who hanged himself by his belt had been arrested for drunkenness and trespassing. To the police on duty he must have been just another drunk. The Galveston Police Department, however, has a rule requiring that belts be removed from pris*561oners during the booking process. This is not an unusual rule. Police departments throughout the country have had the same rule for years. The rule comes from a recognition of the facts of life. It is well known that detainees and other prisoners have suicidal tendencies and must be protected against themselves. To speak of this rule as “discretionary” is to ignore the realities of jailing.
In Davis v. Scherer, the Supreme Court did say that “officials ... do not lose their immunity because their conduct violates some statutory or administrative provisions.” But the Supreme Court was not talking about something as fundamental to jail supervision and the protection of life as the universal practice of removing a detainee’s belt. The Supreme Court in Davis v. Scherer dealt with termination of a plaintiff’s employment in violation of a state highway patrol regulation requiring an investigation before terminating an employee. Here, the police officer’s violation of the unambiguous, mandatory rule of removing a detainee’s belt amounted to callous indifference to life.
If this decision stands, it means that no matter how egregiously a police officer ignores or defies a clear, no-exceptions rule, this Court of Appeals will shield him. No matter how negligent, no matter how callously indifferent to proper police conduct a police officer’s omissions or commissions may be, this Court will protect him by uttering the magical word “discretionary.”
I believe that Congress did not write section 1983 to permit the result the majority reaches in this case. To affirm the dismissal of this case under Rule 12(b)(6) makes it worse.
This case cries for a trial.