Court Opinion

ID: 9843197
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:30:20.949142+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:00.552704
License: Public Domain

PARKER, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I agree with the result reached by the majority opinion but am writing separately because I disagree with the reasoning expressed in Section II. In my opinion, the analysis which denies liability as to Officer Durant springs from Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981), in which an inmate sued prison officials when a hobby kit he had ordered through the mail was allegedly lost in the prison mail system. There, the Supreme Court held that, even though the inmate had been deprived of property under color of state law, 451 U.S. at 536-7, 101 S.Ct. 1908, there was no liability because the deprivation had not occurred because of “some established state procedure,” id. at 543, 101 S.Ct. 1908, but instead resulted from the unauthorized failure of state agents to follow established state procedures.
Here, both the policy at issue and the actions of Officer Durant are comparable to the prison mail system at issue in Par-ratt ; in neither case is there any indication that the state or state officials set out to deprive individuals of their property. The Village’s policy, in this case, is worded neutrally and addresses only peacekeeping functions; moreover, officers are specifically instructed not to become, “involved” in repossessions. While it is certainly conceivable for a municipality to have a different policy, one which would require police to order any repossession terminated the moment a breach of the peace arises, the fact that the Village of Malone has chosen to promulgate the one it has can hardly be said to constitute “deliberate indifference” to the constitutional rights of others under the standard set forth in City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 388, 109 S.Ct. 1197, 103 L.Ed.2d 412 (1989). Based on the evidence produced by Plaintiffs, I find that it was not “obvious” that the implementation of the Village’s policy would “likely” result in a violation of Constitutional rights, id. at 390, 109 S.Ct. 1197, nor were “the police, in exercising their discretion, so often violating] constitutional rights that the need for further training [in this case, training on the New York Uniform Commercial Code] must have been plainly obvious to the city policymakers,” id. at 390 n. 10, 109 S.Ct. 1197.
*305Officer Durant’s actions, in implementing the policy, do not reflect an intent to aid Smith in effecting the repossession; rather, they reflect an intent to prevent Barrett from striking Smith, and they were actions well within Durant’s authority as a police officer. The situation might be different if Durant had said something like, “Don’t interfere with this repossession,” or “you know you’re not the rightful owner of this truck,” but his primary concern appears to have been for Smith’s immediate physical safety. While it is undeniably the case that Officer Durant’s act of restraining Barrett was intentional, the assistance he lent thereby to the repossession in progress was unintentional. Even assuming that Durant’s actions were inappropriate, they reflect at most only negligence on his part in implementing the town’s policy. In my opinion, section 1983 liability does not arise simply because an officer could have found a more fair or more appropriate way of handling a given situation.
Therefore, I propose the following rule with regard to police action at the scene of repossessions: so long as the primary focus of a town’s policy is to deal with a breach of the peace, which an officer, of course, must do, neither he/she nor the town can be held accountable for a violation of due process simply because his or her actions as a peacekeeper may incidentally provide assistance to the repossessor. I believe that such a rule is not only mandated by Parratt, but would be much easier to implement than the test employed in the majority opinion, which requires the court to engage in an exacting factual analysis of the officer’s conduct in order to determine whether state action exists.
Nonetheless, because I agree with the majority that no Constitutional violation has occurred, I agree with its decision not to reach the qualified immunity issue, and I agree with its finding that there can be no liability as to the Village or as to Smith.