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July 28, 2018
Ninth Circuit panel unanimously backs lawsuit against San Jose police who stood by and watched attacks on Trump supporters
By Thomas Lifson

Normally, suing police for failing to prevent crime is not allowed by courts. But a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has just allowed a lawsuit against the City of San Jose and its police department to proceed, despite this general presumption (called "qualified immunity") that police cannot be held responsible for failing to prevent crime.

News media, both local and national, watched and recorded as San Jose police stood aside as people leaving a Trump rally in San Jose were heinously assaulted by anti-Trump thugs. The Washington Post at the time (June 2016) reported:

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Protests outside a Donald Trump rally in downtown San Jose spun out of control Thursday night when some demonstrators attacked the candidate's supporters.

Protesters jumped on cars, pelted Trump supporters with eggs and water balloons, snatched signs and stole "Make America Great" hats off supporters' heads before burning the hats and snapping selfies with the charred remains.

Several people were caught on camera punching Trump supporters. At least one attacker was arrested, according to CNN, although police did not release much information.

Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle explains the Ninth Circuit's logic in allowing the lawsuit to proceed:

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If the allegations are true, "the officers acted with deliberate indifference to a known and obvious danger" and violated the Trump supporters' constitutional rights," said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

After the rally at the McEnery Convention Center, police directed those in attendance to leave from a single exit. There, according to the lawsuit, they were ordered to head out onto a street where hundreds of anti-Trump protesters were waiting, even though a safer route and other exits were available.

They funneled the Trump-supporters into a space dominated by hostile demonstrators who already had been violent. In my opinion, this constitutes collaboration in the violence.

The court decision wrote:

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[T]he attendees alleged sufficiently that the officers increased the danger to them by shepherding them into a crowd of violent protesters and that the officers acted with deliberate indifference to that danger. The district court therefore correctly denied the officers qualified immunity.

While San Jose may appeal to the Supreme Court, delaying the lawsuit from proceeding, once court proceedings begin, the extensive documentation of the violence with police watching will be powerful and persuasive evidence. Here is a screen grab illustrating that point from a YouTube video (hat tip: Breitbart):


The lawyer for the plaintiffs is Harmeet Dhillon, a hero of mine. In addition to being the Republican national committeeman from California, she represents James Damore in his lawsuit against Google for firing him over critical views expressed about diversity. She richly deserves a large contingency fee if these lawsuits succeed and result in substantial judgments against wealthy defendants who discriminate on the basis of political preferences.

I have to wonder: given two sensible decisions of late (this is the other one, affirming a Second Amendment right to open carry), has the Ninth Circuit been affected by the need to wade through poop and dirty drug needles getting to its courthouse in San Francisco and decided that leftist madness has gone too far?

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Originally posted by Sig2340:
Good.

Now strip all the police who were present of qualified immunity.

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Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
I don't know why this would come as a surprise - the Left has been honing their legal arguments against "kettling" and other crowd management tactics for decades in California. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole legal basis for the Circuit's decision turned out to be (unintentionally) gifted to us by SFPD.

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Supporters of presidential candidate Donald Trump who were roughed up by protesters at a June 2016 campaign rally in San Jose can sue the city and its police for allegedly putting them in danger and then failing to protect them, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

If the allegations are true, “the officers acted with deliberate indifference to a known and obvious danger” and violated the Trump supporters’ constitutional rights,” said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

After the rally at the McEnery Convention Center, police directed those in attendance to leave from a single exit. There, according to the lawsuit, they were ordered to head out onto a street where hundreds of anti-Trump protesters were waiting, even though a safer route and other exits were available.

Twenty plaintiffs in the suit said they were beaten or struck by objects thrown by the protesters, and one plaintiff said an officer told her that police had been instructed not to intervene. The plaintiffs said police arrested three people for allegedly assaulting officers, but no one for attacking Trump supporters.

....

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City of San Jose Attorney Richard Doyle said he will discuss whether to appeal en banc or to the Supreme Court in the coming days.

“We got the mayor and police chief dismissed from the case earlier,” Doyle said in an email. “We tried to do the same here with respect to certain police officers.”

The decision will allow plaintiffs to conduct discovery, unless the city appeals.

Dhillon said she anticipates resistance, but hopes to get planning documents from the police to provide insight on who they prepared for the rally that night.

“I heard from many San Jose police officers off the record, and they said they were told to stand down and they were disgusted by that,” Dhillon said.

The judges seemed to favor the plaintiffs’ position during oral arguments in April.

“There was an angry mob at the end of one exit while police said the other exits were blocked,” said Fletcher during the hearing. “That sounds like the state created danger.”

It was a sentiment Nelson echoed in Friday’s decision.

“Being attacked by anti-Trump protesters was only a possibility when the attendees arrived at the rally,” Nelson wrote in the panel’s 28-page opinion. “The officers greatly increased that risk of violence when they shepherded and directed the attendees towards the unruly mob waiting outside the Convention Center.”

But the judges also acknowledged that Dhillon will have to meet a higher bar for plaintiffs to pass as the case proceeds.

...

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Originally posted by gearhounds:
These guys fucked up badly, and deserve to be punished. I have had to pull security at some events, basically providing protection for some loathsome people. But an assault in my presence is a crime regardless of the victim, and I am duty bound to act.

There is NO PERSON in my chain of command that has the authority to tell me not to intervene or arrest someone assaulting another person.

I hope every one of them lose their jobs. I hope whoever ordered them to stand by are sued into oblivion.

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I heard from many San Jose police officers off the record, and they said they were told to stand down and they were disgusted by that,” Dhillon said.