Interact Business Group

Deliberate Indifference

What it means and its implications for public safety agencies and professionals

By Barbara Doepping contact writer
Interact Business Group

When the lights wink out one by one in our town each night, and our citizens doze off into never-never land, I´d like to think that most of us do so under the assumption that our public safety personnel are looking out for our best interests while we sleep— policing our community and keeping us safe; at the ready for all fire and medical emergencies. We rely on the training they receive in order to do their jobs, and to do them well, with that special commitment that it takes to put his/her life on the line for you and me and our families.

The term "Deliberate Indifference" has been used in a broad range of lawsuits—regarding violations of prisoner´s and children´s rights, medical issues, sexual harassment in schools, employment litigation and more. However, for the purposes of this article we will use it to refer to public safety personnel issues, only. Here at the Interact Business Group, our focus is writing strategic business plans for public safety training centers, that once built, will provide a quality, state of the art facility in which to train.

According to The ´Lectric Law Library's Lexicon (n.d.) . . . "Deliberate Indifference" is, "The conscious or reckless disregard of the consequences of one's acts or omissions." Or, per King (2005) "A pattern of constitutional violations by officers may indicate that a lack of proper training, rather than a one-time negligent administration of the training program or factors peculiar to the officer involved in a single incident, is responsible for the plaintiff´s injury. If a training program does not prevent constitutional violations and a pattern of injuries develops, officials charged with the responsibility of formulating policy for the agency may be put on notice that a new program is needed and a failure to address the problem may constitute deliberate indifference. In the absence of a pattern of violations, deliberate indifference may be inferred from the policy makers´ continued adherence to a training program that they knew or should have known would fail to prevent violations in usual or recurring situations."

When it comes to police officers, according to Action Target (n.d., p. 27) "It is commonly estimated that actions for failure to train and failure to supervise are the two most common types of claims brought against police administrators." The article cites three ´critical components´ that the court (refer to U.S. Supreme Court case City of Canton v. Harris, 1989) will have to determine in this type of litigation: