9th Circuit Court says Police Don't have to Perform CPR: SF Cops let Black Man Die

The obligation of police to protect individuals in their custody does not require that they perform CPR when an arrestee is stricken with a possible heart attack, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday. The court affirmed a summary judgment in favor of San Francisco police, who were sued for violation of civil rights and on various tort claims in the 2001 death of  Glenn Fullard. Fullard died after police—who said they suspected him of being under the influence of a controlled substance after he persisted in kicking the door of the Tenderloin police station for no apparent reason after they told him to stop—subdued and handcuffed him. The cause of death was cocaine toxicity, the coroner found. Police testified that after Fullard was handcuffed, they noticed that his breathing was labored and called for an ambulance. The officers said they told the dispatcher to treat the call as a priority and stayed with Fullard until the ambulance arrived, monitoring his pulse and chest movements. Fullard’s mother, who filed the suit, alleged that the failure to apply CPR was the equivalent of using excessive force. But Judge Ronald Gould, writing for the Ninth Circuit, said the officers acted reasonably under the circumstances. “Just as the Fourth Amendment does not require a police officer to use the least intrusive method of arrest neither does it require an officer to provide what hindsight reveals to be the most effective medical care for an arrested suspect,” Gould wrote. The requirement, he explained, is that the police provide “objectively reasonable post-arrest care” by either summoning help or taking the arrestee to a hospital. In this case, Gould wrote, the officers “promptly summoned the necessary medical care by requesting an ambulance for Fullard” and  continued to monitor him. Assuming that police “could have performed CPR on Fullard without risking further injury to him, the critical inquiry is not whether the officers did all that they could have done, but whether they did all that the Fourth Amendment requires,” the judge said. “Here, the officers promptly requested medical assistance, and the Constitution required them to do no more.” [more]

• Glen Fuller died in a chokehold administered by the Tenderloin Task Force (SFPD) The circumstances of his death suggest police wrongdoing. [more]