CA3: Officers confronted with an unknown call of a screaming woman were not unreasonable in waiting to sort it out, even though it resulted in a delay of getting a woman to the hospital where she died

In a “tragic” case of a young woman dying from lock of oxygen to the brain from an asthma attack, police responded to a 911 call of a “woman screaming” and didn’t know what they had. When they arrived, the screaming woman didn’t say what the emergency was, and “Vargas testified that, as Diaz was trying to explain their medical emergency, the officer walked in front of Diaz’s car to the driver’s side and said, ‘get the f*** out of the car, turn off the engine now.’” By the time the officer figured out what they had, the ambulance was near and had them wait. The young woman, however, was shortly brain dead at the hospital and was taken off life support and died days later. Without having to decide the difficult question of whether a seizure occurred, the direction to wait for an ambulance was reasonable because it was so close. Thus, the officers have qualified immunity. Vargas v. City of Philadelphia, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 6331 (3d Cir. April 17, 2015):

Some of our sister courts of appeals have, by contrast, decided that question and have upheld under the community caretaking doctrine not only evidentiary searches and seizures outside the home, but also the effective seizure of persons. See, e.g., Lockhard-Bembery v. Sauro, 498 F.3d 69, 75-76 (1st Cir. 2007) (applying community caretaking exception when officer ordered motorist to push her disabled car out of the roadway for the safety of the general public); Samuelson v. City of New Ulm, 455 F.3d 871, 877 (8th Cir. 2006) (applying community caretaking exception when officers transported to a psychiatric hospital an unwilling individual who appeared to be hallucinating); United States v. Rideau, 949 F.2d 718, 720 (5th Cir. 1991) (applying community caretaking exception when officers stopped defendant for his own safety and the safety of others after observing him standing in the middle of the road at night, dressed in dark clothes, and apparently intoxicated), vacated on other grounds, 969 F.2d 1572 (5th Cir. 1992) (en banc).

We agree that the community caretaking doctrine can apply in situations when, as is arguably the case here, a person outside of a home has been seized for a non-investigatory purpose and to protect that individual or the community at large.12 The undisputed facts show that the actions of Officers Blaszczyk and White were reasonable. They were responding to a volatile situation which they did not initially know involved a medical emergency, and any brief seizure that may have occurred was a result of the officers’ concern for the safety of everyone involved. The officers were sent because of a dispatcher’s report of a 911 call from a “person screaming” (App. at 152-54), which was an apt description. According to Vargas, when the officers pulled up next to Diaz’s car, the occupants of the car began “screaming” at them (App. at 85), but the screaming did not immediately reveal the nature of the emergency. Once the officers realized that Tabitha needed medical attention, it was reasonable for them to direct Vargas to wait because an ambulance was within earshot and its arrival was apparently imminent.