The Enduring Impact of Canton v. Harris on Police Training
/The Enduring Impact of Canton v. Harris on Police Training
By: Dr. Rich Rosell, Police Chief (Ret.)
Introduction
Since the initiation of the misguided fantasy associated with the “Defund the Police” movement, police departments have been forced to do more with significantly less human assets. Very slowly, some municipalities have realized how catastrophic staffing reductions have impacted public safety and stopped looking at salaries and benefit cuts to defund their agencies.
Unfortunately, some municipalities have shifted their foolhardy defunding efforts toward training budgets to make gratuitous budget cuts to appease their constituency. Those who have taken this path do so at their peril.
The landmark Supreme Court case of Canton v. Harris thirty-six years ago established a stringent standard of deliberate indifference, fundamentally altering a municipality's legal obligation to adequately train its police officers and holding them accountable for failures to train in core, foreseeable tasks.
The Case of Canton v. Harris
In Canton v. Harris, Geraldine Harris was arrested by Canton, Ohio police and, while in custody, exhibited incoherent behavior and slumped to the floor twice. The police did not summon medical assistance, and she was later diagnosed with emotional ailments after being taken to a hospital by her family. Harris sued the city, claiming the police department's inadequate training led to the denial of necessary medical care.
The legal question the Supreme Court was asked to decide was “could a municipality be held liable for failing to train its police force?” The Supreme Court's holding was "yes" but under a very specific condition, granting certiorari to determine whether a municipality could be held liable for inadequate training under § 1983 when it resulted in a constitutional violation. That condition (standard) is called deliberate indifference.
The Deliberate Indifference Standard
The Supreme Court defines deliberate indifference in the context of failure to train police officers as a conscious disregard for a known or obvious risk of harm to others, when that risk is a highly predictable consequence of inadequate training. It's more than negligence; it requires proof that policymakers were aware of a pattern of constitutional violations or that the need for specific training in core tasks was obvious and they failed to address it. That failure to train must be so obvious and likely to result in the violation of constitutional rights that the policymakers can be said to have been deliberately indifferent to the need.
What are Core Police Tasks?
Core tasks are best described as those tasks which are "core" or "foreseeable" and essential to an officer's duties. Examples of these core tasks in which failure to train could be presented as examples of deliberate indifference in civil litigation include routine police patrol, investigating motor vehicle crashes, directing traffic, conducting motor vehicle stops, conducting criminal investigations, medical aid (the original basis of the Canton case), use of force (encompassing a wide spectrum of subtasks), handling mentally ill individuals, ADA application during arrest situations and vehicular pursuits, to name a few.
Burden of Proof
Fortunately, proving deliberate indifference is not a slam dunk for the plaintiffs. Some attorneys consider these cases difficult to win, though not impossible. Further, Harris differs from holding a municipality liable for the actions of a single, poorly trained officer, rather it looks for systemic departmental failure at the hands of administrators. These systemic departmental failures can occur when municipality defunds requisite training in core tasks.
Mitigation
As with almost all aspects of police administration, an agency lives and dies on the relevance and actionability of its policies and procedures. Promulgating strong policies and procedures which clearly establish those core, foreseeable tasks of your department is a good starting point, but it cannot end there. An agency must still make certain it seeks credible sources and delivery methods to train its officers in the core, foreseeable tasks delineated in those policies. A sad but true reality is that some agencies’ training budgets are so bleak that they only train on the state-mandated tasks, often provided for free, which sometimes are nothing more than PowerPoint presentations with little or no performance measurement. Training must be comprehensive, thorough, and credible to protect against accusations of deliberate indifference. Further, such check-the-box training does nothing to help the practitioner transition to expert.
Conclusion
The central argument that Canton v. Harris created is a relevant and crucial, though high, legal standard for municipal liability in police training. High as it may be, those of us who have been tasked with assisting with the defense of civil litigation understand that if there is an opening, most plaintiffs’ attorneys will find it and try to force their way through it. It is best to make every possible effort to take away their ability to exploit that opening by making certain that reductions in police budgets do not affect training.
Dr. Rich Rosell is a retired Police Chief from the Town of Indian River Shores, Florida. He is the former Director of Public Safety for the Town of Dover, New Jersey and the Township of Springfield, New Jersey. He retired from the New Jersey State Police at the rank of Captain. He is currently the co-owner and co-publisher of a Professional Investigator publication and the owner of Expert Opinion Consulting, Training, Investigations, and Security, and is a retired veteran of the US Marine Corps and US Army.
