Court Says Suit Over 911 Non-Response Can Proceed

In a decision stemming from an East Los Angeles killing, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday that law enforcement agencies must give the same priority to 911 calls involving domestic violence as they do to calls for other emergencies.

The immediate consequence of the decision is that the children of Denise Navarro can take their lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to trial. The suit contends that the department denied their mother equal protection of the law by failing to send officers immediately when Navarro called 911 in August 1989 and told a dispatcher that her estranged husband was on his way to kill her.

But the 3-0 ruling by a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals could have broader ramifications for the emergency response programs run by police agencies, cautioned one of the judges. The 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, has jurisdiction over nine Western states and the Pacific trust territories.

Navarro, who was in the midst of her birthday party, called 911 after getting a warning call from her brother-in-law that her estranged husband was heading to her house to kill her.

In response to her call, a sheriff’s emergency dispatcher told Navarro, who had earlier obtained a restraining order against Raymond Navarro, that law enforcement officers could not be sent immediately and that she should call back if he arrived.

“OK, well, the only thing to do is just call us if he comes over there. . . . I mean what can we do?” said the dispatcher. “We can’t have a unit sit there to wait and see if he comes over.”

Fifteen minutes later, Raymond Navarro arrived. He evaded a concerned friend stationed at the front of the house, having scaled a rear wall, and shot and killed Maria and three other people.

At the time, Sheriff Sherman Block defended the dispatcher, saying that she did not violate department procedures. “We just cannot respond to every threat unless there is a clear and present danger,” Block said. He said that about half of the 50,000 calls to the East Los Angeles Sheriff’s Station each year turn out to be non-emergencies. About a fourth of them are pranks and a fourth are mistakes or temporary crises that do not require police assistance, Block added.

But some advocacy groups criticized Block for his “hard-line” defense of the dispatcher, saying that she could have done more.

In 1990, Navarro’s children, represented by a guardian, sued Los Angeles County, alleging that she had been denied equal protection of the law, among other claims. The case has bounced back and forth between a trial judge and the appeals court since then.

Thursday’s ruling, written by Judge Harry Pregerson of Woodland Hills reversed a decision by U.S. District Judge Robert M. Takasugi, who had dismissed the case after concluding that there was no triable issue of fact.

Takasugi said it was rational of the county to limit emergency response to in-progress calls. He said 911 emergency assistance is provided for individuals who are severely injured and near death and domestic violence “rarely” reaches that level of injury.

But the appeals court took issue with the latter conclusion and said Takasugi had made other errors in his ruling.

“The critical issue,” the appeals court said, “is whether domestic violence crimes result in severe injury or death less frequently than nondomestic violence crimes that are considered 911 emergencies.”

Pregerson said that nothing in the court papers filed on behalf of the Sheriff’s Department “suggests that victims of domestic violence are less likely to suffer severe injury or death than are victims of other 911 emergency crimes.”

Therefore, Pregerson wrote, Takasugi erred by:

* equating domestic violence calls with calls involving “not in progress” incidents;

* concluding nondomestic violence calls should be treated as in-progress emergencies, and

* assuming that domestic violence crimes are less injurious than nondomestic violent crimes.

In a deposition several years ago, the dispatcher testified that it was the department’s practice to not classify domestic violence calls as emergency procedure calls.

Judge Andrew Kleinfeld of Anchorage concurred in the ruling on technical grounds, saying that the plaintiffs were entitled to go forward with their suit.

However, he criticized the sweep of the ruling, saying that it could lead to the conclusion that in many cases, “police departments must provide bodyguards against threats of domestic violence.”

Capt. Doyle Campbell, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman, said department officials had no immediate reaction to the ruling because they “have not had a chance to review it yet.”

But he added, “Our current policies are in compliance with state law, and we dispatch domestic violence calls as crimes in progress calls and we give them the highest priority.”

In recent years, law enforcement agencies, in some instances sensitized by publicity emanating from the Nicole Brown Simpson murder case, have devoted increased resources to domestic violence. Loyola University law professor Laurie Levenson said the Navarro case was in some respects a throwback to an earlier era.

“It’s good for the courts to remind law enforcement of the importance of domestic violence, but there still has to be some discretion about how to allocate fairly limited resources,” Levenson said.