Supreme Court sides with police in confrontations with mentally disabled

Richard Wolf | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Monday that police cannot be sued for using force against people with mental disabilities when their constitutional right to privacy is not clear.

The 6-2 ruling exonerated two San Francisco police officers who broke into the room of a mentally disabled woman and shot her after she threatened them with a knife.

It was a victory for the city/county police force, and more broadly for law enforcement officers nationwide who regularly must decide whether to use force against people exhibiting erratic behavior.

Justice Samuel Alito, who frequently sides with law enforcement, said the actions of two police officers to subdue the woman did not violate her constitutional rights.

"Considering the specific situation confronting (the officers), they had sufficient reason to believe that their conduct was justified," Alito said.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Elena Kagan said the court should not have decided the case because San Francisco did not argue the principal point it made when it asked the court to take the case last fall -- that the Americans with Disabilities Act did not require officers to accommodate Teresa Sheehan's schizophrenic behavior.

They would have left intact a federal appeals court decision against the city and county, forcing San Francisco to take its case to a jury. Instead, the majority's decision takes the two officers off the hook.

Justice Stephen Breyer recused himself from the case, most likely because his brother, Charles, was the federal district court judge who originally heard the case and dismissed Sheehan's claim.

At the time of the confrontation, Sheehan lived in a community-based group home. Her social worker asked police to help detain her for further evaluation at a hospital after she threatened him with a knife. In forcibly arresting her, the two police officers shot and wounded Sheehan rather than taking more time to try to talk her into complying.

"Police officers regularly encounter, and often detain, mentally ill individuals," the city's brief said. It cited a study that showed in medium- and large-sized police departments, 7% of all contacts with the public involved people with mental illnesses.

"When mental illness manifests in unpredictable, violent behavior as it did in this case, officers must make split-second decisions that protect the public and themselves from harm," the city said.

Lawyers for Sheehan argued that police "failed to reasonably accommodate her disability when they forced their way back into her room without taking her mental illness into account and without employing tactics that would have been likely to resolve the situation without injury to her or others."