Police had no constitutional duty to protect murder victims. • Iowa Capital Dispatch

According to the complaint, Christopher Prichard was arrested in November 2019 for first-degree theft. Police reportedly agreed to his release on bail and continued the case in 31 cases over the next four years. This persistence, the lawsuit says, “allowed Christopher Prichard to escape from custody and encouraged him to repeatedly harass and assault Angela Marie Prichard.”

The police department’s actions were allegedly influenced by the fact that Christopher Prichard had “a personal relationship with one or more” city police officers and had provided electrical services to the officers for free or at a reduced fee.

Court records indicate that Christopher Prichard was arrested on April 18, 2022 for domestic violence against his estranged wife and a no contact order was issued in that case. A few months later, Angela Prichard allegedly discovered a tracking device in her Jeep as well as two hidden cameras installed in her home – potential violations of Iowa’s anti-stalking and privacy laws.

Angela Prichard notified Bellevue police of the situation and, according to the lawsuit, police refused to “enforce the law.”

The lawsuit sets out the chronology of events

On August 23, 2022, the lawsuit says, Christopher Prichard sent threatening text messages to Angela Prichard in which he stated, “It’s getting pretty damn ugly.” Angela Prichard notified the police, but they did nothing about the matter, says the lawsuit.

On August 28, 2022, the lawsuit says, Christopher Prichard told Angela Prichard that he intended to “destroy” her business, which led to another complaint to city police, but no enforcement action was taken.

On September 1, 2022, a temporary restraining order was issued to protect Angela Prichard from any further contact with her estranged husband. Over the next 13 days, Angela Prichard reported at least nine suspected violations of the order, including one that was documented with text messages, but police took no action, the lawsuit says.

Court records show that on September 15, 2022, Christopher Prichard spent a night in jail for violating the order, then failed to appear at a series of court hearings and then failed to turn himself in to serve a six-day jail sentence. An arrest warrant was then issued for him. The lawsuit alleges that police “flatly refused to enforce the warrant and arrest Christopher Prichard.”

On the morning of October 8, 2022, Christopher Prichard, armed with a shotgun, entered the Mississippi Ridge Kennels where Angela Prichard worked and killed her. He was later convicted of first-degree murder.

In April, Angela Prichard’s family sued the city, seeking damages for due process violations based on state-created danger, violations of state laws enforcing no-contact orders, intentional infliction of emotional distress and loss of consortium.

The city has not yet filed an answer to the lawsuit, but has filed what is known as a “motion to dismiss before answering.” As part of that motion, the city’s attorneys argue that while the Iowa Legislature could have passed a law allowing civil lawsuits over police failure to enforce a no-contact order, it chose not to.

In court filings, the city also expresses “vehement disagreement” with the family’s presentation of the facts, but adds: “Even assuming all of these facts are entirely true, the United States Supreme Court has already found that “The plaintiffs are entitled to due process.” must be dismissed.”

The Colorado case involved the murder of three children

To base their argument, lawyers for the city of Bellevue are citing a highly controversial 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision in a case involving police in Castle Rock, Colorado, in which the justices affirmed the principle that the police have no obligation to protect members of the public.

The Castle Rock ruling arose from a lawsuit arising from a temporary restraining order issued in connection with the divorce proceedings between Jessica and Simon Gonzales. A month after the announcement, the couple’s three girls disappeared from Jessica Gonzales’ home. Jessica Gonzales suspected that Simon Gonzales had taken the children contrary to the judge’s order, filed a police report, and provided evidence in the form of a telephone call in which Simon Gonzales stated that he had taken the children to an amusement park.

Police told Jessica Gonzales to wait and see if the children returned by 10 p.m. Shortly after 10 p.m., Jessica Gonzales notified police that her children were still missing, but she was again told to wait to return, this time until midnight.

She then went to the police station to file a report, but the responding officer allegedly took no action and instead went to dinner. A few hours later, the husband showed up at the police station with a gun and opened fire. He was killed by officers who then found the bodies of the missing children in the back of his truck.

Jessica Gonzales sued the city of Castle Rock, claiming the police department had an official policy or practice of ignoring restraining order violations.

The case was dismissed and Jessica Gonzales argued in her appeal that Colorado law makes enforcement of restraining orders mandatory. The US Supreme Court rejected this claim. Justice Antonin Scalia concluded on behalf of the majority that Jessica Gonzales had no interest in police enforcement of a restraining order that falls under the protection of the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Although Colorado’s injunctions specifically stated that police “shall” make an arrest for violations, Scalia said that “a well-established tradition of police discretion has long accompanied seemingly mandatory arrest laws.”

The decision reflected a 1981 ruling by the court that cited a “fundamental principle of American law” that “a government and its agents do not have a general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to every individual citizen.”

Following the Castle Rock decision, the National Organization for Women complained that the court had “effectively given law enforcement the green light to ignore injunctions.”

City: Court should “focus exclusively on the hours before the murder.”

In the Prichard case, attorneys for the city of Bellevue point out that Iowa courts have also held that law enforcement personnel do not have a “special duty” to protect individuals from harm, but instead have a general duty to the public.

The city argues that the Prichard family is now trying to link Christopher Prichard’s repeated violations of the no-contact order to the subsequent murder of Angela Prichard “to avoid the obvious Castle Rock implications on this case.”

“The court must avoid plaintiffs’ attempts to conflate these events and focus solely on the hours immediately preceding Ms. Prichard’s death,” the city’s attorneys argue, pointing out that there is no evidence that Angela Prichard contacted the police immediately before her death – and therefore there was no evidence “that Mr. Prichard had an immediate plan to murder Ms. Prichard.”

Lawyers for the Prichard family argue that the Castle Rock case differs from the Bellevue case in that Castle Rock police failed to enforce a restraining order after only one alleged violation, there was no allegation of nepotism in that case and there was none An arrest warrant was ignored by Castle Rock police.

The family’s attorneys also argue that the city of Bellevue failed to comply with court-ordered discovery in the case and failed to release documents subject to the disclosure requirements of the Iowa Open Records Law.

“Under no circumstances should the court reward defendants’ violation of court-ordered disclosure by dismissing the lawsuit before the required disclosure,” the family’s attorneys argue.

A hearing in this case is tentatively scheduled for September 15, 2025.