Ridgefield

Defendant Noel Shields appeals the district court’s ruling that he is not entitled to summary judgment against Plaintiff Kimberly Kennedy’s 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim. He argues that his alleged conduct did not violate Plaintiffs clearly established constitutional rights. We disagree, and conclude the district court correctly determined that Shields is not entitled to qualified immunity. Accordingly, we affirm the decision below.

I. Introduction

. Kimberly Kennedy’s § 1983 action against Ridgefield City and Ridgefield Police Officer Noel Shields stems from events occurring on September 24, 1998, when a thirteen year-old neighbor, Michael Burns, shot and killed her husband Jay Kennedy and severely wounded her. .

On September 6, 1998, Kennedy called the Ridgefield Police Department (“RPD”) and alleged that Michael Burns had molested Kennedy’s nine-year-old daughter, Tera Teufel. RPD Officer Shields responded to the call.

Kennedy claims to have warned Shields of Michael Burns’s violent tendencies at the September 6 meeting. Kennedy insists that during their initial meeting, she told Shields that the Burns family was unstable and that she had seen a lot of violence in their home. She…

concurring in part and dissenting in part:

I vigorously part company with the majority’s conclusion that Shields created the danger Kennedy faced and then acted with deliberate indifference, thereby violating her rights under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The majority’s conclusion' is unsupported by the record and our own case law. The majority concludes that in the fifteen minutes between the time Officer Shields contacted Angela Burns and the time he advised Kim Kennedy of the contact, he deprived Kennedy of her due process rights. In so doing, the majority not only mangles the state-created danger doctrine, it holds that its new rule was so clearly established that Officer Shields should have known he was violating the Constitution and, thus, has forfeited his qualified immunity.

We have never before recognized a state-created danger cause of action on facts remotely analogous to these. In the sixteen years since we invented the state-created danger exception to DeShaney, we have approved it on fewer than five occasions. In these cases we have narrowly construed the exception to encompass only claims in which the government’s act was directed toward a…

I. Introduction

Kimberly Kennedy’s § 1983 action against Ridgefield City and Ridgefield Police Officer Noel Shields stems from events occurring on September 24, 1998, when a thirteen year-old neighbor, Michael Burns, shot and killed her husband Jay Kennedy and severely wounded her.

On September 6, 1998, Kennedy called the Ridgefield Police Department (“RPD”) and alleged that Michael Burns 7476 KENNEDY v. RIDGEFIELD had molested Kennedy’s nine-year-old daughter, Tera Teufel. RPD Officer Shields responded to the call.

Kennedy claims to have warned Shields of Michael Burns’s violent tendencies at the September 6 meeting. Kennedy insists that during their initial meeting, she told Shields that the Burns family was unstable and that she had seen a lot of violence in their home. She alleges that she went on to describe several violent incidents involving Angela Burns, Michael’s mother. Kennedy also claims she informed Shields that Michael Burns had been involved in a number of violent incidents, including fights at school, lighting a cat on fire, breaking into his girlfriend’s house and attacking her with a baseball bat, and throwing rocks at a building in downtown…