attention online<\/a>.<\/p>\nLuci\u2019s lawsuit alleges that the NYPD’s inaction that night violated her constitutional rights in a variety of ways, including encouraging the attacks by not quelling the scene.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s response<\/p>\n
Attorneys for the city said in their legal papers that the police can\u2019t violate someone’s constitutional rights by failing to protect them.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlaintiff does nothing more than state that she was attacked by protestors and that the officers did not stop them,\u201d their papers say, adding that\u2019s not grounds to sue and the lawsuit should be dismissed.<\/p>\n
Attorneys for the city used an example of a lawsuit brought by a man who had helped police in a sting against a suspected Queens drug dealer. When the dealer later slashed the man in the face with a box cutter, the city argued that the police had no obligation to protect him. An appeals court sided with the city in that case, finding that even though the man was attacked after participating in the sting, the police were not responsible for putting him in danger.<\/p>\n
No right to be protected<\/p>\n
In general, the Constitution doesn\u2019t require public employees to protect people, and that includes the police, several legal experts said.<\/p>\n
Though that may seem surprising, Alex Reinert, a legal scholar and professor at Cardozo Law School, said it\u2019s because in general the Constitution does not create what he called affirmative rights for people.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of what the Constitution does is create rights to be free of certain conduct by the state,\u201d he said. \u201cIn general, we don’t have a right to be protected by the state from assault by private individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Reinert and other legal scholars said there are exceptions to that \u2014 and how the police acted during the group\u2019s attack on Luci may be one.<\/p>\n
Leah Litman, a law professor at the University of Michigan, said persuading a judge that police failed to protect Luci because they thought she was a pro-Palestinian protester could be key.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if you have no free-standing obligation to protect everyone, you can\u2019t decide who you protect and who you don\u2019t on the basis of race, religion and freedom of speech,\u201d Litman said. \u201cThat\u2019s just right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reinert added that there is a good argument for the lawsuit not to be dismissed until the city is required to provide information about what happened that night.<\/p>\n
He said if there is evidence to show that the NYPD’s actions created a situation that increased the risk to Luci, it could be a good argument for the lawsuit to move forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some facts we need to know about what was happening on the ground and any actions the officers may have taken that might have increased the danger to the plaintiff here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Luci\u2019s attorney, Leo Glickman, said he is confident the lawsuit will survive the city\u2019s efforts to have it dismissed.<\/p>\n
“We look forward to litigating this issue before Judge [Frederic] Block and are confident that the case will survive this motion,” Glickman said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NYPD is not constitutionally required to help a person being attacked by an angry mob, lawyers for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-174780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}