Warren v. District of Columbia[1] (444 A.2d. 1, D.C. Ct. of Ap. 1981) is a U.S. Court of Appeals case in which three rape victims sued the District of Columbia because of negligence on the part of the police. Two of three female roommates were upstairs when they heard men break in and attack the third. They phoned the police, reporting that their house was being burglarized, and waited on the roof. Their call was incorrectly dispatched as less important than it was three minutes after they made the call, and three police cars came to the scene, three minutes after the call was dispatched. One policeman drove by without stopping, and another officer walked up to the door and knocked. Upon receiving no answer, the officers left five minutes after they had arrived. Nine minutes later, the two women called the police again and were assured they would receive assistance. This call was never dispatched and the police never came. Believing that the police had arrived and were in the house, the two women called down to the third who was being attacked. This alerted the intruders to their presence, and they then took them captive at knife-point. They were then raped, robbed, beaten, and forced to submit to the attackers' sexual demands for the next fourteen hours. DC's highest court noted that because the police are only under a general duty to provide services to the public at large, a special relationship must exist between the police and the individual in question for the "duty" element of negligence to be satisfied. It held that no such special relationship existed so the case was properly dismissed by the lower court for failure to state a claim and the case never went to trial.[2]
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In the early morning hours of Sunday, March 16, 1975, Carolyn Warren and Joan Taliaferro who shared a room on the third floor of their rooming house at 1112 Lamont Street Northwest in the District of Columbia, and Miriam Douglas, who shared a room on the second floor with her four-year-old daughter, were asleep. The women were awakened by the sound of the back door being broken down by two men later identified as Marvin Kent and James Morse. The men entered Douglas' second floor room, where Kent forced Douglas to sodomize him and Morse raped her.
Warren and Taliaferro heard Douglas' screams from the floor below. Warren telephoned the police, told the officer on duty that the house was being burglarized, and requested immediate assistance. The department employee told her to remain quiet and assured her that police assistance would be dispatched promptly.
Warren's call was received at Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters at 0623 hours, and was recorded as a burglary-in-progress. At 0626, a call was dispatched to officers on the street as a "Code 2" assignment, although calls of a crime in progress should be given priority and designated as "Code 1." Four police cruisers responded to the broadcast; three to the Lamont Street address and one to another address to investigate a possible suspect. (This suggests that when they heard that there had been a burglary, the police must have felt that they had a promising lead on a culprit.)
Meanwhile, Warren and Taliaferro crawled from their window onto an adjoining roof and waited for the police to arrive. While there, they observed one policeman drive through the alley behind their house and proceed to the front of the residence without stopping, leaning out the window, or getting out of the car to check the back entrance of the house. A second officer apparently knocked on the door in front of the residence, but left when he received no answer. The three officers departed the scene at 0633, five minutes after they arrived.
Warren and Taliaferro crawled back inside their room. They again heard Douglas' continuing screams; again called the police; told the officer that the intruders had entered the home, and requested immediate assistance. Once again, a police officer assured them that help was on the way. This second call was received at 0642 and recorded merely as "investigate the trouble;" it was never dispatched to any police officers.
Believing the police might be in the house, Warren and Taliaferro called down to Douglas, thereby alerting Kent to their presence. At knife point, Kent and Morse then forced all three women to accompany them to Kent's apartment. For the next fourteen hours the captive women were raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon one another, and made to submit to the sexual demands of Kent and Morse.
Appellants' claims of negligence included:
By a 4-3 decision the court decided that Warren was not entitled to remedy at the bar despite the demonstrable abuse and ineptitude on the part of the police because no special relationship existed. The court stated that official police personnel and the government employing them owe no duty to victims of criminal acts and thus are not liable for a failure to provide adequate police protection unless a special relationship exists.