People are responsible for their own recklessness

Police officers should be held to account when they fail to protect and serve through malice or recklessness.
But they shouldn't be dragged through the courts and forced to defend themselves when they do their jobs and something still goes terribly wrong.
For that reason, U.S. District Judge Peter Economus acted correctly in dismissing a lawsuit that sought to hold Austintown Township police responsible for the death of a Salem man who had swallowed cocaine.
The death of Anthony Anzevino, 25, of Western Reserve Road was tragic, as is the death of almost anyone so young. His loss, no doubt, brought great pain to those who loved him.
But seeking revenge against or compensation from the police officers who had Anzevino in their custody shortly before his death is wrong.
Anzevino was in custody as a result of bad choices he made in the early morning hours of March 5, 2002.
Reasonable expectations
That was the day he was pulled over after a car chase. People who lead police on chases can expect to be taken into custody.
When Anzevino was arrested, he was covered in a white power suspected to be cocaine -- he even told officers that it was cocaine. What police did not know was that Anzevino had apparently ingested a potentially fatal amount of the drug.
People who consume cocaine can expect it to have a deleterious effect on them. In this case, Anzevino collapsed in the jail and was taken by paramedics to the hospital, where he died.
The only person that night who had reason to believe that he had swallowed a potentially fatal dose of cocaine was Anzevino. There was no evidence that he shared that information with police.
Nonetheless, Anzevino's parents and widow filed suit seeking $14 million from the arresting officers, the township and the police chief.
Presumably at some point between when the first Austintown police officer switched on his cruiser's lights to pull Anzevino over for an expired license plate and the time at which he was apprehended, Anzevino decided to destroy evidence of drug possession by consuming the drugs.
That fatal error cost Anzevino his life, it brought pain to his family and likely had an unsettling effect on the police officers, EMTs and medical personnel who tried to save his life when it became apparent that he was in danger. The most any of them might owe Anzevino's family is an expression of sympathy.
Certainly none of them should be expected to pay money for Anthony Anzevino's wrong-doing.