S.L. Ex Rel. Lenderman v. St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Board of Police Commissioners

725 F.3d 843, 2013 WL 3970217, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 16101
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedAugust 5, 2013
Docket12-3193
StatusPublished
Cited by33 cases

This text of 725 F.3d 843 (S.L. Ex Rel. Lenderman v. St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Board of Police Commissioners) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
S.L. Ex Rel. Lenderman v. St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Board of Police Commissioners, 725 F.3d 843, 2013 WL 3970217, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 16101 (8th Cir. 2013).

Opinions

MURPHY, Circuit Judge.

S.L. brought this 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action against several St. Louis police officers for arresting her on false charges and conspiring to hide it. She also brought municipal liability claims for deliberate indifference and inadequate supervision. The district court1 denied qualified immunity to the officers responsible for the false arrest and to Lieutenant Colonel Reggie Harris and Sergeant Lathan IsshawnO’Quinn for involvement in covering up the arrest. It also denied summary judgment to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Board of Police Commissioners (“Board”) on S.L.’s municipal liability claims. Isshawn-O’Quinn, Harris, and the municipal defendants appeal. We affirm the denial of qualified immunity to the two officers and dismiss the Board’s appeal for lack of jurisdiction.

I.

Officer Susie Lorthridge and Lieutenant Henrietta Arnold were St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD) officers assigned to the eighth district. During the July 3, 2010 workday Officer Lorthridge drove Lieutenant Arnold home to pick up some medication. There, Arnold was surprised to discover her son’s girlfriend, S.L., in his bedroom. She ordered S.L. out of the house and warned her, “[I]f somebody doesn’t come and get you in five minutes, then I’m going to call your parents. And if they don’t answer, then I’m going to take you to jail.”

When S.L. was unable to find a ride home, Officer Lorthridge suggested to Lieutenant Arnold that they arrest her. Arnold initially expressed some concern, but Lorthridge assured her that an arrest would be lawful because S.L. had been trespassing. Lorthridge then handcuffed S.L., and the two officers took her to the police station. S.L. testified that during the ride to the station, Arnold called her a “white bitch” and stated she would like to “slit [S.L.’s] throat.” S.L. also heard Arnold make a call on her cell phone, reporting that she and Lorthridge had “a problem, but when we get there, we’ll talk to you about it.” It seemed to S.L. that Arnold was talking to a superior officer. Since Lieutenant Arnold was the highest ranking officer in her own district at that time, S.L. later concluded that the call must have been made to Lieutenant Colonel Reggie Harris, the head of SLMPD’s internal affairs unit.

[846]*846At the police station S.L. was given a “city court summons” ordering her to appear in court on trespassing charges on September 1, 2012. She was then placed in a holding cell for about an hour. When an officer visited the cell to inquire why S.L. was there, S.L. told her, “I was just seeing my boyfriend, ... [Lieutenant Arnold’s] son, and she arrested me for trespassing.” According to S.L. the officer replied, “Are you serious?” and shook her head. Another officer later removed S.L. from the cell and took her to a second police station. There, S.L. was placed in a cell “with about six or seven other girls” for “about four or five hours” before an officer informed her that she was free to leave. S.L. then told that officer about her arrest and stated that she “really d[id]n’t believe that [she] did anything wrong.” She asked for his advice, and the officer told her that she should raise her concerns at her scheduled court hearing. No information was given to S.L. about the right to counsel or how she might contact a lawyer.

SLMPD procedures require an arresting officer to submit an incident report within 48 hours of making an arrest. S.L. was arrested on July 3, and Lorthridge submitted her first report about the arrest the next day. It was rejected without comment by an eighth district sergeant. On July 5 a new sergeant, IsshawnO’Quinn, was assigned to the eighth district. Lorthridge gave him a second draft of the arrest report that morning and told him that it “need[ed] to be looked at.”

Isshawn-O’Quinn rejected Lorthridge’s second report based on several deficiencies. He pointed out that among other things the report had been submitted in the wrong name, did not identify the district in which the arrest had occurred, and failed to include the information that an “assisting officer” had been present during the arrest. Lorthridge then produced two more draft reports for consideration by Isshawn-O’Quinn, both of which he rejected. In the fourth draft Lorthridge named Arnold for the first time as an officer assisting in the arrest. Isshawn-O’Quinn advised Lorthridge to remove Arnold’s name because she had been on limited administrative duty at the time of the arrest and therefore lacked authority to participate in S.L.’s arrest.2 He explained to Lorthridge, “That puts the department in a bad situation if she’s out there taking police actions. I just couldn’t do that.” Isshawn-O’Quinn also informed Lorthridge that he could not approve the report without a named witness to the arrest. He instructed her to look in the SLMPD computer system for a name and to “be creative.”

Lorthridge submitted a fifth draft of the arrest report on July 6. It omitted any assisting officer and included false statements about the fabricated offense. S.L.’s trespass was set in a new location and an eyewitness was included. The report indicated that S.L. had been arrested for “trespassing on private property” after she was found “walking in the area ... appearing] to be extremely unke[m]pt, as she was not wearing shoes and her hair was scattered about her head.” According to this draft of the report, the victim of the trespass was Riverway Development, LLC, which was said to have previously asked S.L. “repeatedly ... not to trespass on [its] property.” Riverway Development had actually owned a vacant lot adjacent to Arnold’s property, but it was no longer in operation there at the time of S.L.’s arrest.

The arrest report also named an intersection within the St. Louis city limits as [847]*847the location of the arrest, while Arnold’s property where it had actually occurred was just beyond the city limits and outside of SLMPD jurisdiction. Finally, the report inserted the name of Richard Delaney, termed a Riverway Development employee, as a witness to the trespass. Delaney was an Indiana resident whose name had been found in the police department’s computer system after IsshawnO’Quinn suggested that Lorthridge “be creative” in finding one there. Delaney’s name was in the computer system because he had been involved in a minor car accident in St. Louis in 2007. He had never returned to Missouri after that and had never been employed by Riverway Development which no longer operated at the site of the imaginary trespass. One half hour after Lorthridge submitted the fifth arrest report, Isshawn-O’Quinn reviewed it and gave it his approval.

Shortly thereafter, Captain William Swiderski of the eighth district heard “a rumor floating around the patrol station” that Arnold had arrested her son’s girlfriend for trespassing. He reviewed the fifth draft of Lorthridge’s incident report and noticed that it did not mention Arnold’s involvement. The captain also found it problematic that the police report charged S.L. with trespass for being on a public intersection. After consulting with others in the department, he filed an employee misconduct report and commenced an internal affairs investigation. Arnold, Lorthridge, and S.L. were interviewed between August and October of 2010.

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Bluebook (online)
725 F.3d 843, 2013 WL 3970217, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 16101, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/sl-ex-rel-lenderman-v-st-louis-metropolitan-police-department-board-of-ca8-2013.