Whitney Hodges v. City of Grand Rapids, Mich.Whitney Hodges v. City of Grand Rapids, Mich.
Case Information
*1 Before: SUHRHEINRICH, MOORE, and NALBANDIAN, Circuit Judges. _________________
COUNSEL ON BRIEF: Elizabeth J. Fossel, Sarah J. Hartman, Megan Luptowski, CITY OF GRAND RAPIDS, Grand Rapids, Michigan, for Appellants. Stephen R. Drew, Adam C. Sturdivant, DREW COOPER & ANDING, Grand Rapids, Michigan, for Appellee.
_________________
OPINION
_________________
KAREN NELSON MOORE, Circuit Judge. In this suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, defendant police officers appeal from the district court’s partial denial of their motion to dismiss on qualified-immunity grounds. Because the complaint adequately states a claim for relief we AFFIRM the district court’s order, and, to the extent the officers ask us to resolve disputed issues of fact, we DISMISS their appeal for lack of jurisdiction.
I. BACKGROUND
In this suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, plaintiff-appellee Whitney Hodges (“Hodges” or “Whitney”) represents the estate of her late daughter, Honestie Hodges (“Honestie”). [1] Hodges alleges that on December 6, 2017, she watched then eleven-year-old Honestie “walk[] out of her back door with an adult family friend, Aisha Rose, to go to a neighborhood store” when Grand Rapids Police Department (“GRPD”) officers “abruptly and unexpectedly advanced on Honestie with guns drawn.” R. 1 (Compl. ¶¶ 47, 49, 50) (Page ID #7). “[T]here were at least three to four squad cars present with several officers surrounding the Hodges’ home.” Id. ¶ 69 (Page ID #9). Defendant Spencer Sellner, with his gun drawn, “yelled commands at Honestie to approach him by walking backward with her hands raised,” despite Whitney’s and Aisha’s [2] protestations. Id. ¶¶ 52, 54–56 (Page ID #7–8). Honestie complied, at which point defendant Anthony Barberino “commanded Honestie to put her right hand behind her back,” which she did. Id. ¶¶ 57–59 (Page ID #8). “Defendant Barbarino [sic] pulled out his handcuffs and handcuffed Honestie’s hands behind her back” as she “crie[d] and scream[ed]” in “fear, panic, and distress.” Id. ¶¶ 60–62 (Page ID #8). Barberino walked Honestie toward defendant Jeffrey Dionne while officer Jake Bloom (who is not a party to this case) handcuffed Aisha, although Aisha “informed the officers that [neither] she, nor anyone at the Hodges residence, had done anything wrong.” ¶¶ 40, 63, 65 (Page ID #6, 8). Honestie, still handcuffed, was “put in the custody” of defendant Dionne, who walked her to a nearby police car and searched her for weapons as she cried but continued to comply with Dionne’s commands and answer his questions. Id. ¶¶ 70–72, 74 (Page ID #9). At the instruction of Sergeant Thomas Bush (also not a party), Dionne removed Honestie’s handcuffs and left her sitting in the police car with the door closed as she continued to cry. Id. ¶¶ 39, 75–77 (Page ID #6, 9).
The complaint alleges that “GRPD was looking for an adult Caucasian woman who had allegedly stabbed аnother individual at a different location,” and had been “described as wearing her hair in a ponytail bun and wearing a black coat.” Id. ¶¶ 78–79 (Page ID #9). Honestie was “African American and was an 11-year-old child at the time of the incident,” whose “hair was not in a ponytail bun” and who “did not match the description of GRPD’s suspect.” Id. ¶¶ 80–82 (Page ID #9). “Neither Honestie, [Aisha], nor Whitney Hodges made any movements to signal that they were fleeing the police, attempting to evade the officers on the scene, or were an immediate threat to anyone.” Id. ¶ 67 (Page ID #8). “Honestie was not armed, believed to be armed, nor did she pose any immediate threat or danger to anyone,” and she “did not make any movements that caused a threat to any of the GRPD officers on scene.” Id. ¶¶ 122–23 (Page ID #15). “The officer[s] eventually cleared the house and the scene. The suspect they were looking for was not at that location.” Id. ¶ 84 (Page ID #10).
Hodges alleges that by “seiz[ing] and detain[ing] Honestie at gunpoint . . . with the use of handcuffs, and by placing her in a police car, in the absence of probable cause or reasonable suspicion that she had committed any crime,” Sellner, Barberino, and Dionne “violated Honestie’s clearly established right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.” Id. ¶¶ 114–15 (Page ID #14). According to the complaint, when Sellner pointed his gun at Honestie and when Barberino handcuffed her, they used excessive force. ¶¶ 132–46 (Page ID #16–17). The complaint also alleges that when, after Barberino handcuffed Honestie, Dionne put her in the police cruiser, Dionne and Barberino falsely imprisoned her, id. ¶¶ 118–26 (Page ID #15), all in violation of Honestie’s Fourth Amendment rights, id. ; id. ¶¶ 132–46 (Page ID #15–17).
II. ANALYSIS
A. Standard of Review
We review de novo a district court’s denial of a motion to dismiss on qualified-immunity
grounds.
Marvaso v. Sanchez
,
Qualified immunity protects public officials from suit unless “(1) . . . the official violated
a statutory or constitutional right, and (2) . . . the right was ‘clearly established’ at the time of the
challenged conduct.”
Ashcroft v. al-Kidd
, 563 U.S. 731, 735 (2011) (quoting
Harlow v.
Fitzgerald
, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982)). “A Government official’s conduct violates clearly
established law when, at the time of the challenged conduct, ‘[t]he contours of [a] right [are]
sufficiently clear’ that every ‘reasonable official would [have understood] that what he is doing
violates that right.’”
Id.
at 741(alterations in
al-Kidd
) (quoting
Anderson v. Creighton
, 483 U.S.
635, 640 (1987)). “We do not require a case directly on point, but existing precedent must have
placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.”
Id.
The plaintiff ultimately bears
the burden to show that the defendant public official is not entitled to qualified immunity,
Guertin v. Michigan
,
Because qualified immunity is a defense to suit rather than liability, the Supreme Court
has “stressed the importance of resolving immunity questions at the earliest possible stage in
litigation.”
Guertin
,
The initial motion-to-dismiss question—whether a complaint pleads facts that, when presumed true, give rise to a plausible inference that the defendants violated a constitutional right—is fairly straightforward. And at summary judgment and trial the defendants will have an opportunity to demonstrate that the facts are not as the plaintiff pleaded them. But “analyzing the second prong of qualified immunity—whether the alleged constitutional violation is clearly established—‘is sometimes difficult’ on the pleadings, since that ‘inquiry may turn on case- specific details that must be fleshed out in discovery.’” Myers v. City of Centerville , 41 F.4th 746, 758 (6th Cir. 2022) (quoting Crawford v. Tilley , 15 F.4th 752, 765 (6th Cir. 2021)). “‘Absent any factual development beyond the allegations in a complaint, a court cannot fairly tell whether a case is obvious or squarely governed by precedent, which prevents us from determining whether the facts of this case parallel a prior decision or not’ for purposes of determining whether a right is clearly established.” Guertin , 912 F.3d at 917 (quoting Evans- Marshall v. Bd. of Educ. of Tipp City Exempted Vill. Sch. Dist. , 428 F.3d 223, 235 (6th Cir. 2005) (Sutton, J., concurring)).
Indeed, “the application of qualified immunity today can turn on minute factual
distinctions,”
Crawford
, 15 F.4th at 765, particularly in light of Supreme Court precedent
holding that, “in performing Fourth Amendment qualified immunity analysis, we must confine
ourselves to ‘the situation [the officer] confronted,’ [and] carefully consider[] the ‘particular
factual context[]’ at issue.”
Hart v. Hillsdale County
,
As we will explain, the complaint here does not establish the defense of qualified immunity because Hodges has alleged facts making plausible the inference that the officers violated Honestie’s clearly established Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, false imprisonment оr arrest, and excessive force.
B. Scope of the Record
The officers seek to avoid this conclusion by imploring us to consider substantial
evidence outside the complaint, which they say tells a more complete story of the events of
December 6, 2017 and demonstrates why they did not violate Honestie’s clearly established
rights.
See
Appellants Br. at 12–14, 27–32; Reply Br. at 3. Although at the pleading stage we
are generally limited to the facts alleged in the complaint (which we must construe in favor the
plaintiff),
Blackwell v. Nocerini
,
It may be true, as the officers imply, that the video and police reports tell a more
complete story of what happened on the night in question, but at this stage, we do not require a
complete story; we require a
plausible
one.
Marvaso
,
A few words about jurisdiction before we begin: “[a]lthough most denials of motions to
dismiss are non-final orders that do not fall within Congress’s statutory grant of appellate
jurisdiction, . . . [p]ursuant to the collateral-order doctrine, ‘a district court’s order rejecting
qualified immunity at the motion-to-dismiss stage of a proceeding is a final decision within the
meaning of § 1291,’” conferring appellate jurisdiction over appeals from such an order.
Courtright v. City of Battle Creek
,
The normal motion-to-dismiss standard mirrors the scope of our appellate jurisdiction in
appeals from the denial of qualified immunity.
Id.
On a motion to dismiss, our inquiry is
premised on the purely legal question of whether the facts alleged, taken in the light most
favorable to the plaintiff, state a claim for relief.
See Marvaso
,
1. Body-Worn-Camera Footage
In the motion-to-dismiss context, “we have consistently held that we may only consider
. . . video footage over the pleadings when ‘the videos are clear and blatantly contradict[] or
utterly discredit[] the plaintiff’s version of events.’”
Saalim v. Walmart, Inc.
,
We must therefore determine whether the officers’ proffered video evidence blatаntly contradicts or utterly discredits Hodges’s allegations that officers lacked probable cause or reasonable suspicion to detain or arrest Honestie and that they did so using excessive force. Although the complaint does not reflect what, precisely, led officers to believe a stabbing suspect might have fled to Honestie’s address, the parties agree that officers were indeed searching for a stabbing suspect and that Honestie did not match the suspect’s description. Appellants Br. at 4; Reply Br. at 20; R. 1 (Compl. ¶¶ 2–3, 78–82) (Page ID #2, 9).
The officers rely on our decision in
Bell v. City of Southfield
to contend that “[w]here a
Plaintiff omits from her pleadings facts that are material to this Court’s qualified-immunity
analysis, and those facts are revealed by the video footage, the Court may treat the video as
blatantly contradicting the complaint’s omission.” Reply Br. at 6. In
Bell
, we posed “a
hypothetical where there are only two facts relevant to the outcome of an appeal from the denial
of qualified immunity: first, whether the officer tased the plaintiff, and second, whether the
plaintiff was holding a gun at the time.”
Even accepting Bell ’s premise that we could permissibly use a conclusive video to fill holes in a complaint, the instant case is like the second of Bell ’s hypotheses, where the video is inconclusive as to whether the hypothetical plaintiff was holding a gun. The officers insist that the video here contradicts the complaint because they assert that “the video makes clear that the officers went to the Hodges’s [sic] specific address because they had information that a suspect in a stabbing was at that house or might be coming to that house,” Reply Br. at 4, a fact they argue that the complaint omits, id. at 7–8; Appellants Br. at 13–14. But the video does not in fact show why police went to Honestie’s house. The officers cite portions of the video where officers state to Whitney and Aisha that they have information that a suspect might be at the address, but the officers do not point to a portion of the video that would reveal what that information was. Appellants Br. at 28 (citing R. 14-4 (Bush Body Cam. at 9:49–10:15), R. 14-6 (Bloom Body Cam. at 12:20–12:25)); Reply Br. at 4 (same). An officer’s mere statement that they have reason to believe a crime has occurred does not, without more, establish what “particularized and objective basis” the officers actually had “for suspecting that criminal activity might be ‘afoot’ and that it might involve” Honestie’s home. Reply Br. at 13–14. Again, the complaint already acknowledges that police were looking for the stabbing suspect; it just does not say why . The video does not fill this gap.
The officers continue that “Plaintiff attempts to controvert . . . whether the scene in which
the Officers’ [sic] interacted with Honestie was ‘dangerous.’”
Id.
at 5 (quoting Appellee Br. at
30).
[4]
The complaint contains no allegations about the safety or danger of the physical scene that
could be directly contradicted by the video, even if danger were apparent from the face of the
video. The officers argue that the complaint’s omission of details about the dark, confined space
in which the events unfolded is analogous to
Bell
’s hypothetical complaint that omits mention of
the plaintiff holding a gun at the time of a tasing.
Id.
at 5–8. But, whether the scene was
sufficiently dangerous to merit the officers’ treatment of Honestie is a question of fact over
which we lack jurisdiction.
See Adams
,
Even if the video showed what the officers say it does, it is not clear that the complaint’s mere omission—of the information that police officers had received reports that the stabbing suspect might flee to Honestie’s address or of а physical description of the scene—can meet the directly-contradicts-or-utterly-discredits threshold. The complaint’s failure to explain what information led the police to Honestie’s home must be read in concert with its allegations that the police lacked “probable cause or reasonable suspicion that Honestie was committing or had committed a crime.” R. 1 (Compl. ¶ 8) (Page ID #2). The complaint’s key contention is that, whatever reason officers had to detain Honestie that day, it was not enough. Indeed, although Bell interpreted the complaint there as omitting the plaintiff’s continued resistance from the complaint’s allegation of excessive force, the plaintiff’s allegation that officers had “no need to” tase him was also an affirmative, if implicit, allegation that the plaintiff was not resisting. 37 F.4th at 367. And in Bell , the video directly and obviously contradicted the plaintiff’s allegation because it “clearly show[ed]” the plaintiff resisting, giving officers reason to tase him and contradicting the complaint. Id. But here, the video does not, at the motion-to-dismiss stage, resolve the context-sрecific question of whether officers had probable cause or reasonable suspicion the way a video might resolve whether a suspect had a gun in their hand or was resisting arrest.
Even if it did, acceptance of the appellants’ invitation to consider the video over the
complaint would threaten our jurisdiction.
See Adams
, 946 F.3d at 948. That is because a
dispute about whether officers had probable cause or reasonable suspicion under the
circumstances is necessarily fact bound and would require us to answer factual questions about
what circumstances actually existed.
See Hart
,
Similarly, details about the dark and confined nature of the scene may well be relevant to
determining whether officers had cause to detain Honestie, but they are relevant to the
merits
of
Hodges’s claims. A dispute about whether the scene was dangerous enough to justify the
detention of an eleven-year-old girl is the type of quintessential fact issue resolved by a jury or at
summary judgment in qualified-immunity cases. Our law provides that the probable cause and
reasonable suspicion inquiries are “confine[d] . . . to ‘the situation [the оfficer] confronted,’” and
that we must “carefully consider[] the ‘particular factual context[]’ at issue.”
Id.
(alterations in
Hart
) (quoting
Wesby
,
In qualified-immunity cases, a plaintiff will often argue that the circumstances did not create probable cause, reasonable suspicion, or threat to an officer, and defendants will often disagree. Plaintiffs are not, as the officers’ arguments imply, required to allege every fact that a court might glean from available video evidence in order to survive a motion to dismiss. So long as their allegations are not blatantly contradicted or utterly undermined by video evidence, Saalim , 97 F.4th at 1002, the plaintiff need only allege facts that give rise to the plausible inference that the defendants violated a clearly established right, Courtright , 839 F.3d at 518. The officers cannot escape this fundamental rule by arguing that the video shows a more complete picture of the events than the complaint; that is an argument for summary judgment or for trial. As discussed above, we see nothing in the video that blatantly contradicts or utterly undermines Hodges’s allegation that the officers lacked probable cause or reasonable suspicion. And the officers will have an opportunity to contest that allegation on the merits using whatever admissible evidence they wish to present, just not at the motion-to-dismiss stage.
The district court initially relied on
Bell
’s statement that, “when uncontroverted video
evidence easily resolves a case . . . it makes little sense to waste time and effort by ignoring the
videos’ contents,”
2. Police Reports
The officers contend that the district court erred by refusing to consider two documents
which they attached to their motion to dismiss. They argue on appeal that we should consider a
Computer Automated Dispatch (“CAD”) Event Report and an Incident Report (together, “the
reports”), which purpоrt to summarize the events that led police to Honestie’s house that day, as
well as the events that came after.
See
R. 14-1 (CAD Rep.) (Page ID #115); R. 14-3 (Incident
Rep.) (Page ID #121). The district court declined to take the reports into account on the grounds
that it was “not obligated to consider evidence that is ‘subject to reasonable dispute’ or that
‘captures only part of the incident and would provide a distorted view of the events at issue[.]’”
Hodges
, 2024 WL 3040882, at *3 (alteration in
Hodges
) (quoting
Jones v. City of Cincinnati
,
“When a party moves to dismiss an action under Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim
upon which relief can be granted, both sides proceed with the expectation that the court will
decide the motion on the basis of the pleadings alone unless the court notifies them otherwise.”
Chun Ok Song v. City of Elyria
,
An animating concern behind Rule 12(d) is that, where the court considers extraneous
material (even public records) on a motion to dismiss, “there is no way for an opposing party,
prior to the issuance of the court’s decision, to register his or her disagreement with the facts in
the document of which the court was taking notice.”
Passa v. City of Columbus
, 123 F. App’x
694, 697 (6th Cir. 2005). To put a finer point on it, there is no way for the opposing party to
develop and present evidence to support their disagreement with the facts presented in the extra-
complaint material. For this reason, and as the district court correctly noted,
Hodges
, 2024 WL
3040882, at *3, “[w]here the evidence ‘captures only part of the incident and would provide a
distorted view of the events at issue,’ . . . we do not require a court to consider that evidence on a
12(b)(6) motion,”
Jones
,
The officers’ proffered reports illustrate the problem. The Incident Report contains over
a dozen officers’ narrative accounts of the events of December 6. R. 14-3 (Incident Rep. at 5–
11) (Page ID #124–30). If this case were before us at the summary-judgment stage, Hodges
would have had the opportunity to depose these officers about the accuracy of their statements
and could dispute the version of events presented in the Incident Report. Likewise, the CAD
Report contains what appear to be logs of real-time communications between dispatchers and
officers. R. 14-1 (CAD Rep. at 2–5) (Page ID #115–18). At the summary-judgment stage,
Hodges would have had the opportunity to develop evidence about what was happening in the
background of these in-the-moment communications and whether that information was
accurately relayed to the officers on the scene. But at the motion-to-dismiss stage, Hodges has
had no such opportunities, and for good reason; at this stage, the factual allegations in the
complaint are not in dispute—the legal sufficiency of the complaint is. When the officers argue
that the reports “simply filled in the contours and details of Plaintiff’s Complaint,” Appellants
Br. at 51, they mean that the reports fill in the details of the complaint with
the officers’
version
of the facts.
See Blackwell
,
The officers nonetheless argue that the district court should have considered the reports
because they are public records,
see id.
, but in doing so they rely on the definition of the term
“public records” for purposes of the hearsay exception contained in Federal Rule of Evidence
803(8). Appellants Br. at 48 & n.10 (acknowledging that “this Court has not expressly defined
what can be considered a ‘public record’ when it comes to documents offered in support of a
Motion to Dismiss” (emphasis omitted)). The officers provide no basis for their resort to this
rule and we see no reason why its definition should control. We think it likely that our case
law’s use of the term “public records” is better understood to mean something closer to “matters
of public record,” like those of which we may take judicial notice. 5B Charles A. Wright &
Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1357 (4th ed. 2024);
Blackwell
, 123 F.4th at
487 (“We . . . allow district courts to take judicial notice of ‘public records’ without converting a
motion to dismiss into a summary-judgment motion.” (quoting
Jackson v. City of Columbus
, 194
F.3d 737, 745 (6th Cir. 1999)));
Wyser-Pratte Mgmt. Co. v. Telxon Corp.
,
The judicial-notice framing makes sense because it ameliorates the fairness concerns that
animate Rule 12(d); ordinarily, we take judicial notice of adjudicative facts that “can be
accurately and readily determined from sources whose accuracy cannot reаsonably be
questioned.” Fed. R. Evid. 201(b)(2);
accord In re Omnicare, Inc. Sec. Litig.
,
A party cannot evade Rule 201’s requirements by proffering a purported public record in
support of its motion to dismiss, rather than in another context. In fact, for the reasons outlined
above, restrictions on judicial notice of adjudicative facts may be particularly important at the
motion-to-dismiss stage where the parties have not yet had an opportunity to develop their
evidence. The hearsay exception in Rule 803(8) may rest on the premise that “matter[s]
observed while under a legal duty to report” or “factual findings from a legally authorized
investigation,” Fed. R. Evid. 803(8)(A), are more reliable than other hearsay statements for
purposes of trial,
see
Robert P. Mostellеr, 2 McCormick on Evidence § 295 (9th ed. 2025)
.
But
the hearsay exception simply does not provide sufficient protection at the motion-to-dismiss
stage.
See Passa
,
Ultimately, a district court has “discretion to reject any extra-pleading matter if the judge
feels that it is not substantial or comprehensive enough to facilitate the disposition of the action.”
5C Charles A. Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1364 (3d ed. 2024).
Because the reports present only the appellants’ version of the facts, which Hodges has not had
opportunity to dispute with her own evidence, and because “the subject matter of those [reports]
is the heart of the matter contested in this suit,” we cannot say the district court abused its
discretion in declining to consider the reports as public records on the grounds that their contents
are subject to dispute.
See In re Omnicare
,
The officers’ next argument, that the CAD Report should be considered because it was
referrеd to in the complaint and is central to Hodges’s claims, Appellants Br. at 50–51, fails
because it rests on nothing but factual overlap and linguistic similarity between the complaint
and CAD Report.
See Blackwell
,
police report and criminal complaint when the plaintiff’s “complaint generically refer[red] to the police investigation and prosecution” but not to the documents themselves). If, on а motion to dismiss, a district court could consider any document that described some of the same facts alleged in the complaint, Rule 12(d)’s protections would lose their meaning.
In this context, a document is central to a complaint when the legal sufficiency of the complaint depends on the content of the document. Id. (“As the classic example, a plaintiff who asserts a breach-of-contract claim cannot prohibit a district court from considering the whole contract (including the contract terms that undermine the claimed breach) merely by omitting the contract from the complaint.”). Here, Hodges’s “claim[s’] . . . validity [does not] rise[] or fall[] with” the contents of the reports. Id. “If anything, it is more accurate to say that the [reports] are central to the [officers’] defense .” Id.
Also doomed is the officers’ argument that the reports were properly before the district
court because they merely “filled in the contours and details of Plaintiff’s Complaint,” a
proposition for which the officers cite unsupported dicta. Appellants Br. at 46, 51–52.
[6]
In
asking the court to consider the fact-laden reports, the officers “ask us to disregard the normal
‘presumption of truth’ that we must give to a complaint’s well-pleaded facts based on their own
conflicting story about the investigation.”
Blackwell
,
Finally, the officers cite nonbinding out-of-circuit law for the proposition that the court
should consider the reports because Hodges had “actual notice of the documents and relied on
them in framing her Complaint.” Appellants Br. at 47. Even assuming both of those assertions
were true (which we do not decide), the officers’ proposed exception to Rule 12(d) is
unsupported. For their argument, the officers rely exclusively on a Second Circuit case where
the court wrote in what is arguably dicta that, although the district court had not in fact
considered the extra-complaint materials and therefore (contrary to the plaintiff-appellants’
assertion) did not err by doing so, the district court
could have
considered the materials had it so
chosen.
Cortec Indus., Inc. v. Sum Holding L.P.
,
The district court did not err by declining to consider the CAD and Incident Reports. The officers’ exhortation that we should consider the video evidence and reports is a naked attempt to introduce improper substantive evidence at the motion-to-dismiss stage and in contravention of our proper appellate jurisdiction. The officers have not shown that any exception to Rule 12(d) applies so as to permit this end-run around the law governing motions to dismiss and final judgments.
C. Qualified Immunity
Having determined the proper scope of the record on appeal, we must now determine
whether Hodges has plausibly alleged that the officers violated Honestie’s clearly established
rights.
Marvaso
,
1. Unreasonable Search and Seizure
No one disputes that the officers detained or seized Honestie without her consent.
See
Appellants Br. at 26. Hodges alleges that all three officers took part in the seizure: Sellner by
detaining Honestie at gunpoint, R. 1 (Compl. ¶¶ 51–52, 56) (Page ID #7–8), Barberino by
handcuffing her,
id.
¶¶ 58–60, 63 (Page ID #8), and Dionne by putting her in the police cruiser,
id.
¶¶ 71, 76 (Page ID #9). At the very least, officers must have reasonable suspicion for such an
investigative (
Terry
) stop, and, if the stop evolves into an arrest, officers must have probable
cause.
Bey v. Falk
,
The complaint alleges that Honestie did not match thе description of the suspect the
officers were pursuing and that, at the time of the seizure, Honestie did not make “any
movements to signal that [she] w[as] fleeing the police, attempting to evade the officers on the
scene,” she “was not armed, believed to be armed, . . . [did not] pose any immediate threat or
danger to anyone,” and she “did not make any movements that caused a threat to any of the
GRPD officers on scene.” R. 1 (Compl. ¶¶ 67, 78–82, 122–23) (Page ID #8–9, 15). These
factual allegations go beyond bare legal conclusions and make plausible the complaint’s
allegation that the officers lacked a “particularized and objective basis for suspecting” Honestie
of criminal activity.
Bey
, 946 F.3d at 313 (quotation omitted). If proven at trial, such facts
support “the reasonable inference that the defendant[s]” lacked reasonable suspicion and violated
Honestie’s Fourth-Amendment rights.
Iqbal
,
Our case law underscores that, absent reason to believe a detainee has committed a crime
(for example, when the detainee matches a suspect’s description), and absent a threat to others on
the scene or an indication that a prospective detainee intends to flee or assault officers, there is
no reasonable suspicion for even a temporary stop.
See United States v. Noble
,
2. False Imprisonment or Arrest
An officer commits false arrest or imprisonment in violation of the Fourth Amendment
when they “effect[] a warrantless arrest without probable cause.”
Akima v. Peca
,
judgment-like analysis to determine whether a genuine issue of material fact existed,
Wyatt v. Blair
, No. 259750,
An investigative stop of the kind the officers concededly effected on Honestie “may . . .
ripen into an arrest through the passage of time or the use of force.”
Houston v. Clark Cnty.
Sheriff Deputy John Does 1–5
,
Although it is a closer question than the existence of probable cause, we hold that the
complaint alleges facts giving rise to the plausible inference that the manner in which Barberino
and Dionne detained Honestie—by handcuffing her and putting her in the police car,
respectively—was so disproportionate to their reasons for detaining her that, for Fourth
Amendment purposes, it transformed her detention into an arrest. This conclusion is necessarily
informed by the fact that, accepting the complaint’s allegations as true, officers had neither
reasonable suspicion nor probable cause to detain Honestie.
Sutton v. Metro. Gov’t of Nashville
& Davidson Cnty.
, 700 F.3d 865, 876 (6th Cir. 2012) (“A broader factual base of suspicion
permits a broader scope of detention because . . . ‘[t]he scope of activities permitted during an
investigative stop is determined by the circumstances that initially justified the stop.’” (quoting
United States v. Obasa
,
“It is beyond doubt that,” at the time of Honestie’s alleged arrest, “‘the law was clearly
established that, absent probable cause to believe that an offense had been committed, was being
committed, or was about to be committed, officers may not arrest an individual.’”
Radvansky v.
City of Olmsted Falls
,
3. Excessive Force
In determining whether an officer used excessive force in violation of the Fourth
Amendment, “[t]he bottom-line inquiry is ‘whether the totality of the circumstances justifies a
particular level of force.’”
Wright v. City of Euclid
,
Historically, this Circuit’s precedent required the court to “segment the incident into its
constituent parts and consider the officer’s entitlement to qualified immunity at each step along
the way.”
Id.
We would “carve up the incident into segments and judge each on its own terms
to see if the officer was reasonable at each stage.”
Dickerson v. McClellan
,
In Barnes , the defendant officer pulled a driver over for a traffic stop. Id. at 2. When, in the midst of the stop, the car began to pull away with the driver’s door open, the officer jumped onto the door sill and in a matter of seconds fired two shots into the car, killing the driver. Id. The lower courts had been bound by Fifth Circuit precedent to consider the officer’s reasonableness only in light of the situation existing at the moment of the threat. Id. at 3. The lower courts determined that the moment of the threat was confined to the two seconds between when the officer jumped on the door sill and when he fired his first shot, and that it did not include the circumstances of the preceding traffic stop. Id. at 3.
The Supreme Court held that this moment-of-threat approach was erroneous because “the ‘totality of the circumstances’ inquiry into a use of forсe has no time limit.” Id. at 5. Acknowledging that “the situation at the precise time of the shooting will often be what matters most,” the Court wrote that “earlier facts and circumstances may bear on how a reasonable officer would have understood and responded to later ones.” Id. Events immediately preceding a use of force “cannot be hermetically sealed off from the context in which they arose.” at 5– 6 (quoting Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae at 14). “[N]o rule that precludes consideration of prior events in assessing a police shooting is reconcilable with the fact- dependent and context-sensitive approach [the Court] ha[s] prescribed.” Id. at 7 (“A court deciding a use-of-force case cannot review the totality of the circumstances if it has put on chronological blinders.”).
With the Supreme Court’s guidance in mind, we must consider whether Hodges has plausibly alleged that, under the totality of the circumstances—including all of the events preceding Honestie’s detention—the officers used excessive force. Hart , 973 F.3d at 639–42. Hodges alleges that the defendants used excessive forcе on Honestie, Sellner by “drawing and pointing . . . [a] [gun] directly towards an unarmed child,” R. 1 (Compl. ¶ 137, 146) (Page ID #16–17), and Barberino by handcuffing her, id. ¶ 138, 146 (Page ID #16–17). We are again limited to the facts asserted in the complaint in applying the above-recited factors to this allegation.
Where the seriousness of the crime is concerned, the complaint’s allegations state only that “GRPD was looking for an adult Caucasian woman who had allegedly stabbed another individual at a different location.” Id. ¶ 78 (Page ID #9). This is far from an allegation that the stabbing actually happened, but we assume the crime at issue was a stabbing—a serious and violent crime. Although this first prong weighs in favor of the officers’ use of force, the remaining two prongs do not. The complaint expressly avers that Honestie posed no threat to officers or anyone else and showed no signs of resisting or attempting to evade arrest. Id. ¶¶ 141, 143 (Page ID #17). Nonetheless, the complaint alleges, the officers used force on Honestie by holding her at gunpoint and handcuffing her. ¶¶ 137–46 (Page ID #16–17). This allegation gives rise to the plausible inference that each defendant acted in a manner objеctively unreasonable under the circumstances.
It is clearly established that holding a detainee at gunpoint and in handcuffs constitutes
the use of force.
[9]
Vanderhoef v. Dixon
,
“[T]he fact that it is
sometimes
reasonable to use handcuffs and guns when detaining
suspects does not support Defendants’ argument that the amount of force used
in this case
was
objectively reasonable. Whether an exercise of force is excessive will vary depending on the
facts and circumstances of the specific case.”
Binay
,
****
The officers concede that “the totality of the all the circumstances, including the information that the officers had before they interacted with Honestie, is critical to determining whether they should have known that their actions violated a clearly established right.” Reply Br. at 13. We agree, which is why this case should be resolved after the parties have exchanged discovery.
III. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district court’s order finding that Hodges plausibly alleged that the officers violated Honestie’s clearly established rights. To the extent the officers ask us to resolve disputed factual issues about whether the officers in fact had reasonable suspicion or probable cause to detain Honestie or whether their use of force was in fact reasonable under the circumstances, we DISMISS their appeal for lack of jurisdiction.
Notes
[1] Tragically, Honestie died at the age of fourteen in 2020 due tо complications from COVID-19. R. 1 (Compl. ¶ 12) (Page ID #3).
[2] The complaint uses the spellings “Aisha Rose” and “Aisha Rosa” interchangeably. For clarity, we use Aisha’s first name.
[3]
The district court here also partially granted the officers’ motion by dismissing the complaint’s municipal-
liability and substantive-due-process counts, as well as the counts brought under the Michigan constitution and
Michigan state law.
Hodges v. City of Grand Rapids
, No. 1:23-cv-1230,
[4] Of course, this assertion by the officers flips the relevant inquiry on its head; at this stage it is the officers who are (improperly) attempting to controvert the complaint, not the other way around.
[5] The officers argue that the reports are not offered for their truth, but rather for their effect on the listener— “merely to show what information the Officers had that prompted them to go to the Hodges’s [sic] residence and act with caution.” Appellants Br. at 49 n.11. But that is offering the report for truth. The officers want the court to consider these documents because they go to the heart of a key merits issue in this case and one over which we have
[6] Yeary v. Goodwill Indus.-Knoxville, Inc. , 107 F.3d 443, 445 (6th Cir. 1997), does not bind us for two reasons: first, Yeary ’s holding did not rеly on the comment in dicta that the extra-complaint material in question “simply filled in the contours and details of the plaintiff's complaint, and added nothing new.” at 445. Instead, the court held that the district court’s rationale did not in fact hinge on the additional information provided by the extraneous documents and so there was no reversible error. Id. Second, the officers’ assertion that, like in Year y, the reports add nothing new to the complaint, is obviously wrong—the reports contain many of the same details that are portrayed in the video and which, in that context, the officers argue blatantly contradict and utterly undermine Hodges’s complaint. The same information cannot add “nothing new” to the complaint while simultaneously contradicting it.
[7] The complaint does not support the officers’ argument that they acted reasonably to secure a dangerous and unpredictable scene. See R. 1 (Compl. ¶ 67) (Page ID #8) (“Neither Honestie, [Aisha], nor Whitney Hodges made any movements to signal that they were fleeing the police, attempting to evade the officers on the scene, or were an immediate threat to anyone.”). The officers may introduce factual еvidence in support of their argument that the scene was dangerous at the summary-judgment stage and at trial. For this reason (among others), the officers’ citation to Wyatt v. Blair , Appellants Br. at 22–25, is inapposite given that there, unlike here, evidence of the potential danger confronting officers was properly before the state court when it conducted a summary-
[8] Although the complaint does not allege specifically that Honestie’s detention at gunpoint (prior to the handcuffing) constituted false arrest, it is certainly one of the circumstances a court would consider in assessing whether the investigative stop ripened into an arrest. See 3 LaFave, Search and Seizure § 5.1(a); Houston , 174 F.3d at 814–15.
[9]
The allegations in this case, which aver that the officers unreasonably used a gun and handcuffs to execute
an unlawful arrest, distinguish it from our excessive-force precedents regarding the use of handcuffs alone to effect a
lawful arrest.
See Neague v. Cynkar
, 258 F.3d 504, 508 (6th Cir. 2001) (“[T]he handcuffing of a person
in the
course of an otherwise lawful arrest
fails, as a matter of law, to state a claim for excessive force.” (emphasis
added));
see also Binay v. Bettendorf
,