McGreal v. Ostrov
| Citation | 368 F.3d 657 |
| Decision Date | 10 May 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 02-3405.,02-3405. |
| Parties | Officer James T. McGREAL, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Eric OSTROV, Doctor, Village of Alsip, Kenneth Wood, Chief of the Alsip Police Department, et al., Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit) |
Jon Loevy (argued), Loevy & Loevy, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
William W. Kurnik (argued), Knight, Hoppe, Kurnik & Knight, Des Plaines, IL, Denis K. Sheehan, Thomas J. Long (argued), Norton, Mancini, Argentati, Weiler & Deano, Wheaton, IL, for Defendants-Appellees.
Before POSNER, COFFEY and ROVNER, Circuit Judges.
To hear Officer James McGreal tell the story, something is rotten in the Village of Alsip. After running against the mayor and losing by a narrow margin, McGreal found himself the target of a campaign to remove him from his long-held post as an Alsip police officer. He sued the Village of Alsip, the town's Chief of Police, a police lieutenant, and a psychologist retained by the Village to assess McGreal's fitness for duty. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants, and McGreal appeals. We reverse and remand.
We begin with the cast of characters. James McGreal has been a police officer in the Village of Alsip since 1983. The Alsip Chief of Police is Kenneth Wood, and Lt. David Snooks is the department's Field Operations Commander. At the time this suit was filed, Arnold Andrews had been the mayor of Alsip for twenty-four years. Both Wood and Snooks remain in their posts subject to annual reappointment by Mayor Andrews. McGreal served in the department without incident until he challenged Mayor Andrews in the April 1997 mayoral election. After he lost the election to Andrews by a slim 378 votes (the Village has 17,000 residents), McGreal found himself under unprecedented scrutiny from his superiors. Ultimately, they attempted to remove him from his post on the ground that he was unfit for duty. The dispute over McGreal's fitness to serve as a police officer revolves around a number of incidents, followed by a mental health examination. The events overlap in time and we will describe them separately for clarity. We explore the factual circumstances extensively because a full review of the facts casts a pall of suspicion on the Village of Alsip. On summary judgment, of course, we credit McGreal's version of the facts because he is the party opposing judgment. We draw all reasonable inferences in his favor. Myers v. Hasara, 226 F.3d 821, 825 (7th Cir.2000).
McGreal's story begins two years before the election. He was on routine patrol late one night in June 1995 when he noticed a number of cars in the parking lot of the Alsip Elks' Club in apparent violation of the local closing time ordinance. He entered the Club and found people concealing video poker machines behind a folding wall. The machines themselves are not illegal but using them to gamble is prohibited. McGreal promptly fired off a memo to Lt. Snooks about the incident, suggesting that a gambling investigation might be in order. McGreal also mentioned the matter to Sgt. Murray, the head of Alsip vice investigations. Snooks passed the information on to Chief Wood, who told Snooks he would "take care of it." Despite that promise, Wood did not order an investigation at that time. As it turned out, the video poker machines were owned by a company called "Vegas Amusements." Approximately one month after McGreal wrote the memo detailing his suspicions, Vegas Amusements contributed money to the political party controlled by Mayor Andrews. A few days after that, the Mayor signed into law a variance permitting the Elks' Club to have eight video poker machines on the premises rather than the three machines permitted at all other Alsip establishments. At his deposition for this lawsuit, Mayor Andrews could not recall either a company named Vegas Amusements or having ever signed a variance permitting an increased number of the poker machines at the Elks' Club.
A little more than two years later, in late August 1997 (several months after the mayoral election in which McGreal challenged Andrews), McGreal once again found himself at the Elks' Club, this time attending a banquet for his son's Little League team. McGreal observed people lining up to play the video poker machines, which he considered unusual if the machines were purely for entertainment rather than gambling. On September 9, 1997, McGreal wrote another memo, addressed this time to Chief Wood, suggesting again the possibility that the machines were being used for illegal gambling. McGreal cited as evidence the unusual popularity of the machines and the presence of reset switches on each machine, which would facilitate gambling payoffs by keeping score for each user. McGreal also noted that establishments with far fewer poker machines had been investigated for gambling in the past. McGreal also repeated rumors that in recent years, compulsive gamblers had lost substantial sums on the Elks' Club machines. He noted a rumor that an Alsip Village official was receiving a percentage of the revenue produced by the video poker machines. McGreal concluded that, although he placed no importance on unsubstantiated rumors, it appeared to him that the possibility of gambling at the Elks' Club had been overlooked.
Lt. Snooks replied to McGreal's memo by expressing surprise that McGreal would put these rumors of payoffs in writing and asking McGreal to provide "a more detailed written explanation of these `rumors' including ... the names of [the] elected officials." R. 64, Snooks Attachment B. McGreal responded immediately by identifying Mayor Andrews as the elected official involved in the payoff rumor. According to McGreal's memo, an Alsip police sergeant was the source of the rumor. Chief Wood subsequently consulted with neighboring police chiefs to determine how to handle these allegations. Ultimately, he requested that the Cook County Sheriff's Police investigate the charges of gambling at the Elks' Club. In October 1997, the Sheriff's office set up a sting operation and confirmed McGreal's suspicions. The video poker machines at the Elks' Club were in fact being used for gambling. Although Chief Wood claims he asked the Sheriff's police to also investigate whether Mayor Andrews was receiving payoffs, there are no documents memorializing such a request and the Sheriff's office conducted no investigation of the Mayor.
Nonetheless, in early November 1997, Chief Wood discussed with a member of the Illinois State Police Public Integrity Task Force ("PITF") an inquiry into the Mayor's possible involvement in gambling at the Elks' Club. On November 6, 1997, Wood formally requested a probe in writing. A few days later, on November 10, the Mayor caught wind of the investigation and called Chief Wood into his office. According to Wood, the Mayor was visibly upset, and at the end of the meeting he demanded that the Chief resign by the end of the day or the Mayor would fire him. Wood returned later in the day, accompanied by his lawyer, to discuss the matter further. (At that time, Chief Wood was two months shy of his fiftieth birthday, the date on which certain of his employment benefits vested). At or before this second meeting, Mayor Andrews learned that McGreal was the person behind the call for an investigation into the Mayor's possible connections with Elks' Club gambling. Wood's attorney explained to the Mayor that an investigation was proper and justified under the circumstances. The Mayor was somewhat appeased by the lawyer's explanation, and took no further steps towards Wood's resignation. However, at this same meeting, the Mayor mentioned to the chief that the "McGreal case" was going to be investigated by Thomas McGuire, an attorney who specializes in representing municipalities that are seeking the termination of police officers.
The very first entry in McGuire's billing records for the Village of Alsip shows that on November 10, the day the Mayor demanded Wood's resignation, McGuire traveled to Alsip for a four hour meeting with the Mayor. That evening, at a Village Board meeting, Mayor Andrews announced that a "disgruntled police officer" who had been a candidate against him had made serious allegations about him. The Mayor told the Board he had authorized Chief Wood to select an outside law enforcement agency to investigate "some of these fairy tale charges." Of course, the Chief had instigated the investigation before the Mayor knew about it and thus the Mayor had not authorized the investigation and in fact was quite angry about it. Wood later testified that he did not tell the Mayor about the investigation and would have preferred that the Mayor did not know he was being investigated because it was never appropriate for the subject of an undercover probe to know that he was being investigated. PITF completed the investigation in March 1998 and informed Chief Wood that the task force had concluded that the allegation of misconduct by Mayor Andrews in connection with Elks' Club gambling was "unfounded." R. 64, Wood Attachment G.
On August 16, 1997, McGreal arrested Sean Taylor for driving under the influence. Taylor is the son of a city prosecutor in a neighboring town. When McGreal appeared in court for Taylor's initial court date on September 17, he learned that the case had been rescheduled to August 27 without his knowledge. On checking with the court's computer system, McGreal learned that on August 27, two of the citations he wrote for Taylor (driving under the influence and damage to property) had been stricken on the motion of the Assistant State's Attorney handling the case. The third charge, driving with a blood alcohol content of greater than .08, was continued to September 24. At that time,...
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