Palmer v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 27 April 1983
• Docket Number: No. 82 C 2349.,82 C 2349.
• Parties: Reuben PALMER, et al., Subclass A Plaintiffs, and Edward Negron, et al., Subclass B Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

562 F. Supp. 1067

Reuben PALMER, et al., Subclass A Plaintiffs, and Edward Negron, et al., Subclass B Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants.

No. 82 C 2349.

United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, E.D.

March 31, 1983.

Order April 27, 1983.

Jeffrey H. Haas, G. Flint Taylor, Dennis Cunningham, Michael E. Deutsch, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiffs.

Robert L. Janega and Robert W. Fioretti, Asst. Corp. Counsel, Chicago, Ill., for city defendants.

Henry A. Hauser, Deputy Chief, Civ. Action Bureau, Chicago, Ill., for county defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

SHADUR, District Judge.

Two sets of plaintiffs have filed this class action seeking, among other relief, a preliminary injunction. This Court has conducted an evidentiary hearing on the motion for preliminary injunctive relief. In accordance with Fed.R.Civ.P. ("Rule") 52(a) this memorandum opinion and order reflects this Court's findings of fact and conclusions of law. To the extent (if any) that matters stated in the "Conclusions of Law" section of this opinion contain factual statements, those statements shall be considered findings of fact as well. For the reasons stated in this opinion, plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction is granted.

Findings of Fact ("Findings")

Parties and Proceedings

1. On April 16, 1982 plaintiffs filed this class action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 ("Section 1983") on behalf of two subclasses of persons arrested by the Chicago Police Department and charged with felonies under Illinois law:

(a) those persons convicted of criminal offenses in the Circuit Court of Cook County and sentenced to probation or imprisonment ("Subclass A"); and

(b) those persons awaiting trial in the Circuit Court of Cook County ("Subclass B").

Defendants in this action are:¹

(c) "City Defendants": City of Chicago ("City"), Superintendent of Police Richard Brzeczek ("Brzeczek") and Detective Division Area 2 Commander Milton Deas ("Deas"); and (d) "County Defendants": Cook County State's Attorney Richard M. Daley and various of his deputies and assistants: Chief Deputy William Kunkle ("Kunkle"), former Assistant in charge of the Felony Review Division Lawrence Hyman, and Assistants Daniel Locallo and James Varga.

2. Immediately on filing this action plaintiffs moved for an emergency temporary restraining order ("TRO") before the Honorable Thomas McMillen, to whom the case was originally assigned. After hearing arguments from all parties, on April 20, 1982 Judge McMillen issued a TRO that provided in part:

Defendants shall preserve all police department investigative office or working files, sometimes known as "street files," together with all contents of such files....

That TRO took effect upon plaintiffs' filing of the required bond April 26, 1982. By agreement of the parties, the TRO has been continued beyond its ten-day limitation and, as amended, still remains in force and effect.

3. In September 1982, after all parties had engaged in discovery, plaintiffs moved to amend the TRO, claiming (a) Chicago police detectives were violating both the letter and spirit of the TRO by maintaining investigative writings and files as their personal property and (b) that practice had been adopted and was being carried on to avoid the mandate of the TRO for preservation of such writings and files. On September 24, 1982 Judge McMillen amended the TRO to provide (emphasis added):

Defendants shall preserve intact all police department investigative, office or working files, sometimes known as "street files," together with all the contents of such files, and all other papers and documents formerly put in such files....

4. Shortly thereafter this action was transferred to the docket of this Court, which promptly scheduled and thereafter held a hearing on plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction.² That hearing took place October 25-27 and 29, 1982 and (after a delay occasioned by the nature of Brzeczek's testimony — see Finding 18) was concluded January 3, 1983. All the remaining Findings are based on the evidence adduced at the hearing.

City and County Defendants' Practices and Procedures

5. City's Police Department ("Department") is responsible for investigation of crimes occurring within City and for apprehension of persons who commit such crimes. Department comprises the following Bureaus: Technical Services, Field Tactical Services, Community Services, Administrative Services, Operational Services and Investigative Services. Its Detective Division, within the Bureau of Investigative Services, is administratively divided into six geographical Areas, each headed by an Area Commander directly subordinate to a Deputy Superintendent. Each Area detective facility contains an Administrative Unit, a Property Crimes Unit and a Violent Crimes Unit.

6. Violent Crimes Units are responsible for the investigation of crimes against the person, such as homicide, rape, kidnapping, battery, robbery and assault. Members of Subclasses A and B have been charged with offenses as the result of such investigations.

7. Detectives investigating the types of crimes described in Finding 6 record the results of their investigations in documents that may be classified in two categories, "Unofficial Reports" and "Official Reports":

(a) "Unofficial Reports" comprise documents usually prepared contemporaneously with the obtaining of the information (such as detectives' notes, typed witness statements or interviews, and major crime incident worksheets, normally prepared at the initiation of an investigation) and documents that convey information to or request assistance from another shift of detectives working on the same investigation (such as "To-From Memos," "To All Watch Memos" and "Memos").

(b) "Official Reports" comprise standardized incident, opening, supplementary and closing reports.

Only the Official Reports were and are marked with the Records Division ("RD") number assigned to an investigation and were and are transmitted from the Area detective facility to the Records Division at Police Headquarters, 1121 S. State Street, for storage in the correspondingly numbered file.

8. Department has never provided its detectives or other personnel with directives or guidelines as to the extent to which Official Reports had to embody material obtained in the course of investigations and reflected in Unofficial Reports. City Defendants contend (Prop. Finding 17):

At all times relevant hereto the policy of the Chicago Police Department has been that all official reports prepared in the course of a violent felony investigation must be complete and accurate; that is, such reports must contain all information known to the preparer(s) which pertains to the offense or to the person(s) accused thereof.

In practice, however, Official Reports have sometimes been prepared from the perspective of what fits the preparer's concept of the crime, so they omit information that — though highly relevant and sometimes exculpatory of the defendant charged with the offense — the preparer does not deem "pertinent."³ Retention of Unofficial Reports is essential so that all exculpatory material may be made available to criminal defendants in the regular course of discovery procedures. Consequently any failure to retain Unofficial Reports creates a serious potential of deprivation of defendants' constitutional rights. Such deprivations have in fact occurred in the past and were the subject of testimony during the hearing.

9. Existence of Unofficial Reports was well known throughout Department before the institution of this action.⁴ However, before the promulgation of Detective Division Notice 82-2 ("Notice 82-2") on April 20, 1982:⁵

(a) Department took no official cognizance of and had no official policy concerning Unofficial Reports.

(b) There was no uniform practice within Department as to the preparation, retention, use or storage of Unofficial Reports.

Unofficial Reports were regularly maintained at the Areas' detective facilities during the course of an ongoing investigation. Files containing Unofficial Reports during the course of investigation are variously referred to as "street files," "running files," "office files" or "working files" (for convenience these Findings and Conclusions will use the term "street files"). Because of the absence of any official policy or uniform practice:

(a') At one Area headquarters Unofficial Reports were kept in a joint file with the Official Reports, while in others they were maintained in a separate file.

(b') In some Areas and on some watches Unofficial Reports were considered the property of the individual detective, who could maintain them in his personal possession and retain them or discard them as he wished.

(c') In what appear to be a significant number of cases the Unofficial Reports were destroyed, sometimes upon the submission of a closing report, sometimes upon completion of the prosecution and sometimes after appeal.

10. In addition to materials contained in the street files, other types of police reports are not given RD numbers and are not kept in the Central Record Division. Those include crime lab notes and writings, which are placed in files with crime lab rather than RD numbers. Similarly investigative reports generated at the Central Records Division, such as reports concerning internal investigations and firearm use reports, are not given RD numbers.

11. As a result of the procedures described in the preceding Findings, not all potentially exculpatory⁶ information contained in the various investigative materials is necessarily included in the Official Reports. There has been and is no police rule, regulation, procedure or practice that specifically required all exculpatory information learned in a criminal investigation to be placed in Official Reports and transmitted to Central Records. Nor was or is there any satisfactory procedure for monitoring whether in fact all exculpatory information is transmitted to...