Thomas v. County of Los Angeles, s. 91-56047
| Citation | 978 F.2d 504 |
| Decision Date | 12 February 1993 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 91-56047,91-56048,s. 91-56047 |
| Parties | Darren THOMAS, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES; City of Lynwood; Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department; Sheriff Sherman Block; Captain Bert J. Cueva; Defendants-Appellants. Darren THOMAS, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES, Defendant, and Paul Archambault; Katherine Brown-Voyer; Tony Campbell; James Corrigan; Robert Delgadillo; Kelly Gill; Douglas Gillies; Ruben Gracias; Kevin Kiff; J. Leslie; Jason Mann; Guy Mato; John Mossotti; Ed Nordskog; Michael Pippin; Dan Raimo; Thomas Rosas; J. Sheehy; Elizabeth Smith; Greg Thompson; Michael Voge; Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (9th Circuit) |
Steven D. Manning and Robert S. Wolfe, Douglas J. Collodel, and Richard H. Nakamura, Jr., Morris, Polich & Purdy, Los Angeles, Cal., for defendants-appellants.
Robert A. Olson, Greines, Martin, Stein & Richland, Beverly Hills, Cal., for defendants-appellants.
Patrick O. Patterson, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., Los Angeles, Cal., for plaintiffs-appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
Before: SCHROEDER and KOZINSKI, Circuit Judges, and ORRICK, * District Judge.
The plaintiffs, predominately black and hispanic residents of the City of Lynwood, California, brought this section 1983 class action alleging that deputy sheriffs at the Lynwood station of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department were mistreating minority citizens. The complaint, filed against the County of Los Angeles, the The injunction issued by the district court ordered the entire Los Angeles Sheriff's Department to do the following:
City of Lynwood, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, supervisory personnel within the Sheriff's Department, and individual Sheriff's deputies, includes allegations of unlawful detentions and searches, beatings, shootings, terrorist activities, and destruction of property. Specifically, the plaintiffs charge that deputy sheriffs in Lynwood use excessive force in detaining minority citizens and employ unlawful procedures in searching residences occupied by minorities. This appeal, filed by the defendants, challenges the preliminary injunction issued by the district court in an effort to bring to an end the incidents of police misconduct
1. Follow the Department's own stated policies and guidelines regarding the use of force and procedures for conducting searches; and
2. Submit to the Court in camera and under seal, copies of reports alleging the use of excessive force that are in the possession of the Department on the first of every month.
Pursuant to the defendants' request for emergency appellate relief, this court stayed the injunction pending appeal.
We reverse the district court's injunction because its broad geographic and substantive scope is not supported by the record before us, and because the district court entered the injunction and subsequent findings of fact without resolving some serious factual disputes concerning the specific incidents of misconduct alleged. We hold that the plaintiffs do have standing to pursue this action and we remand for further proceedings.
The misconduct as described by the plaintiffs is both malicious and pervasive. Affidavits collected during the early stages of litigation charge that black and hispanic men have been repeatedly arrested without cause and severely beaten at the Lynwood station, the County jail, and the "Operations Safe Streets" trailer. Guns, flashlights, fists, clubs, boots, a brick wall, and an electric Taser gun were just a few of the weapons allegedly used to injure individual plaintiffs. Many of the victims required medical treatment after being "apprehended" by Lynwood deputies, and some were hospitalized. Firearms were purportedly used to terrorize suspects. Affidavits recount instances where deputies placed the muzzle of a firearm in a suspect's ear, mouth or behind his head, and threatened to pull the trigger, or actually fired the gun without discharging a bullet. The plaintiffs also cite ten incidents where deputies allegedly illegally forced entry into residences, searched and ransacked the premises, and then left without arresting anyone. Many of the incidents described by the plaintiffs involved racial slurs and obscene language directed at the victim of the beating or search.
The plaintiffs filed volumes of declarations and affidavits in support of their allegations and defendants responded in kind. There was no evidentiary hearing. The record is described in appellees' brief as follows:
In support of their preliminary injunction motion, plaintiffs filed over 200 pages of documentary evidence, including 58 declarations detailing the deputies' misconduct and 33 color photographs of injuries and property damage suffered by the victims. Plaintiffs also relied on documents they had previously filed in opposition to defendants' pending motions, including certified copies of the declarations of 11 deputies and news reports concerning the existence and activities of the "Vikings," a white-supremacist gang of deputies operating within the Lynwood substation. Defendants responded with more than 1,200 pages of declarations and other documents in an effort to refute plaintiffs' claims. In reply, plaintiffs filed 25 additional declarations and other documents.
The plaintiffs sought from the district court a preliminary injunction to prevent further violent acts and unlawful searches. Before argument, the plaintiffs presented the court with a proposed order which anticipated enjoining only department personnel acting within "the jurisdiction of the Although two weeks later the district court filed written findings of fact and conclusions of law in support of the preliminary injunction order, they were entered without an evidentiary hearing and did not resolve any specific conflicting factual allegations. 1 The findings of fact and conclusions of law are reprinted in their entirety in the Appendix.
Lynwood station." The defendants represented to the court, however, that the Department's deputy assignment policy would make such an order impossible and, if issued, would "interject confusion into law enforcement operations." In response, the district court granted the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction, but struck the geographic limitation contained in the proposed order. The preliminary injunction was entered on September 23, 1991
As a threshold matter, appellants challenge plaintiffs' standing to pursue this action in which they seek to represent a class of residents and visitors to the Lynwood area who have been or may be mistreated by Lynwood Sheriff's deputies on account of their race, color, national origin, age, or economic class. Appellants rely principally on City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 103 S.Ct. 1660, 75 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983).
The Article III "case or controversy" requirement restricts federal jurisdiction to those cases where the plaintiffs can maintain that their injury or the threat of future injury by the defendants is "both 'real and immediate,' not 'conjectural or hypothetical.' " Lyons, 461 U.S. at 102, 103 S.Ct. at 1665 (citations omitted). Plaintiffs allege that they are suffering ongoing irreparable injury as a result of the Lynwood deputies' terrorist-type tactics. Further, they contend that there is a direct link between the department policy makers and the injuries suffered by the plaintiffs.
The majority of the incidents alleged by the plaintiffs are said to have occurred within a six by seven block area within the jurisdiction of the Lynwood station. Seventy-five plaintiffs allege that they were victims of police misconduct, many within this small section of the City. A number of the class members are alleged to have been repeatedly subject to police brutality and harassment. This is significant as the "possibility of recurring injury ceases to be speculative when actual repeated incidents are documented." Nicacio v. United States I.N.S., 797 F.2d 700, 702 (9th Cir.1985).
Also significant is the fact that members of the plaintiff class have been subjected to retaliatory attacks in response to the filing of this action. In O'Shea v. Littleton, the Supreme Court dismissed a complaint alleging discrimination in sentencing, holding that "[p]ast exposure to illegal conduct does not in itself show a present case or controversy regarding injunctive relief ... if unaccompanied by any continuing, present adverse affects." 414 U.S. 488, 495-96, 94 S.Ct. 669, 676, 38 L.Ed.2d 674 (1974). Repeated instances of violence and retaliatory confrontations are "continuing present adverse affects" and cause the threatened injury to be "sufficiently real and immediate to show an existing controversy." Id. at 496, 94 S.Ct. at 676.
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