Doulin v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 20 April 1987
• Docket Number: No. 82 C 6771.,82 C 6771.
• Citation: 662 F. Supp. 318
• Parties: William DOULIN and Benjamin Perlman, individually and on behalf of a class, Plaintiffs, v. The CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

662 F. Supp. 318

William DOULIN and Benjamin Perlman, individually and on behalf of a class, Plaintiffs, v. The CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants.

No. 82 C 6771.

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

August 25, 1986.

Judgment Order April 20, 1987.

Kenneth N. Flaxman, Elizabeth R. Dale, Kenneth N. Flaxman, P.C., Chicago, Ill., for plaintiffs.

Judson H. Miner, Corp. Counsel and Herbert L. Caplan, Diane J. Larsen Asst. Corp. Counsels, Chicago, Ill., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

ROVNER, District Judge.

The Chicago Police Department has a policy of detaining all arrestees, whether on felony charges or on misdemeanor charges, as long as it takes for their fingerprints to clear before releasing them on bond or presenting them to a judge or magistrate for a probable cause hearing. This case is a class action challenging that policy. The class consists of all persons who were arrested since 1977¹ on misdemeanor charges and who were detained pursuant to the fingerprint clearing policy of the Chicago Police Department despite their ability and right to post bond and be released. Members of the plaintiff class assert that the fingerprint clearing policy violates their Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and, in addition to damages, seek declaratory and injunctive relief. The issue squarely posed by this case, therefore, is whether the Fourth Amendment, applicable to the states by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment, prohibits the City of Chicago from detaining misdemeanor arrestees, who have not been presented to a judge for an independent probable cause determination, for an indeterminate length of time until their fingerprints have been cleared so that their identities can be established with virtual certainty. This Court holds that it does.

The original complaint in this case was filed on November 3, 1982. The named plaintiffs, William Doulin and Benjamin Perlman, initiated this action on their own behalf and on behalf of all others similarly situated.² Since then, the complaint has been amended twice to add two more named plaintiffs and to seek declaratory relief as well as injunctive relief and damages. Counts II, III, and IV of the Second Amended Complaint and all class allegations stemming therefrom are at issue here.³ On July 9, 1984, Judge Moran certified a class, pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 23(b)(2), consisting of:

All persons who were arrested on other than a felony charge by a police officer of the City of Chicago on or after November 3, 1977, and who were detained pursuant to the "fingerprint clearing" policy of the City of Chicago implemented in Police Department General Order 78-1.

This Court held a bench trial solely on the issue of the defendants' liability for declaratory and injunctive relief for the class from May 23 to June 3, 1986.⁴ The Court deferred a trial on the issue of damages, for which the defendants have demanded a jury trial, to a later date. At the conclusion of the trial, the Court requested that the parties file proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law and supporting legal briefs. Pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a), the Court hereby enters its Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law setting forth the reasons for its conclusion that plaintiffs have established liability on the merits.

FINDINGS OF FACT

1. Named plaintiff Benjamin Perlman is the proprietor of a retail jewelry store known as "Imperial Jewelers" in Chicago. He has been a retail jeweler for over twenty-five years. Named plaintiff William Doulin is employed by Perlman as the manager of the jewelry store. As part of the ordinary course of business, Perlman buys scrap gold from the public. On October 9, 1981, Perlman and Doulin were arrested by Chicago police officers for the misdemeanor offense of receipt of stolen jewelry. At the time of the arrest, Perlman had operated that particular jewelry store for over 10 years and was well known to neighborhood police officers. Indeed, several of them recognized him at the station house, where, after the arresting officers completed the paperwork incident to the arrest, Doulin and Perlman were taken to the "lockup." At the lockup, they were each fingerprinted and placed in a joint cell to await fingerprint clearing despite the fact that both had available the $100 cash bond set by Illinois Supreme Court Rules 528⁵ and 530⁶ for misdemeanor offenses. Neither Doulin nor Perlman were permitted to post bond until their fingerprints "cleared" pursuant to Chicago Police Department General Order 78-1. Perlman was confined for six hours and Doulin was confined for twelve hours as a result of Chicago's post-arrest detention policy even though the police knew who they were.

2. Gayle Borg is an unnamed plaintiff member of the above-described plaintiff class. On May 6, 1983, Borg was arrested at her home at about 10:30 p.m. and charged with having permitted minor children, who were attending her daughter's birthday party, to consume alcoholic beverages. Borg was in custody for three hours before she was fingerprinted at the women's lockup. Pursuant to Chicago Police Department policy, before women are fingerprinted, they must be transported to one of four women's detention centers in Chicago.⁷ Borg was fingerprinted at the women's lockup at about 1:30 a.m., and her fingerprints were then transmitted to the Identification Section of the Chicago Police Department. Borg's fingerprints were received at the Identification Section at 2:12 a.m. At 4:30 a.m., a fingerprint technician concluded that a new set of fingerprints was required. Borg was reprinted and her prints again were transmitted to the Identification Section, where they were reassigned to a fingerprint technician at 7:59 a.m. The fingerprint technician was unable to find Borg's prints on file, and her prints were set aside to be rechecked by a more experienced technician. The more experienced technician commenced the recheck at 10:15 a.m. At 10:25 a.m., the technician concluded that Borg's prints were not on file with the Chicago Police Department. Borg was permitted to post bond and was released at 11:00 a.m., over 12 hours after her arrest.

3. On May 9, 1983, named plaintiff Patricia Muhammad received a "warrant notice" which told her to report to the police station and post a $100 bond. Following receipt of the warrant notice, Muhammad telephoned the police station and learned that the warrant was on the misdemeanor offense of "deceptive practices" and that bond had been set on the warrant at $100. Muhammad gathered together $100 and, on May 13, 1983, went to the police station with the cash to surrender on the warrant. Muhammad arrived at the police station at about 12:00 noon and sought to post bond. As required by General Order 78-1 of the Chicago Police Department, the officers at the police station refused to permit Muhammad to post bond and instead caused her to be transported to a women's detention center at 1121 South State Street. Muhammad was fingerprinted at 3:20 p.m. and placed in a jail cell. Muhammad's fingerprints cleared at about 9:10 p.m., and she was released on bond at 9:30 p.m., approximately 9½ hours after she arrived at the station to post bond.

4. Howard Sery is also an unnamed plaintiff. Sery was arrested at his home about midnight on May 9, 1984 by Chicago police officers and charged with misdemeanor offenses. Sery was fingerprinted about 1:00 a.m., and his fingerprints were received at the Identification Section at 3:52 a.m. Sery was permitted to post bond at approximately 11:00 a.m. on May 9, 1984 when the results of the fingerprint check were "waived" by the watch commander, as provided for by General Order 78-1. Sery's prints were ultimately assigned to a fingerprint technician at 1:30 p.m. on May 9, 1984.

5. One objective of the Chicago Police Department's fingerprint clearing policy as embodied in General Order 78-1, which was applied to all of the named plaintiffs and continues to be applied to all persons arrested in Chicago on all misdemeanor as well as felony charges, is to determine if a person's fingerprints are on file with the Chicago Police Department, so as to determine with virtual certainty the true identity of an arrestee. The Chicago Police Department, however, maintains in its files only the fingerprints of those persons it has previously arrested.

6. Once an individual is arrested, he is transported to a district police station for "booking." The arrestee is interrogated, photographed, and fingerprinted. The fingerprint clearing process begins with the actual fingerprinting of the arrestee, a process which ordinarily does not require more than five minutes, although it may take longer if the arrestee offers resistance. However, the actual fingerprinting is not done until after the arrest report is completed and after the arrestee is transported to the lockup. Because all women are transported to a women's detention center after the arrest report is completed and before fingerprinting, women are subject to even greater delays. The Chicago Police Department prepared an internal audit entitled "Identification Procedures in Misdemeanor Arrests" in January 1983. (Plaintiff's Ex. 11.) Attachment 1 to the audit demonstrates that generally more than one hour elapses from the time of arrest to the time of fingerprinting. When a top level officer of the Chicago Police Department was asked if there was any law enforcement reason that fingerprinting could not be accomplished before the arrest report was completed, the answer was that "good procedure would dictate that proper procedures are followed. Whatever analysis was done to put these procedures in effect would dictate how the procedure is put forward." (Burzinski Tr., May 23, 1986, at 64.)

7. After the arrestee has been fingerprinted, the prints are transported to the Identification Section of the Chicago Police Department either by a...