Goodloe v. City of N.Y.
| Decision Date | 28 September 2015 |
| Docket Number | No. 12 CV 3018(KAM)(VMS).,12 CV 3018(KAM)(VMS). |
| Citation | 136 F.Supp.3d 283 |
| Parties | Carl GOODLOE, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF NEW YORK, Undercover Police Officer # 2570, Detective Cooke, Detective Dauge, Sergeant Ramirez, Police Officer Frank Chiodi, and John Doe Police Officers 1–5 of the New York City Police Department, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of New York |
Harold C. Baker, III, Law Office of Harold C. Baker, Brooklyn, NY, for Plaintiff.
Erica Michelle Haber, New York City Law Department, New York, NY, for Defendants.
VERA M. SCANLON
, United States Magistrate Judge:
In this civil rights action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981
, 1983 and 1985, Plaintiff Carl Goodloe ("Plaintiff") alleges in his Amended Complaint that Defendants City of New York, Undercover Police Officer # 2570, Detective Cooke, Detective Dauge, Sergeant Ramirez, Police Officer Frank Chiodi, and John Doe Police Officers 1–5 of New York City Police Department ("NYPD" and, collectively, "Defendants") violated his constitutional rights by subjecting him to a malicious prosecution which caused Plaintiff a loss of liberty and property. Docket No. 18. Before the Court is Plaintiff's motion to compel Defendants to produce records relating to a confidential informant's ("CI") provision of information to law enforcement which, according to Defendants, provided probable cause for Plaintiff's prosecution for drug conspiracy charges. Docket No. 32–35. Defendants oppose. Docket No. 36. I held a motion hearing. Docket No. 39.
I deny in part and grant in part Plaintiff's motion to compel. Within ten days of the entry of this Order, Defendants must produce to Plaintiff the following information: the amount of monetary compensation the CI received for the information provided to police (Defendants have already disclosed to Plaintiff that the CI received monetary compensation), whether the CI was a registered confidential informant and when the CI had last provided useful information to law enforcement prior to providing information about Plaintiff. Defendants need not produce the balance of the requested CI information as explained below.
The following facts are primarily drawn from Plaintiff's counsel Harold Baker's affidavit in support of this motion to compel and supporting exhibits. Docket No. 33. When necessary for completeness, I have cited to Defendants' counsel Erica M. Haber's affidavit and exhibits submitted in opposition to the motion and from Plaintiff's Amended Complaint. Docket Nos. 18, 35.
On September 2, 2005, Defendant UC 2570 was the ghost undercover agent (an undercover agent is responsible for providing security for the primary undercover agent) during a controlled narcotics buy wherein Plaintiff and others allegedly sold cocaine to the primary undercover agent. Docket No. 33 ¶ 8. Plaintiff was arrested by officers who were members of the Brooklyn North Narcotics District ("BNND"), but the charges against him were later dismissed. Id.
Later in 2005, Plaintiff filed a civil rights lawsuit relating to the incident and reached a settlement with the City of New York. Id. ¶ 11. On January 6, 2006, the City of New York issued a check paying the settlement amount. Id. Although Plaintiff's 2005 civil rights lawsuit did not name any of Defendants in this action, it did name John Doe Defendants who, had the lawsuit not settled, may have been identified as one or more Defendants in this action, for example, Defendant UC 2570. Id. Plaintiff alleges that as a result of the foregoing, Plaintiff was known to Defendant UC 2570 prior to the incident that is the subject of the instant action. Id. ¶ 31.
Although Defendant Cooke was not present for Plaintiff's September 2005 arrest, according to Defendant Cooke, a sergeant asked him to complete some paperwork relating to Plaintiff's September 2005 arrest for processing and tracking. Id. ¶¶ 28, 31. Thus, Plaintiff was known to Defendant Cooke prior to the subject arrest as well.
In or around October 2005, police began an eighteen-month investigation called Operation Lightning Strikes Twice. Id. ¶ 12. Over the course of Operation Lightning Strikes Twice, police officers made controlled narcotics buys from the Cypress Hills Housing complex and surrounding areas in Queens. Id. ¶ 12.
Defendant UC 2570 worked as an undercover agent in connection with several controlled buys over the course of Operation Lightning Strikes Twice. Id. ¶ 13. As a result, Defendant UC 2570 would see the faces of individuals from whom he purchased narcotics. Id. ¶¶ 13–14. For each controlled buy, Defendant UC 2570 would fill out a buy report containing information pertaining to the buy. Id. ¶¶ 13–14. Among the recorded information was a John Doe ("JD") nickname for the buyer, whose physical description Defendant UC 2570 would record from memory on the buy report sometime after the buy. Id. ¶ 14.
According to Plaintiff, the NYPD gave Defendant UC 2570 an incentive to conduct and report as many undercover buys as possible, as the NYPD had a policy of promoting undercover investigators based on the volume of buys and arrests they helped make in connection with Operation Lightning Strikes Twice. Id. ¶¶ 4, 11, 25.
On January 25, 2006, Defendant UC 2570 purchased narcotics at 305 Fountain Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11208 from a person Defendant UC 2570 called "JD Hood," so named because the person was wearing a hood at the time of the transaction. Id. ¶ 15. Apartment 7A belonged to another individual named "JD Brown Jacket," or Larry Bozeman, who was a frequent target of Operation Lightning Strikes Twice. Id.
According to Defendant UC 2570, on January 25, 2006, he met Mr. Bozeman outside Apartment 7A, where they had a brief drug-related conversation before entering. Id. ¶ 16. Once inside, Mr. Bozeman introduced Defendant UC 2570 to JD Hood, who was sitting on the living room couch and who sold Defendant UC 2570 crack cocaine in exchange for money. Id. According to Defendant UC 2570, the transaction took between ten and fifteen minutes. Id. ¶ 17. Defendant UC 2570's buy was completed with the assistance of a backup team that included some individual police officers who had played some role in Plaintiff's September 2, 2005 arrest, all of whom Detective Cooke knew as friends or colleagues. Id. ¶¶ 21, 27.
The physical description that Defendant UC 2570 wrote down for JD Hood in the related buy report was that he was a black male, 20–25 years old, approximately five-foot-eight to five-foot-eleven, approximately 190 pounds. Id. ¶ 18. On January 25, 2006, and despite the fact that he had been a part of Plaintiff's September 2, 2005 arrest, Defendant UC 2570 did not recognize JD Hood as Plaintiff. Defendant Cooke, who was a member of the January 25, 2006 field team backing up Defendant UC 2570 did not recognize JD Hood as Plaintiff, either. Id. ¶¶ 26–28.
Defendants did not arrest JD Hood on January 25, 2006, because the controlled buy was part of the ongoing Operation Lightning Strikes Twice. Id.
Between January 25, 2006 and November 30, 2006, Plaintiff alleges that Defendant Cooke did very little to locate, investigate or identify JD Hood. Id. ¶ 28. On November 30, 2006, Defendant UC 2570 was walking with Mr. Bozeman in a courtyard between the buildings of a housing project when they ran into JD Hood and had a brief drug-related conversation with him. Id. ¶¶ 23, 31.
At the time of Defendant UC 2570's and JD Hood's encounter, Defendant Cooke was sitting in the back seat of a police vehicle one block away. Id. ¶¶ 28–31. Defendant Cooke testified that when he saw Defendant UC 2570 and JD Hood together, which Defendant Cooke claimed was on a street corner, he recognized JD Hood as Plaintiff, remembering Plaintiff from the September 2, 2005 arrest paperwork that he had completed at a sergeant's request and from other encounters with Plaintiff within the precinct. Id. ¶ 28. According to Defendant Cooke, he was able to recognize JD Hood as Plaintiff without the aid of binoculars, despite being one block away. Id. ¶¶ 28–31.
Plaintiff argues that Defendant UC 2570's and Defendant Cooke's versions of events are contradictory and that Defendant Cooke's version of events is not credible due to the physical circumstances under which he claims to have recognized Plaintiff as JD Hood.
After Detective Cooke's claimed November 30, 2006 identification of JD Hood as Plaintiff, on December 5, 2006, Defendant Cooke placed Plaintiff's photograph—which had been taken in connection with the 2005 arrest for which he brought a civil rights action and which Plaintiff contends should have been destroyed after the 2005 charges against him were dismissed—into a photo array and placed it before Defendant UC 2570. Id. ¶ 33. According to Plaintiff's Amended Complaint, Defendant UC 2570 identified Plaintiff as JD Hood, the person from whom Defendant UC 2570 had purchased drugs on January 25, 2006. Docket No. 18 ¶ 33.
On February 25, 2007, Defendant Cooke was driving with other officers when he saw Plaintiff and stopped him. Docket No. 33 ¶¶ 36–38. In the DD5 for the stop, Defendant Cooke stated that he stopped JD Bear (not JD Hood). Id. ¶ 36. Defendant Cooke also wrote that the individual identified himself to officers as Abdul Evans and that, when Defendant Cooke ran Abdul Evans's information in a NYPD database, he saw that Abdul Evans's NYSID number was the same as Plaintiff's NYSID. Id. Plaintiff denies telling Defendant Cooke that his name was Abdul Evans and, according to Plaintiff, Defendant Cooke's claim in...
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