Martinez v. Village of Mount Prospect, 96 C 6027.

• Decision Date: 05 April 2000
• Docket Number: No. 98 C 7580.,No. 96 C 6027.,96 C 6027.,98 C 7580.
• Citation: 92 F.Supp.2d 780
• Parties: Javier MARTINEZ, Plaintiff, v. VILLAGE OF MOUNT PROSPECT; Ronald Pavlock, individually and in his official capacity; Tom Daley, individually and in his official capacity; Dick Draffone; individually and in his official capacity; David Nicholson, individually and in his official capacity; and Jack Dahlberg, individually and in his official capacity, Defendants. Harry Moser, Plaintiff, v. Village of Mount Prospect and Tom Daley, individually and in his official capacity, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

92 F.Supp.2d 780

Javier MARTINEZ, Plaintiff, v. VILLAGE OF MOUNT PROSPECT; Ronald Pavlock, individually and in his official capacity; Tom Daley, individually and in his official capacity; Dick Draffone; individually and in his official capacity; David Nicholson, individually and in his official capacity; and Jack Dahlberg, individually and in his official capacity, Defendants.

Harry Moser, Plaintiff, v. Village of Mount Prospect and Tom Daley, individually and in his official capacity, Defendants.

No. 96 C 6027.

No. 98 C 7580.

United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division.

April 5, 2000.

Keith L. Hunt, Nancy A. Ostdiek, Hunt & Associates, P.C., Chicago, IL, for Javier Martinez, plaintiff.

Everette M. Hill, Jr., Richard T. Wimmer, Lance C. Malina, James Vincent Ferolo, Klein, Thorpe & Jenkins, Ltd., Chicago, IL, Laura Lee Scarry, Robbins, Schwartz, Nicholas, Lifton & Taylor, Ltd., Chicago, IL, Elizabeth Ann Knight, Kathryn M. Reidy, Knight, Hoppe, Fanning & Knight, Ltd., Des Plaines, IL, for Village of Mount Prospect, defendant.

Terry A. Ekl, Connolly, Ekl & Williams, P.C., Clarendon Hills, IL, for Ronald Pavlock, Jack Dahlberg, defendants.

Charles E. Hervas, James Gus Sotos, Kevin G. Kulling, Kimberly D. Fahrbach, Hervas, Sotos & Condon, P.C., Itasca, IL, for Tom Daley, defendant.

William W. Kurnik, Kurnik, Cipolla, Stephenson & Barasha, Arlington Heights, IL, for Dick Draffone, defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

CASTILLO, District Judge.

Our nation, throughout its history, has continually struggled with the issue of race. As we begin the twenty-first century, it is critical that our legal system assist in the elimination of all racial discrimination. We must constantly strive to ensure that race plays no role in the day-to-day operation of our justice system. These two lawsuits are reflective of some of the racial issues we must as a society address in our criminal justice system.

Currently pending before the Court are the parties' joint motion to approve their respective settlement agreements in these two lawsuits and their joint motions to dismiss both cases with prejudice.¹ For the reasons that follow, we approve the settlements and commend the parties for their efforts in addressing the critical issues presented in this litigation.

In Martinez v. Village of Mount Prospect, No. 96 C 6027, a Hispanic former police trainee accused the Village of Mount Prospect's Police Department of national origin employment discrimination. At trial, this Court, over objection, allowed Martinez to introduce significant evidence that the Police Department targeted Hispanic members of the community in an effort to meet various arrest quotas. Specifically, we allowed Martinez, as well as other present and former Mount Prospect officers and trainees, to testify that they were instructed by commanding officers to target Hispanic drivers for traffic stops. Additionally, we permitted Martinez to submit evidence regarding the disproportionately high percentage of traffic tickets received by Hispanic drivers as compared to their numbers in the community. We admitted this evidence because it is relevant to Martinez's claim that he was subjected to a hostile work environment because of his national origin and that the Mount Prospect Police Department had a widespread custom of discriminating against Hispanic people, including him. See Schwapp v. Town of Avon, 118 F.3d 106, 111 (2d Cir.1997) ("Schwapp's awareness that a supervisor ... told officers to target minorities for traffic stops could very well be relevant to Schwapp's reasonable perception of a hostile work environment.")

On January 19, 2000, this Court entered judgment in Martinez after the jury returned a verdict in favor of Martinez in the amount of $1,179,000 against Defendants Mount Prospect, Thomas Daley, Richard Draffone and David Nicholson.² Immediately after the jury's verdict, the Court announced in open court that it had drafted a letter (attached to this opinion as Appendix A) requesting the Department of Justice to conduct an investigation into racial profiling at the Mount Prospect Police Department. Importantly, the Court prepared this letter before the jury reached its verdict but did not publicly release the contents of the letter until after the jury's verdict was received in open court. The decision to refer the case to the Justice Department was based on our independent evaluation of the profiling evidence, which the Court found compelling.

In view of the jury's verdict and the trial evidence, this Court thereafter entered a temporary restraining order, (R. 142), in which we enjoined the Village, Thomas Daley, and Richard Draffone

from engaging in a custom, policy or practice of discriminating against the plaintiff or other Hispanic persons, and ... from directing, suggesting, ordering or otherwise communicating that any police officer should focus, concentrate, target, profile, or otherwise modify law enforcement efforts in any way on the sole basis of the national origin of any person.

This order was generally continued by agreement of the parties until the Court ruled on the various post-trial motions or the case was settled. (R. 159.)

In our second case, Moser v. Village of Mount Prospect, No. 98 C 7580, a Mount Prospect police officer accused the Village of retaliation after he supported Martinez's discrimination charges. Moser and another police officer's employment discrimination case against the Village, Medrano v. Village of Mount Prospect, No. 98 C 4638, were awaiting trial when the Martinez verdict was returned. Ultimately, with the able assistance of our colleague District Court Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer, all three plaintiffs—Martinez, Moser, and Medrano —entered into separate but dependent settlement agreements with the Village. In other words, each plaintiff has a separate agreement with the Village, but the agreements are void unless all three are approved by the Court.

As detailed in our letter to the Justice Department, this Court was deeply troubled by the evidence of racial profiling admitted in the Martinez case. Racial profiling of any kind is anathema to our criminal justice system because it eviscerates the core integrity that is necessary to operate that system effectively in our diverse democracy. Many respected legal scholars have closely analyzed the critical societal problems caused by racial profiling. See, e.g., David Cole, No EQUAL JUSTICE: RACE AND CLASS IN THE AMERICAN CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM (1999); Randall Kennedy, RACE, CRIME, AND THE LAW (1997); David A. Harris, The Stories, The Statistics, and the Law: Why "Driving While Black" Matters, 84 MINN.L.REV. 265 (1999); David Cole, Race, Policing, and the Future of Criminal Law, 26 HUM.RTS. 2 (Summer 1999) Dorothy E. Roberts, Foreword: Race, Vagueness, and the Social Meaning of Order-Maintenance Policing, 89 J.CRIM.L. & CRIMINOLOGY 775 (1999).

Professor Cole of the Georgetown Law Center, for example, points out that double standards based on race, such a profiling,

undermine law enforcement itself, because they breed resentment and alienation among minorities.... People who see the criminal justice system as fundamentally unfair will be less likely to cooperate with police, to testify as witnesses, to serve on juries, and to convict guilty defendants when they do serve. In addition, people who have lost respect for the law's legitimacy are more likely to break the law themselves.... Finally, the perception and reality of a fundamentally unfair criminal justice system contribute to broader racial divisions in society.

Cole, Race, Policing, 26 HUM.RTS. at 3. If we cannot believe that our nation's law enforcement officers will enforce the law in a racially neutral manner, then we will be left with a society where members of the minority community always view the actions of any police officer with great suspicion. See Harris, The Stories, 84 MINN. L.REV. at 268 ("Pretextual traffic stops aggravate years of accumulated feelings of injustice, resulting in deepening distrust and cynicism by African-Americans about police and the entire criminal justice system.").

The reverse will also be true because racial profiling is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Officers that engage in profiling will necessarily come into contact with law-breaking members of minority communities far more frequently than with law-breaking whites and thus will view the actions of minority civilians with a presumption of guilt. See, e.g., Harris, The Stories, 84 MINN.L.REV. at 268 ("Skin color becomes evidence, and race becomes a proxy for general criminal propensity."); Id. at 301 ("Put simply, there is a connection between where police look for contraband and where they find it."); Roberts, Foreword, 89 J.CRIM.L & CRIMINOLOGY at 818 ("[T]argeting Blacks for police surveillance results in higher rates of arrest, reinforcing the presumption of Black criminality. If police stopped and frisked whites as frequently as they do Blacks, white arrest rates would increase.").

Unfortunately, racially stereotypic "street" perceptions do not become eradicated when processed through our country's justice system; instead they are exacerbated. For example, targeting minority civilians for traffic stops distorts the sentences that they receive for other crimes because many traffic violations "count" when determining a convicted defendant's criminal history points. See USSG § 4A1.2(c); see also United States v. Hernandez, 160 F.3d 661, 669 (11th Cir.1998) ("Hernandez also should have received a criminal history point for his 1986 conviction for driving without a license."); United States v. Burke, 148 F.3d 832, 839 (7th Cir.1998) (affirming district court's addition of two criminal history points for the defendant's prior convictions for driving without a license and driving on a suspended license); United States v. Boyd, 146 F.3d 499, 502 (7th Cir.1998) (affirming district court's...