Patel v. City of Madison, No. 18-12061
| Decision Date | 27 May 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 18-12061 |
| Citation | 959 F.3d 1330 |
| Parties | Sureshbhai PATEL, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. CITY OF MADISON, ALABAMA, Eric Parker, Defendants - Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
Henry F. Sherrod, III, Henry F. Sherrod III, PC, Florence, AL, for Plaintiff-Appellee
Allen L. Anderson, Allison B. Chandler, Robert B. Tuten, Tuten Law Offices, Huntsville, AL, for Defendant-Appellant Eric Parker
David J. Canupp, J. Bradley Emmons, Lanier Ford Shaver & Payne, PC, Huntsville, AL, for Defendant-Appellant City of Madison, Alabama
Before ROSENBAUM, BRANCH, and HIGGINBOTHAM,* Circuit Judges.
It’s long been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Of course, people might reasonably differ on what those words are.1 That’s the problem here.
In this case, the video recordings from two police dashboard cameras are unable to definitively resolve the parties’ dispute about whether Plaintiff-Appellee Sureshbhai Patel resisted Defendant-Appellant Officer Eric Parker’s efforts to secure and frisk him. Parker contends Patel’s alleged resistance prompted Parker to sweep Patel’s legs out from under him and throw him to the ground, ultimately permanently partially paralyzing him. For his part, Patel insists that he never resisted Parker, and Parker’s actions violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of excessive force.
Because neither the Court nor the video recordings can resolve these diametrically opposed accounts of what happened, the district court correctly concluded that summary judgment was not appropriate. So for the reasons set forth below, we affirm the district court’s order.
On the morning of February 6, 2015, Jacob Maples thought he spotted an unfamiliar man roaming his street—Hardiman Place Lane—and possibly casing houses. So Maples phoned the Police Department at Defendant-Appellant City of Madison, Alabama (the "City"). He gave the dispatcher his name, address, and phone number and said he saw a skinny black man wearing a white or light-colored sweater, jeans, and a toboggan hat,2 in the driveway at 148 Hardiman Place Lane. Maples also advised the dispatcher that the man was "walking around close to the garage." Then Maples asked the dispatcher to send "somebody to talk to [the unidentified man]."
The dispatcher issued a "check subject call" with the man’s description and advised that the man was headed north on Hardiman Place. As part of the announcement, the dispatcher also said the man was "walking in the yards, standing by the driveways, and looking around the garages."
As it happened, Madison Officer Eric Parker was training Officer Andrew Slaughter in the vicinity of Hardiman Place Lane that day. When the dispatcher’s "check subject" call came over the radio, the two officers headed over to Hardiman Place Lane to investigate. From his experience and training, Parker thought Hardiman Place Lane was a high-crime area and, more generally, he knew that burglars sometimes commit their crimes in the mid-morning after most people have left for work.
Meanwhile, Patel was going about his business, enjoying the cooler weather with a morning walk around the Hardiman Place Lane neighborhood. Patel had recently moved to his son’s house at 148 Hardiman Place Lane after retiring from farming in his native Gujarati, India. Then 57 years old, Patel had emigrated to Madison about a week earlier to help raise his grandchildren. He spoke almost no English, having been raised in an area of India that primarily spoke Gujarati.
While Patel was on his walk, Parker and Slaughter arrived at Hardiman Place Lane and spotted Patel on the sidewalk. They thought Patel mostly matched the description Maples had provided, since Patel was wearing a white sweater, jeans, and a toboggan hat. And he was skinny like Maples said, weighing only 115 pounds. Two differences, of course, were that Patel was neither black nor in his thirties, but instead, was a 57-year old Indian grandfather. Parker decided to investigate.
Parker and Slaughter pulled their cruiser up behind Patel. Slaughter switched on the cruiser’s dashboard camera, so the system began recording audio and video. The recording from that camera shows the following events.
Parker and Slaughter got out of their cruiser and approached Patel from behind. Slaughter said, "Hi, Bud."
Patel briefly looked back at them and waved. Then he continued walking.
Slaughter followed up, calling after Patel, and "What’s going on, Sir?"
In response, Patel waved and walked towards the officers, whom he recognized as officers from the way they were dressed. As he walked, Patel said to Parker and Slaughter, "India" and "no English."
Then Patel took two steps away from the officers, and again, Slaughter said, "Come here." Once again, Patel answered, "India" and "no English."
Slaughter responded, Patel answered, "My house, my house, 148, walking, India," and pointed off in the direction that he was headed.
Patel then walked about seven steps away from the officers, towards his residence. Slaughter told Patel to stop and said, The officers walked the seven steps to reach Patel and asked him for his identification. Patel again responded with "no English" and "India." Parker repeated Patel’s statement, "No English."
Then Slaughter asked Patel whether he lived in the neighborhood, what his address was, and where he was going. Patel answered Slaughter’s question about where he was going by pointing off towards his son’s house again, and he took approximately nine more steps that way. During the encounter, when Patel’s hands are visible on the video recording, they can be seen moving at his midsection and by his sides. Parker, though, later said Patel "kept reaching in his pockets" during their interaction.
At this point of the incident, Parker and Slaughter closed the nine steps between themselves and Patel. Parker took over the encounter and said, "Sir, Sir, come here." Patel stopped and turned towards the officers. Then Parker took ahold of Patel’s hands and held them behind Patel’s back, knuckles to knuckles. With Patel’s hands secure, Parker began to frisk Patel’s right pocket with his left hand while holding onto Patel’s index fingers with his right.
Around this time, Officer Spence pulled up to the scene in his cruiser. He parked his car facing Parker’s vehicle, so in addition to the video taken by Parker’s dashboard camera, Spence’s dashboard camera captured video from this point on, from the opposite angle.
Returning to the moments after Parker put Patel’s hands behind his back, Patel attested that while that was happening, Patel did not move. Parker restrained both of Patel’s hands continuously, according to Patel, and the officers searched both Patel’s pockets.
Parker did not agree with Patel’s recollection. According to Parker, Patel pulled his left hand free four times. Then, Parker recounted, he tried to pat down one of Patel’s pockets, but he was not able to do so because Patel was pulling away. Parker also asserted that after he had Patel’s hands behind Patel’s back, Patel stepped forward, turned his head back towards the officers, and moved his shoulder.
A review of the video footage does little to resolve the dispute concerning whether Patel pulled his hands away from his back, since the officers’ bodies blocked one camera’s view of Patel’s hands during this time, and the other camera’s recording is very grainy and distant.3 As a result, it is impossible to observe forceful wrenching, let alone movements, by Patel. But the video does show that after Parker put Patel’s hands behind his back, Parker appeared to frisk Patel’s right leg, from the pocket to the shoe.
Then Parker commanded, Patel did not respond, and movement by Patel is not visible on the video recordings.
Parker next appeared to pat down Patel’s left pants pocket for a few seconds. As for Patel’s alleged step forward, immediately after Parker apparently frisked Patel’s left pocket, the video footage shows that Patel did not take a step forward but rather, in what could be construed as a move to maintain his balance, adjusted his foot what looks like at most an inch to the side. Finally, when the video is slowed down to quarter-speed, the only detectable movement beyond this appears to be that Patel turned his head halfway towards Parker and Spence as Spence arrived in his cruiser.
Immediately after this, Parker took Patel to the ground, using his left leg to sweep Patel’s left leg out from under him, even though Parker admitted he did not know how to perform a leg sweep. As Patel’s legs flew up and back behind him and his shoe flew off, Patel recalled, Parker continued to hold Patel’s hands behind Patel’s back. As a result, Patel hit the ground hard, face and left shoulder first.
Soon after Patel was on the ground, Spence walked up to the scene. As Spence arrived, he thought Patel "appeared to be in his 70s."
With Patel on the ground, Parker got on his hands and knees on top of Patel, and yelled, "Stop trying to jerk away from me!" Patel, though, did not seem in the video footage to be jerking away from Parker. Rather, Spence observed that blood ran from Patel’s nose, and Patel "appeared to be out of it," "drool[ing]" with his head "lolled." As Spence approached, Parker or Slaughter said to him about Patel, "He don’t speak a lick of English."
Then the officers tried to stand Patel up, but Patel had no control over his lower extremities. Parker radioed for back-up and said that Patel was an "older Indian male" who "doesn’t speak English."
Patel was transported by ambulance to the hospital for treatment.
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