Opinion
Civil Action 24-0524
06-10-2024
DAZZMON D. SLEDGE v. RAYVILLE POLICE DEPT., ET AL.
SECTION P
JERRY EDWARDS, JR., JUDGE
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
KAYLA DYE MCCLUSKY UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
Plaintiff Dazzmon D. Sledge, who proceeds pro se, filed this proceeding on approximately April 19, 2024, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He names the following Defendants: Rayville Police Department, Richland Parish Sheriff's Department, unidentified officers, Officer Jeff Fields, and Officer William Boren. For reasons that follow, the Court should retain Plaintiff's unlawful stop and false arrest claims against Officer Jeff Fields. The Court should dismiss Plaintiff's remaining claims.
This matter has been referred to the undersigned for review, report, and recommendation under 28 U.S.C. § 636, and the standing orders of the Court.
Background
Plaintiff claims that on April 23, 2023, Officer Jeff Fields stopped his vehicle without reasonable suspicion and then arrested him without probable cause, charging him with improperly parking his vehicle on a roadway and disobeying a peace officer. [doc. #s 1, pp. 4, 5; 3, p. 2]. He maintains that he is not guilty. Id. at 5. Plaintiff states that “another party” paid his citations, but he maintains that an “officer took payment for the citations” from the other party without his consent. [doc. # 1, p. 5]. He suggests that he did not intend to admit guilt to the citations. Id. In amended pleading, however, Plaintiff states that his charges were dismissed on May 4, 2023. [doc. # 3, pp. 2-3, 4].
In an amended pleading, Plaintiff suggests that the date was April 26, 2023. [doc. # 3, p. 3].
Plaintiff claims that Officer William Boren “was an assisting officer.” [doc. # 3, p. 2]. Unidentified officers also “assisted in the arrest[.]” Id.
Plaintiff claims that “this is a possible racial profiling case” because Officer Fields lacked probable cause to arrest him. [doc. # 1, p. 5]. He claims he was “maliciously targeted.” [doc. # 3, p. 3]. He adds that he “is not sure as to why the officers harassed him[.]” [doc. # 1, p. 8].
Plaintiff claims that an officer “falsified legal documents while lying under oath as an officer of the law.” [doc. # 1, pp. 4, 7]. In an amended pleading, Plaintiff writes, “Legal documents were falsified to make me look like a criminal and then the same information was hidden from me to cover up the wrongful doings of sworn law enforcement agents.” [doc. # 3, p. 2].
Plaintiff claims: “There are signs of slander and defamation of character due to plaintiff's information being printed in the public paper stating the false charges brought against him. The false charges and illegal arrest are also on the world wide web for all to see.” [doc. # 1, pp. 4-5]. In his amended pleading, Plaintiff alleges: “My name was wrongfully printed in the local newspaper for crimes I did not commit. This incident threatens my livelihood and career by implying that I do not respect the law or law enforcement agents.” [doc. # 3, p. 2].
Plaintiff claims that his Miranda “rights were not read to him until he was taken to the police station.” [doc. # 1, p. 5].
Plaintiff seeks expungement, the retraction and correction of statements in the newspaper, an apology from all involved officers, a reprimand of all officers, and compensation. [doc. # 1, pp. 7-8].
Law and Analysis
1. Preliminary Screening
A complaint is frivolous when it “lacks an arguable basis either in law or in fact.” Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 325 (1989). A claim lacks an arguable basis in law when it is “based on an indisputably meritless legal theory.” Id. at 327. Courts are also afforded the unusual power to pierce the veil of the factual allegations and dismiss those claims whose factual contentions are clearly baseless. Id.
A complaint fails to state a claim on which relief may be granted when it fails to plead “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007); accord Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009). A claim is facially plausible when it contains sufficient factual content for the court “to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678 (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570). Plausibility does not equate to possibility or probability; it lies somewhere in between. Id. Plausibility simply calls for enough factual allegations to raise a reasonable expectation that discovery will reveal evidence to support the elements of the claim. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556.
Assessing whether a complaint states a plausible claim for relief is a “context-specific task that requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial experience and common sense.” Iqbal, supra. A well-pled complaint may proceed even if it strikes the court that actual proof of the asserted facts is improbable and that recovery is unlikely. Twombly, supra.
In making this determination, the court must assume that all the plaintiff's factual allegations are true. Bradley v. Puckett, 157 F.3d 1022, 1025 (5th Cir. 1998). However, the same presumption does not extend to legal conclusions. Iqbal, supra. A pleading comprised of “labels and conclusions” or “a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action” does not satisfy Rule 8. Id. A complaint fails to state a claim where its factual allegations do not “raise a right to relief above the speculative level.” Montoya v. FedEx Ground Package Sys., Inc., 614 F.3d 145, 148 (5th Cir. 2010) (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555). “[U]nadorned, the-defendant unlawfully-harmed-me accusation[s]” will not suffice. Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 677.
“[P]laintiffs must allege facts that support the elements of the cause of action in order to make out a valid claim.” City of Clinton, Ark. v. Pilgrim's Pride Corp, 632 F.3d 148, 152-53 (5th Cir. 2010). Courts are “not free to speculate that the plaintiff ‘might' be able to state a claim if given yet another opportunity to add more facts to the complaint.” Macias v. Raul A. (Unknown) Badge No. 153, 23 F.3d 94, 97 (5th Cir. 1994).
A hearing need not be conducted for every pro se complaint. Wilson v. Barrientos, 926 F.2d 480, 483 n.4 (5th Cir. 1991).
“To state a section 1983 claim, a plaintiff must (1) allege a violation of a right secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States and (2) demonstrate that the alleged deprivation was committed by a person acting under color of state law.” Whitley v. Hanna, 726 F.3d 631, 638 (5th Cir. 2013) (internal quotation marks omitted). Consistent with the standard above, a “[S]ection 1983 complaint must state specific facts, not simply legal and constitutional conclusions.” Fee v. Herndon, 900 F.2d 804, 807 (5th Cir. 1990).
2. Unlawful Stop and False Arrest
Plaintiff claims that on April 23 or 26, 2023, Officer Jeff Fields stopped his vehicle without reasonable suspicion and then arrested him without probable cause, charging him with improperly parking his vehicle on a roadway and disobeying a peace officer. [doc. #s 1, pp. 4, 5; 3, p. 2-3].
Plaintiff explains that Officer Fields first “dangerously tailed” him, intending “to orchestrate a negative situation ....” [doc. # 1, p. 4]. He writes, “If the officer believed that a crime had been committed, was in the process of being committed, or was going to be committed, the officer would have alerted the plaintiff that he was in fact an officer of the law before both of their vehicles halted on N. Julia Street in Rayville, Louisiana.” Id. at 5. “The officer informed the plaintiff that he followed him dangerously close because the car he was driving fit the description of the vehicle that a warranted female suspect was driving. Although the officer stated that he talked to the suspect's family and knew the plaintiff's identity prior to their interaction, the officer still vehicularly harassed the plaintiff.” Id.
While Plaintiff's pleadings are not a model of clarity, the Court should, construing the allegations liberally and in Plaintiff's favor, retain his claims that Officer Fields lacked reasonable suspicion to conduct a traffic stop and lacked probable cause to arrest him. Plaintiff appears to claim that Fields did not reasonably suspect (i) that Plaintiff, a male, was the female Fields was looking for and (ii) that Plaintiff committed any other crime. Further, Plaintiff maintains that, after the stop, he did not disobey any orders and that, consequently, Fields lacked probable cause to arrest him for disobeying a peace officer. Plaintiff also suggests that Fields lacked probable cause to arrest him for improperly parking on a roadway, thinly suggesting that Fields forced him to park because Fields did not identify himself as an officer and was “dangerously tailing” Plaintiff, intending to “orchestrate a negative situation.”
3. Assisting Arrest
Plaintiff claims that Officer William Boren “was an assisting officer.” [doc. # 3, p. 2]. Unidentified officers also “assisted in the arrest by physically assisting with handcuffs, searching [Plaintiff's] body, and searching [his] belongings.” Id.
Plaintiff does not appear to claim that officers conducted an unlawful search. Rather, he appears to only provide context, stating that officers conducted searches (as opposed to an unlawful searches).
Plaintiff's allegations, however, are devoid of necessary detail and are therefore too vague to amount to plausible false arrest claims. He writes that Officer Boren and unidentified officers assisted in the arrest, but he does not detail the nature of this assistance. He notes that unidentified officers assisted with handcuffs, but he does not elaborate. Ultimately, Plaintiff's false arrest claims against Boren and unidentified officers are conclusory and do not sufficiently detail these defendants' personal involvement; the Court should dismiss these claims.
See Goldman v. Williams, 101 F.Supp.3d 620, 657 (S.D. Tex. 2015) (dismissing a claim against a defendant where the defendant's “only involvement in Plaintiff's arrest was to assist Defendant Williams in handcuffing Plaintiff and in escorting her to Defendant Williams' patrol unit.”); Hayes v. Dep't of Pub. Safety & Corr., 2017 WL 5184430, at *4 (W.D. La. Nov. 7, 2017) (“Deputy McNutt only assisted in handcuffing Mr. Hayes, he did not initiate the arrest. Merely assisting another officer with placing handcuffs on Mr. Hayes is not sufficient to show false arrest and/or false imprisonment. The court finds that neither of these Defendants can be held liable for false arrest and/or false imprisonment.”); Ferguson v. Dunn, 2017 WL 9286964, at *4 (E.D. Tex. 2017) (“The allegation that Holloway ‘aided and assisted' Dunn, absent more, is simply insufficient to establish Holloway's personal involvement in Ferguson's arrest.”); Minor v. Mississippi Dep't of Pub. Safety, 2020 WL 1877798, at *2 (N.D. Miss. Apr. 15, 2020) (finding, where the plaintiff alleged that “unidentified members of [a] police department ‘assisted'” in his false arrest, that the “plaintiff has not satisfied even the threshold requirement of showing a violation of his constitutional rights attributable to the unnamed Coldwater police officers.”); Goodarzi v. Hartzog, 2014 WL 722109, at *6 (S.D. Tex. Feb. 21, 2014) (“To state, no less prove, such a claim, Plaintiff must allege facts showing that each defendant clearly directed or requested that Goodarzi be arrested. Just as she failed to allege each Defendant's individual behavior contributed to the detention, she fails to specify the role of each in instigating the arrest.”); Alexander v. Carter for Byrd, 733 Fed.Appx. 256, 267 (6th Cir. 2018) (“[A]n officer's ‘mere presence' at the scene of an arrest fails to establish § 1983 liability.”).
4. Racial Profiling
Plaintiff claims that “this is a possible racial profiling case” because Officer Fields lacked probable cause to arrest him. [doc. # 1, p. 5]. He claims he was “maliciously targeted.” [doc. # 3, p. 3]. He adds that he “is not sure as to why the officers harassed him[.]” [doc. # 1, p. 8].
“[T]he Constitution prohibits selective enforcement of the law based on considerations such as race.” Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 813 (1996). “[T]he constitutional basis for objecting to intentionally discriminatory application of laws is the Equal Protection Clause.” Id. Claims of racially selective law enforcement “draw on ordinary equal protection standards.” See U.S. v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456, 465 (1996) (internal quotation marks omitted); Marshall v. Columbia Lea Reg'l Hosp., 345 F.3d 1157, 1168 (10th Cir. 2003). “To state a claim of racial discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause and section 1983, the plaintiff must allege and prove that [he] received treatment different from that received by similarly situated individuals and that the unequal treatment stemmed from a discriminatory intent.” Bowlby v. City of Aberdeen, 681 F.3d 215, 227 (5th Cir. 2012) (quoting Priester v. Lowndes Cty., 354 F.3d 414, 424 (5th Cir. 2004) (internal quotation marks omitted)).
Here, Plaintiff does not even allege that he received treatment different from others. See Villarreal v. City of Laredo, Texas, 94 F.4th 374, 398 (5th Cir. 2024) (“Villarreal's Fourteenth Amendment selective enforcement claim likewise required her to identify ‘examples' of similarly situated individuals who were nonetheless treated differently.... Villarreal did not provide even one example of an individual similarly situated to her in all relevant respects who was not arrested for his conduct. This claim fails.”). Further, Plaintiff's claim is entirely speculative. He alleges, for instance, that it is “possible” that that Fields engaged in racial profiling. And he alleges somewhat conversely and equivocally that he is “not sure” why officers harassed him. As above, a complaint fails to state a claim where its factual allegations do not “raise a right to relief above the speculative level.” In addition, “a plaintiff's ‘subjective belief of discrimination, however genuine, [cannot] be the basis of judicial relief.'” Stout v. Vincent, 717 Fed.Appx. 468, 472 (5th Cir. 2018) (quoting Elliott v. Grp. Med. & Surgical Serv., 714 F.2d 556, 567 (5th Cir. 1983)).
In Stout, the Court found that “evidence fails to show that there is a genuine issue for trial regarding whether [an officer] treated them unequally and acted with discriminatory intent” where the appellants only alleged or provided evidence that “they, a black couple, were detained when driving a nice car on a Mississippi road by an officer who did not write them a ticket and who could not remember their purpose for visiting the state.” Stout, 717 Fed.Appx. at 473.
The Court should dismiss these claims.
5. Falsified Legal Documents
Plaintiff claims that an officer “falsified legal documents while lying under oath as an officer of the law.” [doc. # 1, pp. 4, 7]. Through context, he intimates that he is referring to Officer Fields. In an amended pleading, he writes, “Legal documents were falsified to make me look like a criminal and then the same information was hidden from me to cover up the wrongful doings of sworn law enforcement agents.” [doc. # 3, p. 2].
As above, a complaint fails to state a claim on which relief may be granted when it fails to plead “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570. A civil rights plaintiff must support his claims with specific facts demonstrating a constitutional deprivation and may not simply rely on conclusory allegations. Ashcroft, 556 U.S. at 662.
Here, Plaintiff's claims are too conclusory to constitute a plausible claim. For instance, he claims that Fields falsified legal documents and lied under oath, but he does not identify or describe the document, the falsehood, or the lie. Likewise, he claims that information was hidden from him, but he does not specify the information to which he refers. To the extent he alleges fraud, he does not “state with particularity the circumstances constituting fraud[.]” FED. R. CIV. P. 9(b). The Court should dismiss these claims.
6. Entities Unamenable to Suit
Plaintiff names the Rayville Police Department and the Richland Parish Sheriff's Department as defendants.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 17(b)(3) provides that the “[c]apacity to sue or be sued is determined . . . by the law of the state where the court is located ....” Under Louisiana law, an entity must qualify as a “juridical person,” which is an “entity to which the law attributes personality, such as a corporation or a partnership.” LA. CIV. CODE art. 24.
Here, these Defendants do not qualify as juridical persons. See Cozzo v. Tangipahoa Parish Council-President Government, 279 F.3d 273, 283 (5th Cir. 2002) (“[A] sheriff's office is not a legal entity capable of being sued ....”); Aucoin v. Terrebonne Par. Sheriff's Off., 2022 WL 16657429, at *1 (5th Cir. Nov. 3, 2022). Accordingly, the Court should dismiss Plaintiff's claims against the Rayville Police Department and the Richland Parish Sheriff's Department.
7. Defamation
Plaintiff claims: “There are signs of slander and defamation of character due to plaintiff's information being printed in the public paper stating the false charges brought against him. The false charges and illegal arrest are also on the world wide web for all to see.” [doc. # 1, pp. 4-5]. In his amended pleading, Plaintiff alleges: “My name was wrongfully printed in the local newspaper for crimes I did not commit. This incident threatens my livelihood and career by implying that I do not respect the law or law enforcement agents.” [doc. # 3, p. 2].
Section 1983 provides in relevant part: “Every person who . . . subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States . . . to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured ....” 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (emphasis added). If a person is not personally involved, then, a fortiori, he cannot subject another to, or cause, a deprivation of constitutional rights. See Thompson v. Steele, 709 F.2d 381, 382 (5th Cir. 1983) (“Personal involvement is an essential element of a civil rights cause of action.”).
Here, Plaintiff does sufficiently identify “any particular defendant's personal involvement in conduct that caused constitutional deprivation.” See Alderson v. Concordia Par. Corr. Facility, 848 F.3d 415, 421 (5th Cir. 2017) (dismissing a claim that supervisory officials failed to correctly house the plaintiff because despite the magistrate judge's instruction to “state what each defendant did[,]” the plaintiff did not identify a responsible defendant). To the extent he faults multiple individuals or entities, the Court disregards bare assertions of collective responsibility unsupported by concrete factual allegations. See Martinez v. City of N. Richland Hills, 846 Fed.Appx. 238, 243 (5th Cir. 2021); Jones v. Hosemann, 812 Fed.Appx. 235, 238-39 (5th Cir. 2020) (“It is not enough for a plaintiff to simply allege that something unconstitutional happened to him. The plaintiff must plead that each defendant individually engaged in actions that caused the unconstitutional harm.”).
Accordingly, the Court should dismiss these claims.
8. Reading Miranda Rights
Plaintiff claims that his Miranda “rights were not read to him until he was taken to the police station.” [doc. # 1, p. 5].
The officer's alleged failure to read Miranda warnings, however, did not violate Plaintiff's constitutional rights and “cannot be grounds for a § 1983 action.” Chavez v. Martinez, 538 U.S. 760, 772 (2003); see Foster v. Carroll Cty., 502 Fed.Appx. 356, 358 (5th Cir. 2012). A “violation of the Miranda rule[]” does not provide “a basis for a claim under § 1983.” Vega v. Tekoh, 597 U.S. 134, 141 (2022). The Court should dismiss this claim.
Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 439 (1966).
Recommendation
For the reasons above, IT IS RECOMMENDED that-excepting Plaintiff Dazzmon D. Sledge's unlawful stop and false arrest claims against Officer Jeff Fields-Plaintiff's claims be DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE as legally frivolous and for failing to state claims on which relief may be granted.
Under the provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(C) and Rule 72(b), parties aggrieved by this recommendation have fourteen (14) days from service of this Report and Recommendation to file specific, written objections with the Clerk of Court. A party may respond to another party's objections within fourteen (14) days after being served with a copy of any objections or response to the district judge at the time of filing.
Failure to file written objections to the proposed factual findings and/or the proposed legal conclusions reflected in this Report and Recommendation within fourteen (14) days following the date of its service, or within the time frame authorized by Fed.R.Civ.P. 6(b), shall bar an aggrieved party from attacking either the factual findings or the legal conclusions accepted by the District Court, except upon grounds of plain error. See Douglass v. United Services Automobile Association , 79 F.3d 1415 (5th Cir. 1996).