Duffie v. City of Lincoln, No. 15-2431 (8th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseAfter the LPD conducted a high-risk traffic stop of plaintiff, he filed suit against the City and three officers involved in the stop under 42 U.S.C. 1983 for deprivation of his constitutional rights. The district court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. In this case, an officer relied on an incident report that did not contain information sufficient to create reasonable suspicion that plaintiff had already, was, or was about to commit a crime; Nebraska law permits individuals who are at least 18 years old to open carry handguns in public; the City does not restrict an individual's right to open carry except in certain locations; and the mere report of a person with a handgun is insufficient to create reasonable suspicion. The court concluded that an objectively reasonable officer could not reliably conclude that the young man described in the report could not legally possess a firearm. The incident report also did not adequately make out a case that the young man committed assault; the officers' reports reflect that they were responding to the display of a weapon, not a threat against the clerk; and an objectively reasonable police officer would not mistake a 58-year-old bald, double amputee, male for a young adult with hair. Therefore, the court concluded that plaintiff sufficiently alleges a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. Because the district court erred in granting the officers qualified immunity, the court reversed and remanded for further proceedings.
Court Description: Smith, Author, with Shepherd and Kelly, Circuit Judges] Civil case - Civil Rights. The district court erred in granting defendants' motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity because the report on which the officers stopped plaintiff did not contain information sufficient to create a reasonable suspicion that plaintiff had or was about to commit a crime; under Nebraska law which permits a person to carry a handgun in open view, an objectively reasonable officer could not reliably conclude that the young man described in the incident report to police could not legally possess a firearm; nor did the convenience store clerk's report make out a case that the young man committed an assault; further, whatever suspicion the officer possessed decreased when placed in the context of his stop of plaintiff as an objectively reasonable officer would not mistake the 58-year-old bald plaintiff for the young man with short hair in the report; as a result, the defendant officers involved in the stop were not entitled to qualified immunity. Judge Shepherd, dissenting.
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