Bolden v. Richmond Police Department

Background

Amani Bolden sued the Richmond Police Department under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal law allowing claims for constitutional violations by state or local actors. The complaint described two incidents. In March 2022, an officer approached Bolden while he was working in a driveway, restrained and searched him, and searched a black Mercedes-Benz without a warrant or Bolden’s authorization after receiving a report that Bolden and a friend were waving a gun. In November 2022, Bolden asked the department to help enforce a protective order involving Kathleen Lopez. According to the complaint, the department said the alleged violations were not arrestable and told Bolden he would be arrested if he answered Lopez’s calls or responded to her messages.

Bolden asserted four claims: a general civil-rights claim involving privacy, the vehicle search, a false police report, and physical assault; a claim against the department for failure to train its officers; an excessive-force claim under the Fourth Amendment; and an unreasonable-search claim under the Fourth Amendment. The department moved to dismiss the first and second claims. It argued that the first claim duplicated the unreasonable-search claim and that the failure-to-train claim was inadequately pleaded. Alternatively, it asked the court to separate the failure-to-train claim from the other claims.

Court’s Analysis

The court held that the first claim was duplicative in part. To the extent it challenged the vehicle search, it repeated the separate unreasonable-search claim. To the extent it challenged the force used against Bolden, it repeated the excessive-force claim. The court therefore dismissed the first claim to those extents. It did not dismiss the claim to the extent it alleged an unreasonable seizure, which the court described as a wrongful or false arrest, because that theory was not asserted elsewhere in the complaint.

The court also granted the motion to dismiss the failure-to-train claim. A local government may be liable under § 1983 when an official policy or custom causes a constitutional violation, but it generally cannot be held responsible solely for the acts of its employees. For a failure-to-train claim, the plaintiff must plausibly allege deliberate indifference—that officials disregarded a known or obvious risk that inadequate training would cause constitutional violations. The court found that Bolden’s allegations about the vehicle search and the department’s handling of his complaints about Lopez were conclusory and did not show a factually similar, persistent, and widespread practice.

Disposition

The court granted the motion to dismiss in part. It dismissed the first claim, except to the extent it asserted wrongful arrest, and dismissed the second claim without prejudice. The court stated that Bolden could file an amended complaint by September 7, 2023, with a blackline comparison to the existing complaint. Because the failure-to-train claim was dismissed, the court denied the request to bifurcate that claim as moot; it also described the request as premature because individual defendants had not yet been named. Judge Laurel Beeler signed the order.