Ching v. City of Minneapolis

Background

Florine K. Ching, as trustee for the heirs of Travis Jordan, brought claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and Minnesota tort law against the City of Minneapolis, Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, and Minneapolis Police Officers Neal Walsh and Ryan Keyes. The claims arose from the officers’ fatal shooting of Jordan outside his mother’s home.

According to the amended complaint, Jordan’s girlfriend told a 911 operator that Jordan was suicidal, that he did not own a gun, and that he was alone at his mother’s house. The operator nevertheless incorrectly told police that Jordan was trying to buy a gun. Walsh and Keyes arrived without an electronic-control device or beanbag gun. After Jordan refused to speak with them, Keyes saw him holding a knife. Jordan came outside, walked slowly toward Walsh with his arms at his sides, and did not raise the knife. Walsh fired three shots, Jordan fell and the knife dropped, and Walsh then fired four more shots. Keyes fired once, but the complaint did not allege that Keyes’s bullet hit Jordan.

Rule 12(c) Record

The defendants moved for judgment on the pleadings under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(c). The court applied the same standard used for a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. It accepted well-pleaded factual allegations as true and drew reasonable inferences for Ching.

The court considered the body-camera videos because their authenticity and completeness were not disputed and the videos were treated as embraced by the pleadings. It did not consider the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension report for the truth of its narrative and analysis because doing so would improperly rely on material outside the pleadings at this stage.

Officer Walsh and Excessive Force

The court held that the complaint plausibly alleged that Walsh violated the Fourth Amendment by using objectively unreasonable deadly force. The court separately analyzed Walsh’s initial shots and his later shots after Jordan fell and dropped the knife.

As to the initial shots, the court found the question close but concluded that, accepting the complaint’s allegations and reasonable inferences, a jury could find that Jordan did not pose an immediate and substantial threat. Relevant allegations included that Jordan was not suspected of a crime, was known to be suicidal, was outside striking distance, walked slowly toward the officers, kept his arms at his sides, and never raised the knife. The court granted the motion as to Walsh’s initial use of deadly force because qualified immunity applied: existing precedent did not clearly establish that the initial shooting was unlawful on these facts.

As to the later shots, the court concluded that the complaint plausibly alleged a constitutional violation. Deadly force that is reasonable while an immediate threat exists is no longer reasonable once the threat has ended. The complaint alleged that Jordan had fallen and dropped the knife before Walsh lowered his weapon and fired four more shots. The court found that the body-camera videos did not establish as a matter of law that the threat remained immediate. It also held that Walsh had not shown entitlement to qualified immunity on the face of the complaint because existing precedent clearly established that an officer may not continue using deadly force after the immediate threat has passed.

Officer Keyes

The court granted the motion as to the § 1983 claim against Keyes. Although the complaint alleged that Keyes fired one shot, it did not allege that the shot hit Jordan. Read as a whole, the complaint specifically attributed all seven shots that hit Jordan to Walsh. The court therefore found no plausible allegation that Keyes seized Jordan, which is required for an excessive-force claim under § 1983.

The court also found that the complaint did not plausibly allege that Keyes committed the asserted battery or wrongful-death claims because those claims required an alleged contact with Jordan. The assault claim also failed because the complaint’s conclusory allegation that Jordan reasonably feared bodily harm was unsupported and conflicted with allegations that he wanted the officers to shoot him and repeatedly said, “let’s do this” and “just do it.”

State-Law Claims Against Walsh

The court held that Walsh was not entitled to official immunity on the Minnesota state-law claims. Under Minnesota law, official immunity generally protects discretionary law-enforcement decisions unless the officer acted willfully or maliciously. Because the complaint plausibly alleged that a reasonable officer in Walsh’s position would know that the continued shooting was unlawful, the court declined to grant official immunity to Walsh at this stage.

Claims Against the City and Chief Arradondo

Ching brought municipal-liability claims against the City and Chief Arradondo under § 1983. The claims relied on an official-policy theory involving the lack of less-lethal equipment and the policies governing the information 911 operators asked for and relayed to officers.

The court granted the motions as to these claims. It found that the complaint did not plausibly allege that the lack of an electronic-control device or other less-lethal equipment made constitutional violations highly predictable or that the policy had caused other constitutional violations. It also found that the complaint did not plausibly allege that the 911 policies caused the alleged constitutional deprivation. The complaint alleged that the dispatcher incorrectly relayed information, but it did not allege that the policy required dispatchers to provide materially incorrect information.

Order

The court ordered that the defendants’ motions for judgment on the pleadings were granted as to all claims against Officer Keyes, the City of Minneapolis, and Chief Arradondo, and those defendants were dismissed. The motions were granted as to Walsh’s claim concerning his initial use of deadly force. The motions were denied as to the claim that Walsh continued using deadly force after a reasonable officer would have realized that deadly force violated Jordan’s constitutional rights.