A Chicago man can continue part of his federal lawsuit against the city alleging police violated his Fourth Amendment rights by questioning him or detaining him more than 60 times since 2006, which he attributes to a case of mistaken identity.
In a complaint filed in March, Darren Cole, 50, said Chicago police officers were looking not for him, but for Darren H. Cole, who has an outstanding warrant against him. Of the 60 stops he recounted in the past 15 years, at least 10 resulted in officers taking Cole to precinct stations. Officers frequently applied handcuffs. In multiple instances an officer held him at gunpoint. In another, Cole alleged an officer punched him in the mouth.
Cole said after his first arrest, during which officers held him for four hours, he returned to the 11th District and asked the front desk officers how to prevent a recurrence. They suggested he always travel with a drivers license, proof of insurance and a Social Security card. He later carried letters from a Chicago Police sergeant and Marion County sheriff indicating he was not the subject of the warrant.
Sheila Bedi
| Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
The city argued Cole’s complaint was outdated because most of the allegations involved incidents from far outside the two-year statutory window, which only went back as far as March 25, 2019, two years before Cole’s lawsuit. Cole contended his entire history with the police department constitutes an ongoing violation.
On that point, Rowland sided with the city, writing Cole “knew each time that the officers wrongly detained him, as he was not the subject of the arrest warrant precipitating the detentions. Therefore, each detention was independently actionable and cannot form the basis of a continuing violation.”
The city also argued Cole failed to make a valid allegation of a Fourth Amendment violation because the officers who stopped him had probable cause to initiate an arrest. Here Rowland sided with Cole, finding the record didn’t allow her to determine if the officers in each instance had probable cause. Even so, the motion to dismiss failed because Cole specifically alleged a lack of probable cause, the judge said, and at this stage she has to consider his allegations true.
“For instance, the complaint alleges that CPD officers stopped plaintiff in April 2019 and informed him that his license plate ‘was flagged as belonging to a person with an outstanding warrant’; the officers, moreover, continued to hold plaintiff at gunpoint even after he showed them documentation proving he was not the correct person,” Rowland wrote. “These facts plausibly establish that the CPD officers did not reasonably believe that plaintiff had committed or was committing a crime.”
To prevail at a trial, Rowland wrote, Cole would need to prove the existence of a formal policy causing his situation, rather than random chance. But she disagreed with the city’s request to dismiss because Cole didn’t make allegations of other people placed in similar circumstances.
Rowland noted Cole’s allegations included “widespread practices” of inadequate data management and taking other steps to ensure correct suspect identity before engaging in prolonged detention. He also said the CPD’s information database, CLEAR, was ineffective at protecting against unconstitutional detention as a result of mistaken identity. The city blamed an Illinois State Police “intrastate warrant record keeping system." But Rowland said that line of defense is more appropriate later in the proceedings.
Although Rowland will allow only allegations within the proper timeframe to support Cole’s claim, she also granted him leave to amend the complaint to add evidence concerning claims regarding CPD’s records management. That amendment is due Jan. 7, with a city response to come by Jan. 28.
Cole has been represented in the case by attorneys Sheila A. Bedi, of the Community Justice Civil Rights Clinic at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, in Chicago, and Daniel Massoglia, of First Defense Legal Aid, of Chicago.
The city is represented by attorneys with its Department of Law.