UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS

EASTERN DIVISION

EDUARDO G. VELEZ SR., ) 

 ) 

Plaintiff, ) 

) No. 20 C 4239 

 v. ) 

) Judge Sara L. Ellis 

CHICAGO POLICE OFFICERS CESAR ) 

KURI, STAR NO. 16202, BRIAN MCHALE, ) 

STAR NO. 8721, DUCAR, ALEJANDRO ) 

SANCHEZ, STAR NO. 2141, RICKY ) 

HUGHES, STAR NO. 8666, GERALD LEE, ) 

STAR NO. 15949, FEDERICO ) 

ANDAVERDE, STAR NO. 2530; CITY OF ) 

CHICAGO, ) 

) 

Defendants. ) 

 

OPINION AND ORDER

Defendant Chicago Police Officers Cesar Kuri, Brian McHale, Alejandro Sanchez, Ricky 

Hughes, Gerald Lee, and Federico Andaverde (collectively, the “Defendant Officers”) executed a 

search warrant at a multi-unit residence that Plaintiff Eduardo G. Velez, Sr. owns. The 

Defendant Officers and Defendant Ducar took possession of cash seized from a safe in Velez’s 

basement apartment. Although the Defendant Officers and Ducar ultimately returned a portion 

of the seized funds to Velez, Velez filed this lawsuit against them under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, 

alleging that the Defendant Officers unreasonably entered into his apartment and unreasonably 

seized his money. In his third amended complaint, Velez also brings a claim against Defendant 

City of Chicago (the “City”), seeking to hold the City liable under Monell v. Department of 

Social Services of New York, 436 U.S. 658, 694 (1978). The City has filed a motion to dismiss

Velez’s Monell claim. Because Velez has not sufficiently pleaded facts to support his Monell

claim, the Court grants the City’s motion. 

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BACKGROUND1

Velez owns a multi-unit building at 9517 S. Exchange, Chicago, Illinois, where he lives 

in the basement apartment. On May 18, 2020, while Velez was not at home, the Defendant 

Officers executed a search warrant at the building. The Defendant Officers searched Velez’s 

apartment, despite not having legal cause to do so. Although they did not arrest Velez for any 

crime, they did seize money they found in a safe in Velez’s apartment. The Defendant Officers 

and Ducar later notified Velez that the Chicago Police Department (“CPD”) had seized his 

money. On October 7, 2020, a CPD officer with the asset forfeiture unit sent Velez a letter 

offering to return $62,980, an amount less than that seized from Velez’s safe on May 18. 

The Defendant Officers were members of CPD’s postal interdiction team. This team 

locates and searches suspicious boxes and packages delivered through the mail, Federal Express, 

and UPS. Upon locating a suspicious package, the team conducts further investigation that often 

leads to a search warrant of the package. If the search reveals the package contains contraband, 

the team then obtains a search warrant for the package’s destination. In obtaining the search 

warrant for the destination residence, the team requests permission to search not only the box but 

also “any other substances, proof of residency, all narcotics paraphernalia, all narcotics records 

from these transactions.” Doc. 56 ¶ 39. The team places a tracking device in the box, and an 

undercover officer delivers the box to the residence by posing as a delivery person. Officers then 

execute the search warrant, searching the entire residence even if they quickly locate the 

package. 

1 The Court takes the facts in the background section from Velez’s third amended complaint and 

presumes them to be true for the purpose of resolving the City’s motion to dismiss. See Phillips v. 

Prudential Ins. Co. of Am., 714 F.3d 1017, 1019–20 (7th Cir. 2013). 

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LEGAL STANDARD

A motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) challenges the sufficiency of the complaint, not 

its merits. Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6); Gibson v. City of Chicago, 910 F.2d 1510, 1520 (7th Cir. 

1990). In considering a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, the Court accepts as true all well-pleaded facts in 

the plaintiff’s complaint and draws all reasonable inferences from those facts in the plaintiff’s 

favor. Kubiak v. City of Chicago, 810 F.3d 476, 480–81 (7th Cir. 2016). To survive a Rule 

12(b)(6) motion, the complaint must assert a facially plausible claim and provide fair notice to 

the defendant of the claim’s basis. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009); Bell Atl. Corp. v. 

Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007); Adams v. City of Indianapolis, 742 F.3d 720, 728–29 (7th 

Cir. 2014). A claim is facially plausible “when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the 

court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” 

Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678. 

ANALYSIS

To state a Monell claim, Velez must allege (1) an express policy that, when enforced, 

causes a constitutional violation; (2) a widespread practice that, although not authorized by 

written law or express municipal policy, is so permanent and well-settled as to constitute a 

custom or usage with the force of law; or (3) a constitutional injury caused by a person with final 

policymaking authority. McCormick v. City of Chicago, 230 F.3d 319, 324 (7th Cir. 2000). The 

policy or practice “must be the direct cause or moving force behind the constitutional violation.” 

Woodward v. Corr. Med. Servs. of Ill., Inc., 368 F.3d 917, 927 (7th Cir. 2004) (citation omitted)

(internal quotation marks omitted). 

Velez claims that the City maintains a custom of obtaining and executing overly broad 

search warrants that are not appropriately limited to places and things in which police officers 

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have probable cause to believe they will find contraband. He also contends that the City has 

failed to train the postal interdiction team in obtaining and executing appropriately limited search 

warrants. The City argues that Velez’s Monell claim fails because he has alleged only an 

isolated incident and he has not alleged any policymaker’s knowledge or deliberate indifference. 

With respect to Velez’s claim that the City maintains a custom or practice of obtaining and 

executing overly broad search warrants, the City maintains that Velez’s conclusory allegations 

do not suggest the required widespread pattern or practice. See Rossi v. City of Chicago, 790 

F.3d 729, 737 (7th Cir. 2015) (a Monell claim requires “a widespread practice that permeates a 

critical mass of an institutional body,” not “individual misconduct”); Grieveson v. Anderson, 538 

F.3d 763, 774 (7th Cir. 2008) (“[I]t is necessarily more difficult for a plaintiff to demonstrate an 

official policy or custom based only on his own experience because what is needed is evidence 

that there is a true municipal policy at issue, not a random event.” (citation omitted) (internal 

quotation marks omitted)). To determine whether Velez has sufficiently alleged a widespread 

practice, courts sometimes consider allegations of other similar instances of misconduct. See 

Carmona v. City of Chicago, No. 15-cv-00462, 2018 WL 1468995, at *2 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 26, 

2018) (collecting cases). But this is not a requirement, and, at the pleading stage, Velez need not 

“identify every other or even one other individual” whose residences CPD searched based on 

allegedly overly broad warrants. White v. City of Chicago, 829 F.3d 837, 844 (7th Cir. 2016) 

(federal courts may not apply a “heightened pleading standard” to Monell claims); see Barwicks 

v. Dart, No. 14-cv-8791, 2016 WL 3418570, at *4 (N.D. Ill. June 22, 2016) (at summary 

judgment, a single incident cannot establish a Monell claim, but at the motion to dismiss stage, a 

plaintiff “need only allege a pattern or practice, not put forth the full panoply of evidence from 

which a reasonable factfinder could conclude such a pattern exists”). 

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Alternatively, courts have looked to other factual allegations to buttress a plaintiff’s claim

of a widespread policy or practice. See Mendez v. City of Chicago, No. 1:18 C 6313, 2019 WL 

4934698, at *3 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 7, 2019) (reference to Department of Justice report on CPD’s use 

of excessive force during foot chases supported Monell failure-to-train claim at the pleading 

stage); Shields v. City of Chicago, No. 17 C 6689, 2018 WL 1138553, at *4 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 2, 

2018) (reference to two reports highlighting CPD’s use of excessive force similar to plaintiff’s 

allegations suggested existence of widespread practice, allowing Monell claim to proceed). In 

White, for example, the plaintiff alleged that the defendant officer sought an arrest warrant, 

knowing he lacked probable cause, based upon conclusory allegations that the plaintiff had 

committed a criminal offense. 829 F.3d at 840–41. The plaintiff also attached a copy of the 

“standard complaint form” that did “not require specific factual support for an application for an 

arrest warrant.” Id. at 841, 844. The Seventh Circuit found that plaintiff’s allegations of a 

widespread practice of requesting warrants based on conclusory allegations, “[t]ogether with the 

individual claim against [the officer] and the standard printed form,” sufficed to state a claim. 

Id. at 844. 

Here, Velez took discovery that he represented would make a Monell claim appropriate. 

But his third amended complaint still includes only conclusory allegations that do not “permit the 

reasonable inference that the practice is so widespread so as to constitute a governmental 

custom.” Gill v. City of Milwaukee, 850 F.3d 335, 344 (7th Cir. 2017). Thus, Velez has not 

pleaded enough facts to nudge his Monell claim based on a custom of obtaining and executing 

overly broad warrants “across the line from conceivable to plausible.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 

570.

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As for the City’s alleged failure to train its officers to obtain appropriately limited 

warrants, “[a] municipality’s culpability for a deprivation of rights is at its most tenuous where a 

claim turns on a failure to train.” Connick v. Thompson, 563 U.S. 51, 61 (2011). Liability on a 

failure-to-train theory requires that “the failure to train amounts to deliberate indifference to the 

rights of persons with whom the police come into contact.” City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 

378, 388 (1989). “A municipality can be held liable under a theory of failure to train if it has 

actual knowledge of a pattern of criminally reckless conduct and there is an obvious need to 

provide training to avert harm, even if the prior acts have yet to result in tragedy.” Flores v. City 

of S. Bend, 997 F.3d 725, 733 (7th Cir. 2021). While “failure-to-train liability does not require 

proof of widespread constitutional violations before that failure becomes actionable,” id. at 731,

Velez’s individual experience would only support such a claim if the alleged overly broad search 

was a “highly predictable consequence of a failure to equip law enforcement with specific tools 

to handle recurring situations,” Bd. of Cnty. Comm’rs v. Brown, 520 U.S. 397, 409 (1997); see 

also Flores, 997 F.3d at 731 (“[A] single violation can suffice where a violation occurs and the 

plaintiff asserts a recurring, obvious risk.”). Here, however, Velez does not plead any facts to 

support the conclusion that the City had actual knowledge of the use of overly broad search 

warrants or that a recurring risk of harm existed so as to make the need for further training 

concerning the proper scope of search warrants obvious. See Dawson v. Dart, No. 17-cv-00283, 

2020 WL 1182659, at *4 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 12, 2020) (“Dawson, however, does not allege sufficient 

facts supporting her claim that that the Sheriff’s officers ‘so often violate constitutional rights 

that the need [for] further training’ was ‘plainly obvious’ to the Sheriff.” (quoting Canton, 489 

U.S. at 390 n.10)); Miller v. City of Chicago, No. 19 CV 4096, 2019 WL 6173423, at *2 (N.D. 

Ill. Nov. 20, 2019) (“There is no allegation to support an inference that unlawful hotel searches 

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are so rampant that the failure to train reflects a deliberate indifference to the constitutional rights 

of guests like Miller.”); cf. Flores, 997 F.3d at 733–34 (allegations of a city’s failure to train 

sufficed at the pleading stage where the plaintiff alleged that the city “knew that its officers 

routinely drove over 50 miles per hour, but it took no steps to prevent this behavior”). Therefore, 

Velez also has not sufficiently pleaded a Monell claim based on the City’s failure to train its 

officers.

2

 

CONCLUSION

The Court grants Defendant City of Chicago’s motion to dismiss Count III of Plaintiff’s 

third amended complaint for Monell liability [67]. The Court dismisses Velez’s Monell claim 

(Count III). Because this is the first time the Court has substantively addressed the Monell claim

and Velez indicates he can provide additional details to support his claim, the Court dismisses 

the Monell claim without prejudice and allows Velez until July 1, 2022 to file a fourth amended 

complaint that adequately sets forth a basis for Monell liability against the City. 

Dated: June 6, 2022 ______________________

SARA L. ELLIS

United States District Judge

2 The City also argues that the Court should dismiss the Monell claim because the third amended 

complaint alleges that the Defendant Officers obtained a valid warrant authorizing the search, providing a

lawful explanation for the Defendant Officers’ actions. But the Court cannot conclude on the basis of the 

pleadings alone that no underlying constitutional violation occurred here, where Velez alleges that the 

Defendant Officers did not have probable cause to search his unit or to seize his money, and that the 

search warrant included incomplete or incorrect information. 

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