Opinion ID: 24829
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: McClendon's Claims Against the City of Columbia

Text: 36 McClendon alleged that the City of Columbia was liable, under § 1983, for both failure to properly train officers with regard to the appropriate use of confidential informants and for a custom or policy of allowing evidence to be kept in the offices of individual officers. 37 Municipalities may be held liable under § 1983 only when an official policy or governmental custom of the municipality causes the deprivation or violation of the constitutional rights of the plaintiff. 43 In order to demonstrate a municipal custom or policy, a plaintiff must allege: [A] pattern of similar incidents in which citizens were injured or endangered by intentional or negligent policy misconduct and/or that serious incompetence or misbehavior was general or widespread throughout the police force. 44 McClendon has failed to make a showing of such a custom or policy. He presented no evidence of a pattern of incidents injuring or endangering citizens. The evidence he presented did not establish that the alleged custom of improperly storing evidence was general or widespread throughout the police force. Instead, all of the testimony regarding improper storage of evidence related solely to the actions of Officer Carney on a few limited occasions. His evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to him, establishes, at best, an isolated incident of injury in violation of the unwritten city policy regarding storage of evidence. The City, therefore, was entitled to summary judgment on this claim. 38 McClendon's claims regarding the City's failure to train its officers regarding the proper use of confidential informants also fails. The Supreme Court has stated, [T]he failure to provide proper training may fairly be said to represent a policy for which the city is responsible, and for which the city may be held liable if it actually causes injury. 45 We recently held in a failure to train case that the plaintiff must prove his rights were violated as a result of a municipal custom or policy of deliberate indifference to his rights. 46 In such cases, the plaintiff may prove deliberate indifference in two ways: 1) by showing that the municipality deliberately or consciously chose not to train its officers despite being on notice that its current training regimen had failed to prevent tortious conduct by its officers; or 2) showing a single incident with proof of the possibility of recurring situations that present an obvious potential for violation of constitutional rights and the need for additional or different police training. 47 39 We generally have rejected the application of the single incident showing, noting that proof of a single incident ordinarily is insufficient to hold a municipality liable for inadequate training. 48 We have, however, allowed liability to attach for a single incident in at least one case. In Brown v. Bryan County, Oklahoma, 49 we found that the County was liable under the single incident exception where it failed to provide any training or supervision for a young, inexperienced officer with a record of recklessness. In finding that liability could attach for a single incident, we found that, to proceed under the exception, the evidence must establish, under the stringent standards of the Supreme Court's pronouncements in Bryan County, unmistakable culpability and clearly connected causation. 50 In other words, as McClendon notes in his reply brief, the question is whether it should have been obvious that the failure to train was likely to lead to the injury. 40 We find this case distinguishable from Bryan. Although there is no evidence that disputes McClendon's claim that the City of Columbia does not provide specific training for its officers regarding the use of informants, there is a difference between a complete failure to train, as in Bryan, and a failure to train in one limited area. Even if this failure to train is considered sufficiently culpable conduct, however, McClendon has failed to prove a causal connection between this failure to train and his injury. He points to no evidence demonstrating that any training on behalf of the City with regards to the use of informants would have prevented Carney from providing Loftin with the gun used in this case. His only evidence regarding this claim is an expert opinion stating that the City failed to train Carney adequately with respect to dealing with confidential informants. The expert presented no opinion regarding whether this failure to train was causally connected to the injury at issue. McClendon claims that the Chief of Police, after being made aware of Loftin's danger, failed to provide guidance or training to Carney which resulted in his decision to handle the situation by arming his informant. Although Carney testifed in his deposition that the Chief of Police was made aware of Loftin's involvement in the shooting of McClendon's cousin, there is no evidence that his failure to take any action regarding this information actually led to Carney's decision to provide Loftin with a weapon. This is a mere conclusionary allegation. The evidence presented by McClendon in regards to this claim, even viewed in the light most favorable to him, fails to present a genuine issue of material fact. Accordingly, the district court did not err in granting summary judgment in favor of the City on this claim.