Opinion ID: 2719764
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Probable Cause to Arrest Plaintiffs

Text: Defendants acknowledge that “[i]n some circumstances, advice from officials as to the propriety of proposed conduct may indeed justify an individual in believing that his planned conduct is not prohibited,” Piscottano v. Murphy, 511 F.3d 247, 286 (2d Cir. 2007), and that had the officers explicitly invited protesters onto the bridge, they could not have arrested the protesters without fair warning of the revocation of such permission. Indeed, defendants concede that the involvement of officers in directing the protest prior to its movement 16 onto the roadway “may have sanctioned the demonstration . . . so long as the parameters of the implied permission were complied with and the demonstrators remained on the sidewalk.” Appellants’ Br. at 28‐29. However, defendants argue that the protesters violated this initial implied permission when they left the sidewalk and entered the Bridge roadway. They argue that after this point in the march, plaintiffs’ actions were in direct contravention of the officers’ repeated admonitions to protesters to remain on the sidewalk, and that plaintiffs have not alleged facts sufficient to establish that a reasonable police officer would have understood that plaintiffs had been invited onto the roadway. Defendants argue that a reasonable officer would have understood that the lead group of officers were not “leading” the protesters onto the roadway but were instead strategically retreating, “reacting to a surging crowd that was following leaders who were intent on ‘taking the bridge’ despite both the law and direct and explicit warnings that their continued presence on the roadway would result in arrest.” Appellants’ Br. at 28. In such a situation, where no “implicit invitation” had been given to proceed onto the roadway, defendants argue that New York’s disorderly conduct statute, which criminalizes “obstruct[ing] vehicular or pedestrian traffic” with “intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof,” N.Y. Penal Law § 240.20, gave plaintiffs fair warning that their conduct was illegal, and no further warning was necessary. 17 Defendants have identified the relevant inquiry: not whether plaintiffs will ultimately prevail, or whether a reasonable demonstrator would have understood the police’s actions as an invitation to enter the roadway, but rather whether a reasonable police officer (in the position of the officers who decided to arrest plaintiffs) should have known that under the totality of the circumstances, the conduct of the police could have been reasonably understood by plaintiffs as an implicit invitation to enter the Bridge roadway, and thus should have known that additional, louder, or clearer instructions were required. But defendants’ assertions of what the officers understood are unsupported by the Complaint or the record, which do not provide any details as to what any individual defendant knew or saw of the events leading up to the arrests.8 Further, to the extent that defendants’ arguments rest on a markedly different characterization of the events of the protest than those alleged by plaintiffs, we are unable to consider the 8 The dissent references the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Wood v. Moss, 134 S. Ct. 2056 (2014), implying that the decision requires us to ignore the reality of what each defendant officer knew or saw. But Wood did not unmoor the reasonableness standard from facts as they transpire in an individual case. In Wood, the Court reasoned that a discriminatory motive cannot be inferred from facts that conclusively point in a neutral direction, in that case, towards officers’ reasonable concern for the safety of the President. Id. at 2069. But that common‐ sense conclusion does not change the analysis here. Officers at the Brooklyn Bridge had a constitutional obligation to warn protesters of a revoked invitation to march on the roadway. If the officers knew, or should have known, that their actions would be construed by reasonable protesters as inviting them onto the bridge, then a reasonable officer should have issued a fair warning revoking that permission. Plaintiffs allege that the officers’ actions amount to such an invitation. Discovery will illuminate whether that it is indeed true. 18 resulting factual dispute at this stage. We must take the Complaint’s allegations as true when considering defendants’ motion to dismiss, as they are not “blatantly contradicted” or “utterly discredited” by the submitted videos and still images, Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 380 (2007).9 Given the paucity of the record as to the actions of any specific defendant on the day of the march, we cannot say at this stage whether or not defendants had sufficient knowledge of plaintiffs’ perceptions of the officers’ actions such that they acted unreasonably in arresting plaintiffs. A homely analogy will illustrate what is ultimately a common‐sense point. Any driver knows that he may not ordinarily cross an intersection against a red light, but that an officer directing traffic can lawfully order him to ignore the red light and proceed. We assume arguendo that being signaled by a police officer to proceed in the face of a red light would be a valid defense for a driver charged with running that red light. In that situation, an officer who directed a driver to proceed, or realized that her gesture could reasonably have been seen as giving such a directive, would clearly act unreasonably by ticketing the driver for ignoring the red light. On the other hand, a second officer who saw the driver run the red light but was unaware of her colleague’s instructions to do so would have probable cause to ticket the driver. 9 The videos and still images submitted by the parties are inconclusive on these points. They depict only what can be seen and heard from particular vantage points, and not what the police or protesters in general, or particular officers named as defendants, saw and heard. 19 The facts of this case are of course far more complicated than this simple example. Although we have recounted the facts by referring to “the police” and “the demonstrators,” we have done so only because the record is so undeveloped that we cannot specify the conduct or knowledge of particular named defendants. Ultimately, to recover damages, the plaintiffs will need to establish that particular defendants acted unreasonably in arresting them (or directing their arrest). Just as some demonstrators (but not others) might be convicted of disorderly conduct because it can be proven that they had heard and defied a clear warning that they were obstructing traffic and needed to move, so discovery might reveal that some police officers (but not others) were fully aware of facts that would lead reasonable officers to know that many of the demonstrators reasonably understood that they had been granted permission to proceed across the bridge, just as plaintiffs allege. Given this standard, plaintiffs may have a difficult time establishing liability or avoiding the qualified immunity defense at a later stage of litigation.10 In order to have a reasonable belief that probable cause exists, an officer need not anticipate or investigate every possible defense that a person suspected of violating the law may have, and an officer may have probable cause despite knowledge of facts that create an arguable defense. On the other hand, as Cox 10 The difficulty may be especially pronounced with respect to officers who were unaware of earlier events, and were directed by superiors to arrest demonstrators who plainly appeared, at that later stage of events, to be in violation of New York Penal Law § 240.20(5). 20 and Papineau clearly establish, an officer may not constitutionally arrest a demonstrator when he is personally aware that responsible officials have implicitly or explicitly authorized the very conduct for which he seeks to make the arrest. As the Seventh Circuit has held, “[o]nce a police officer discovers sufficient facts to establish probable cause, she has no constitutional obligation to conduct any further investigation in the hope of discovering exculpatory evidence,” but “[a] police officer may not ignore conclusively established evidence of the existence of an affirmative defense.” Hodgkins ex rel. Hodgkins v. Peterson, 355 F.3d 1048, 1061 (7th Cir. 2004); see also Fridley v. Horrighs, 291 F.3d 867, 873 (6th Cir. 2002) (holding that an officer, when assessing probable cause, “is not required to inquire into facts and circumstances in an effort to discover if the suspect has an affirmative defense,” but may not “ignore information known to him which proves that the suspect is protected by an affirmative legal justification” (emphasis and internal quotation marks omitted)). Taking plaintiffs’ allegations as true, as we must, we believe that they have adequately alleged actionable conduct. Plaintiffs have alleged that the police directed the demonstrators’ activity along the route of their march, at times specifically condoning, or even directing, behavior that on its face would violate traffic laws. When the bottleneck at the pedestrian walkway of the Bridge led the demonstrators to pool into the roadway, the police did not immediately direct them out of the street, and when they did undertake to issue such a warning to clear the roadway, they did so in a way that no reasonable officer who observed 21 the warning could have believed was audible beyond the first rank of the protesters at the front of the crowd.11 According to plaintiffs’ account, the police then retreated back onto the Bridge in a way that would reasonably have been understood, and was understood, by the bulk of the demonstrators to be a continuation of the earlier practice of allowing the march to proceed in violation of normal traffic rules. We emphasize that the procedural posture of this case presents a formidable challenge to defendants’ position. They urge us to find that qualified immunity is established for all defendants based on plaintiffs’ version of events (plus a few inconclusive photos and videos). The evidence, once a full record is developed, may contradict plaintiffs’ allegations, or establish that some or all of the defendants were not aware of the facts that plaintiffs allege would have alerted them to the supposed implicit permission. We express no view on 11 The fact that some protesters clearly heard the warning does not establish probable cause to arrest the entire group, when defendants knew that the vast majority had not heard the warning. See Papineau, 465 F.3d at 59‐60 (holding that officers could not engage in “indiscriminate mass arrests” of a group where a few unidentified individuals from the group had violated the law). Nor would any warning the officers gave after demonstrators had already proceeded halfway across the bridge qualify as “fair warning.” At that point, the police had allegedly blocked off any avenues of retreat. As the district court noted, “[i]mplicit in the notion of ‘fair warning’ is an opportunity for plaintiffs to conform their conduct to requirements.” Garcia, 865 F. Supp. 2d at 488 n.7; see also Morales, 527 U.S. at 58 (noting that “the purpose of the fair notice requirement is to enable the ordinary citizen to conform his or her conduct to the law”). 22 whether some or all of the defendants may be entitled to qualified immunity at a later stage of the case. Cf. Pena v. DePrisco, 432 F.3d 98, 111‐12 (2d Cir. 2005) (affirming denial of application for qualified immunity at motion to dismiss stage without prejudice to renew application at a later stage). But to reverse the district court’s denial of qualified immunity on a motion to dismiss, we would have to say that on the basis of plaintiffs’ account of events, no officer who participated in or directed the arrests could have thought that plaintiffs were invited onto the roadway and then arrested without fair warning of the revocation of this invitation.12 Since we cannot do so on this limited record, we affirm the judgment of the district court.13 12 Contrary to the dissent’s assertion, to say that officers may have had different experiences is not to say that they were all reasonable or all unreasonable. Discovery is necessary in this case simply because, as a factual matter, individual officers may have had different experiences on the day of the march, and, thus, some may be liable and some may not, depending on what they saw, heard, and knew. With a full record, the district court can then evaluate whether reasonable officers could disagree about the legality of what each officer did. 13 We also affirm the district court’s denial of qualified immunity on plaintiffs’ state law claims, as our analysis of federal qualified immunity is equally applicable to qualified immunity under New York law, which “in the context of a claim of false arrest depends on whether it was objectively reasonable for the police to believe that they had probable cause to arrest.” Papineau, 465 F.3d at 64. 23