Opinion ID: 2979805
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Adequacy of Lowe’s Training

Text: First, plaintiffs must come forward with evidence tending to show that Lowe’s training was inadequate. Although defendants were not required to support their motion for summary judgment with evidence negating plaintiffs’ claim, both individual defendants filed affidavits attesting to the adequacy of Lowe’s training. Also attached to each affidavit is a copy of Lowe’s personnel record and a copy of the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department Policies and Procedures Manual. According to Lowe's personnel file, he worked for the Campbell County Sheriff's Department for less than six months before he was terminated. Before he was hired in Campbell County, Lowe had been a reserve police officer with the City of LaFollette (Tennessee) Police Department for less than six months (January 2005 to June 2005); had been employed by the Union County (Tennessee) Sheriff’s Department as a school security officer and patrol officer for sixteen months (August 2003 to January 2005); and prior thereto had served for approximately four years as a school security officer for the Knox County (Tennessee) School Division. The file further shows that Lowe had received police officer training in the form of a seven-week course at the Walters State Community College Law Enforcement Academy in 2002. In January 2004, Lowe earned certification as a law enforcement officer from the State of Tennessee's Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission (“POST”). Defendants McClellan -14- Harvey v. Campbell County No. 09-5041 and Scott stated in their affidavits that Lowe “obtained his forty (40) hours of in-service training each and every year following his POST certification, otherwise, his POST certification would have been revoked.” The record does not detail the substance of the original POST training or post-certification training Lowe received. In regard specifically to Lowe’s training in the use of deadly force, his personnel record indicates that he received “training in the constitutional application of force by a law enforcement officer” before he was hired. Both McClellan and Scott stated in their affidavits that Lowe was “trained by the Campbell County Sheriff's Department in the use of force.” Neither affiant attested to having personally trained Lowe, but both confirmed that when he was hired, Lowe was given a copy of and had access to the Sheriff's Department Policies and Procedures Manual. The 340-page manual includes a 12-page Policy on the “Use of Force & Deadly Force.” Plaintiffs have offered no evidence disputing these sworn statements and have not identified any particular deficiency in the training. Instead, they claim that the absence of facts in the record regarding the precise nature and contents of Deputy Lowe’s training in the constitutional use of force shows that the training was inadequate. They cite McClellan’s and Scott’s failure to describe their personal training of Lowe and their own personal unfamiliarity with Lowe’s understanding of use-ofdeadly-force policies as evidence that the training was inadequate. They argue that the inadequacy of the training is further demonstrated by the fact that Lowe was acting within the scope of his employment when he shot and killed the unarmed Harvey. -15- Harvey v. Campbell County No. 09-5041 Plaintiffs’ position is thus based not on evidence in the record that shows their cup is halffull, but on the failure of defendants to show conclusively that their cup is full to the brim. Plaintiffs would have us draw inferences that are not reasonably supported by the record evidence. As indicated above, our duty to view the facts in the light most favorable to plaintiffs does not require or permit us to accept as true mere allegations that are not supported by factual evidence. Leary, 528 F.3d at 443-44. Plaintiffs, in response to a properly supported motion for summary judgment, cannot rely merely on allegations and arguments, but must set out specific facts showing a genuine issue for trial. Id. at 444. Plaintiffs have not done so. They have presented no facts. In fact, it appears they have not even conducted discovery designed to uncover facts supporting their allegations. They rely instead on speculative, unsupported allegations to create metaphysical doubt, which clearly does not amount to a genuine issue of material fact. Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 586 (1986). The district court overlooked these shortcomings in plaintiffs’ case, concluding that defendants had not met their burden. The court held that defendants had failed to conclusively show that Lowe’s training was so adequate to the tasks performed as to demonstrate the absence of any genuine issue of material fact. In so ruling, the court did not identify a single item of evidence supporting plaintiffs’ allegation that the training was inadequate. The district court thus improperly excused plaintiffs from their burden of coming forward with specific facts demonstrating a triable fact issue. -16- Harvey v. Campbell County No. 09-5041 Comparing the facts of this case with those presented in Plinton further illustrates the error in the district court’s ruling. In Plinton, the plaintiff sued the county, asserting that an officer’s training was inadequate, and that this caused the officer to improperly investigate and maliciously prosecute the plaintiff’s son, causing him to commit suicide. 540 F.3d at 461. The officer had not received his department’s written policies, though he professed to know them and to have received on-the-job training. Id. He had been with the department for two years and had been a police officer for six. Id. The plaintiff argued that the department’s failure to provide the written policies and formal orientation or training in those policies constituted inadequate training, and presented a report conclusorily stating that training on written policies is the “foundation to police performance” that county officials failed to provide. Id. at 464. The court held that although the plaintiff “may” have shown a genuine issue of material fact on the inadequacy prong, he had failed to show any evidence of deliberate indifference because the officer in question was already a trained and experienced officer, had testified that he knew the policies and could ask questions of supervisors if he had any, and the department had not encountered any bad outcomes in the past six years which would have put them on notice of the potential for unconstitutional behavior. Id. at 464-65. The plaintiff’s assertions of the “obvious” need for more training and the “conclusory remarks” of the report on police training were held not to satisfy the “stringent” deliberate indifference standard, which requires more than “even heightened negligence.” Id. at 465. The court thus affirmed the award of summary judgment to the defendant county. -17- Harvey v. Campbell County No. 09-5041 Plaintiffs in this case have presented even less evidence than the plaintiff in Plinton. Unlike the officer in Plinton, Lowe had actually received the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department Policies and Procedures, including the Policy on the Use of Deadly Force. While Lowe had not been on the job as long as the officer in Plinton, he still had significant experience as a police officer, having served with three different police departments and two school systems. Further, the record shows that Lowe had completed police academy training and POST training before he was hired by the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department. Here, plaintiffs have not produced any affirmative evidence refuting, impugning or challenging this showing. Hence, whereas the Plinton plaintiff’s claim “may” have survived summary judgment on the issue of inadequacy of training—before losing for lack of evidence of deliberate indifference—the Harvey plaintiffs’ claim falls short in both respects. Deputy Lowe received arguably more training than the officer in Plinton, and the plaintiffs have not produced even a scintilla of affirmative evidence tending to show this training was so inadequate as to evidence deliberate indifference. Moreover, plaintiffs’ argument and the district court’s ruling completely ignore the fact that it was manifestly not the defendants’ duty to show that Deputy Lowe’s training was adequate; it was plaintiffs’ burden to show that such training was inadequate. Plaintiffs were obligated to come forward with affirmative evidence above and beyond the pleadings to show that the training Lowe received was not sufficient. But when defendants challenged plaintiffs to present their evidence of deficient training, plaintiffs’ only response has been to argue essentially that defendants’ affidavits are insufficient to rebut plaintiffs’ unsupported allegations. This is not enough. For lack of evidence -18- Harvey v. Campbell County No. 09-5041 of inadequate training alone, defendants are entitled to summary judgment. Yet, the factual support for the remaining two elements of plaintiffs’ deliberate indifference theory is just as lacking. 2. Deliberate Indifference and Causation Elements Plaintiffs have proffered even less evidence to support the second and third prongs of the Plinton test. They have provided no evidence that any inadequacy, if one indeed existed, was the result of defendants’ deliberate indifference. Evidence that a particular officer was unsatisfactorily or even negligently trained will not suffice to attach liability to a municipality unless the failure to train is shown to have been the product of deliberate indifference. City of Canton, 489 U.S. at 38889. Plaintiffs have offered no evidence to refute defendants’ sworn statements that Lowe received training in the constitutional use of force through his POST certification, the provision of departmental procedures, and from the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department. There is no evidence that defendants were or should have been aware that the training Deputy Lowe received was inadequate, necessitating additional instruction. There is no evidence that other police departments in Tennessee routinely provide additional training for their officers in the constitutional use of force. Moreover, here, as in Plinton, the record is devoid of evidence of prior misuses of deadly force that could be deemed to have put McClellan and Scott on notice of any deficiency in training. Plaintiffs have not even alleged that the County ignored a history of excessive force by Lowe or other deputies. “A pattern of similar constitutional violations by untrained employees is ‘ordinarily necessary’ to demonstrate deliberate indifference for purposes of failure to train.” Connick, 131 -19- Harvey v. Campbell County No. 09-5041 S.Ct. at 1360 (quoting Bryan County, 520 U.S. at 409). For liability to attach in the instance of a single violation, the record must show “a complete failure to train the police force, training that is so reckless or grossly negligent that future police misconduct is almost inevitable or would properly be characterized as substantially certain to result.” Hays v. Jefferson County, 668 F.2d 869, 874 (6th Cir. 1987) (internal citations omitted). In City of Canton, the Court hypothesized that a history or pattern of prior violations might not be necessary to show deliberate indifference if the need for more or different training were “obvious.” See Connick, 131 S.Ct. at 1360-61. However, the Court’s hypothesis was premised on the assumption that the municipality had decided not to train its officers about the constitutional limits of the use of force. Id. at 1361. Under such circumstances, the highly predictable consequence that deadly force could be misused in violation of citizens’ rights could be deemed so obvious as to reflect deliberate indifference. Id. Here, however, unlike the City of Canton hypothetical, it is undisputed that Lowe had received some training in the use of deadly force. Plaintiffs therefore had to show that the County, through its policymaker(s), was on notice that, absent additional training, it was so highly predictable that sheriff’s deputies would misuse deadly force as to amount to conscious disregard for citizens’ rights. Plaintiffs, like Connick, see id. at 1365, failed to make this showing. Furthermore, outside plaintiffs’ bare assertions, there is not even a scintilla of evidence that defendants’ deliberate indifference created a training regimen so deficient that it was the actual cause -20- Harvey v. Campbell County No. 09-5041 of Lowe’s apparently unreasonable decision to fatally shoot Harvey. What specifically transpired between Lowe and Harvey immediately before the fatal shooting is unknown. The record is devoid of information explaining what motivated Lowe to use deadly force in response to the actions of the apparently unarmed Harvey. It may be that Lowe reasonably apprehended that Harvey threatened him with imminent and serious bodily harm even though he had no gun or knife. Lowe may have made some mistake of law or fact that resulted in his use of greater force than necessary. Lowe may have acted out of sheer unmitigated malice, without any justification whatsoever—an intentional crime that no amount of training would have prevented. It is simply impossible to reasonably conclude, based on the present record, that Harvey’s death can somehow be traced back to a particular inadequacy in Lowe’s training to which defendants had been deliberately indifferent. To reiterate, it is not reasonable to draw inferences—as the district court appears to have done—of inadequate training, deliberate indifference and causal effect from the mere fact that, given the training he had, Lowe still shot and killed Harvey. Because plaintiffs have thus utterly failed to put forth any evidence to support reasonable jury findings that the training program was inadequate, that McClellan or Scott was deliberately indifferent to the deficiency, and that the deficiency was causally related to Lowe’s shooting of Harvey, we conclude that defendants are entitled to summary judgment. -21- Harvey v. Campbell County No. 09-5041 D. State-Law Claim The parties have not—either in the district court or in their appellate briefing—separately addressed the factual support for plaintiffs’ state-law claim for negligence. In their motion for summary judgment, defendants asked for summary judgment on plaintiffs’ § 1983 claim and asked the court to decline to exercise continuing supplemental jurisdiction over the state-law claim under 28 U.S.C. § 1367. The district court denied both requests. Hence, while we reverse the denial of defendants’ motion for summary judgment, no question has been presented regarding the state-law claim and we express no opinion on its merits.