Opinion ID: 2980104
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Failure to Reprimand

Text: Plaintiffs first contend that the County had “a custom or policy of allowing its officers to abuse individuals,” and support their claim with an affidavit from Officer Jackie Miracle. Miracle attests that, “on or about 2004,” a number of unspecified officers abused a suspect they pulled over for a traffic stop. Miracle further attests that “Chief Deputy Charles Scott stood by and watched the passenger of the vehicle being abused” without “reprimand[ing] any of the [o]fficers involved.” In Thomas v. City of Chattanooga, a case involving similar allegations of officer abuse, we explained that to prove a municipality’s deliberate indifference in this context, a plaintiff must show, among other things, that the municipality ignored “the existence of a clear and persistent pattern of [illegal activity]” by officers. 398 F.3d 426, 429 (6th Cir. 2005) (alteration in original) (internal -7- No. 09-6115 Siler v. Campbell Cnty. quotation marks and citation omitted). Though those plaintiffs submitted affidavits establishing that forty-five excessive-force suits had been filed against the city in the eight years before the relevant incident, id. at 430, we found that these complaints did not constitute a “clear and persistent” pattern of illegal conduct in the absence of “data showing what a ‘normal’ number of excessive force complaints would be,” id. at 431. Like the Thomas plaintiffs, Plaintiffs here fail to support their claim regarding “the existence of a clear and persistent pattern” of illegal activity by County officers. See id. at 429. Indeed, Plaintiffs offer even less than their Thomas counterparts: they do not point to any complaint of excessive force, nor do they produce any lawsuit on the matter. Rather, they put forth a lone affidavit from an officer who claims that he witnessed a single instance of abuse. Even if we assume the truth of the affidavit, the isolated incident described therein falls short of Thomas’s pattern requirement. See id.