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09-1010 Carmichael v. Village of Palatine

By: dmc-admin//May 24, 2010//

09-1010 Carmichael v. Village of Palatine

By: dmc-admin//May 24, 2010//

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Civil Rights
Stop and detention; qualified immunity

Where officers had no factual basis for stopping the plaintiffs at gunpoint, they are not entitled to qualified immunity on the plaintiffs’ claim that they were unreasonably searched and seized.

“The record before us contains no evidence that Officer Sharkey had any factual basis for stopping the plaintiffs at gun point. He admits that the reasons that he initially gave for stopping the car—absence of a front license plate and tinted windows—were not known to him at the time that he effected the stop. The record shows, moreover, that the reason that he later gave for the stop—the absence of tail and brake lights—was not true. As the state court determined during the earlier criminal proceeding against the plaintiffs, there is simply no basis in the record upon which a determination of probable cause can be sustained.

Certainly, any reasonable police officer, acting at the time Officer Sharkey acted, would have known this elementary principle of the law of arrest.”

Affirmed in part, and Reversed in part.

09-1010 Carmichael v. Village of Palatine

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Kendall, J., Ripple, J.

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