# Jeffrey v. Salaam

> District Court, E.D. Arkansas · May 23, 2025

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11059080

## Case

- **Court:** District Court, E.D. Arkansas
- **Decided:** May 23, 2025
- **Opinion:** 100trialcourt
- **Cited by:** 0 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11059080

## Opinion text

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS
CENTRAL DIVISION

BRITTANY DAWN JEFFREY PLAINTIFF

v. Case No. 4:24-cv-00128-LPR

JALEN SALAAM, in his individual and
official capacity; ZACHARY NELSON,
in his individual and official capacity; and
KEITH HUMPHREY, in his official capacity
as Little Rock Police Department, Chief of Police DEFENDANTS

ORDER

Pending before the Court is a fairly discrete Motion to Dismiss.1 The named Defendants—
three police officers employed by the City of Little Rock—seek dismissal of the official-capacity
claims brought against them.2 Defendants’ Motion is GRANTED.
The official-capacity claims against the three Little Rock police officers are treated as
claims against the City of Little Rock.3 Each such claim is brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 or the
Arkansas Civil Rights Act.4 And the City can’t be held liable under either of those statutes on a
respondeat superior theory.5 So, even assuming one or more officers engaged in conduct that
violated the United States Constitution or the Arkansas Constitution, something more is necessary

1 Doc. 23.
2 Id. The three named Defendants do not seek dismissal of the individual-capacity claims against them. See id.
3 See Rogers v. City of Little Rock, 152 F.3d 790, 800 (8th Cir. 1998) (first citing Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436
U.S. 658, 690 n.55 (1978); and then citing Marchant v. City of Little Rock, 741 F.2d 201, 204 (8th Cir. 1984)) (holding
that an official-capacity suit against a city police officer and the chief of the city police department was “another form
of action against the city”).
4 First Am. Compl. (Doc. 18) at 8–20.
5 See Monell, 436 U.S. at 691 (“[A] municipality cannot be held liable under § 1983 on a respondeat superior theory.”);
see also Jones v. Huckabee, 369 Ark. 42, 49, 250 S.W.3d 241, 246 (2007) (“[T]he doctrine of respondeat superior is
not a basis for liability under the Arkansas Civil Rights Act . . . .”).
to state viable § 1983 or ACRA claims against the City. Whether Ms. Jeffrey has adequately
alleged “something more” is discussed below.
I. Custom, Policy, or Practice
A city can be held liable under § 1983 if the unlawful conduct of a city employee was a
result of the city’s custom, policy, or practice.6 To the extent that Ms. Jeffrey was trying to

plausibly allege this, she failed to do so. The First Amended Complaint alleges that “Defendant
Humphrey and the Little Rock Police Department have implemented [an unwritten] policy,
practice, or custom of harassing, threatening, detaining, arresting, and/or citing for lawful speech
protected by the First Amendment, while those individuals were on public property – despite the
absence of reasonable suspicion that an individual has violated any law.”7 Generally speaking,
courts must accept a complaint’s allegations of fact as true at the motion-to-dismiss stage.8 But
the above allegation is a textbook example of a conclusory statement that a court need not (and
should not) accept as true even at this stage of the proceedings.9 When the First Amended
Complaint’s conclusory statements are ignored, there is absolutely nothing to plausibly suggest

the existence of a custom, policy, or practice that could have motivated the alleged unlawful actions
of Officers Salaam or Nelson.
It is true that the First Amended Complaint alleges that “complaints and notices of First
Amendment violations were submitted from protests and protestors prior to the illegal stop of

6 Johnson v. Blaukat, 453 F.3d 1108, 1114 (8th Cir. 2006).
7 First Am. Compl. (Doc. 18) ¶ 40.
8 See Wiles v. Capitol Indem. Corp., 280 F.3d 868, 870 (8th Cir. 2002) (citing Westcott v. City of Omaha, 901 F.2d
1486, 1488 (8th Cir. 1990)).
9 See id. The same is true of the First Amended Complaint’s statement that “[t]he Little Rock Police Department
continues to enforce anti-speech policies . . . .” First Am. Compl. (Doc. 18) ¶ 45.
Ms. Jeffrey.”10 But without more detail—e.g., how many complaints and notices were submitted,
whether those complaints and notices were substantiated, to whom the complaints and notices were
submitted, and when the complaints and notices were submitted—there’s not enough to plausibly
suggest the existence of a custom, policy, or practice that could have motivated the alleged
unlawful actions of Officers Salaam or Nelson.11 At this point, we simply have no idea if there

were any sufficiently similar prior incidents, let alone enough of them to plausibly suggest the
existence of a custom, policy, or practice that would support liability here.
II. Failure to Train
In certain circumstances, a city can be held liable if a police officer’s unconstitutional
conduct can be traced back to the city’s failure to train.12 But the bar for such a claim is pretty
high. As the Supreme Court has explained, “[a] municipality’s culpability for a deprivation of
rights is at its most tenuous where a claim turns on a failure to train.”13 In the Eighth Circuit,
liability only attaches “where (1) the city’s . . . training practices are inadequate; (2) the city was
deliberately indifferent to the rights of others in adopting them, such that the ‘failure to train

reflects a deliberate or conscious choice by a municipality,’ and (3) an alleged deficiency in the
city’s . . . training procedures actually caused the plaintiff’s injury.”14 Accordingly, to prevail on
such a claim, “[i]t is necessary to show ‘that in light of the duties assigned to specific officers or

10 First Am. Compl. (Doc. 18) ¶ 42.
11 The First Amended Complaint also states that “[Chief] Humphrey knew and was aware of similar incidents by his
subordinates and failed to take corrective actions that would cease the offending conduct.” Id. ¶ 44. But this allegation
doesn’t add anything to the mix. First, calling previous incidents “similar” (without any further description of those
incidents) is conclusory. Second, by omitting information about how many such incidents occurred, this allegation
fails to plausibly suggest a custom, policy, or practice.
12 See Andrews v. Fowler, 98 F.3d 1069, 1076 (8th Cir. 1996) (quoting City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 389
(1989)).
13 Connick v. Thompson, 563 U.S. 51, 61 (2011).
14 See Andrews, 98 F.3d at 1076 (citation omitted) (quoting City of Canton, 489 U.S. at 389).
employees the need for more or different training is so obvious, and the inadequacy so likely to
result in the violation of constitutional rights, that the policymakers of the city can reasonably be
said to have been deliberately indifferent to the need.’”15
Many of the statements in the First Amended Complaint make it less than clear whether

Ms. Jeffrey is alleging that (1) Officers Salaam and Nelson received no training at all on the First
and Fourth Amendment or (2) the training they did receive was insufficient. From the language in
paragraphs 39–44, either reading would be reasonable.16 The Court resolves this ambiguity by
taking Ms. Jeffrey at her word in paragraph 103, which appears to summarize her previous
allegations on this point: “On information and belief, Defendants Nelson and Salaam have not
received training related to the First Amendment and have no[t] received sufficient training on the
requirements of probable cause and the Fourth Amendment.”17 Based on this statement, the Court
concludes that Ms. Jeffrey is alleging that Officers Salaam and Nelson had no First Amendment
training at all, but did receive training—albeit allegedly insufficient training—on the requirements
of probable cause and the Fourth Amendment.18

The probable cause/Fourth Amendment training issue is easily resolved. The First
Amended Complaint makes several statements characterizing the probable cause/Fourth
Amendment training given to Officers Salaam and Nelson as insufficient or improper or

15 Id. (quoting City of Canton, 489 U.S. at 390).
16 See First Am. Compl. (Doc. 18) ¶¶ 39–44.
17 Id. ¶ 103 (emphasis added).
18 The Court acknowledges that, in paragraph 52, the First Amended Complaint alleges that “Defendant Salaam
previously received some level of training and education on civil rights, including the First Amendment.” Id. ¶ 52.
To the extent the First Amended Complaint is not asserting a total lack of training in the First Amendment area but is
instead asserting an insufficiency in the First Amendment training given, such a claim fails for the same reasons the
Court sets out below with respect to the probable cause/Fourth Amendment inadequate-training claim.
inadequate.19 All such statements are conclusory in nature, and the First Amended Complaint
provides no actual facts to support these conclusory statements. Given Ms. Jeffrey’s failure to
plead any actual facts, this portion of the claim doesn’t state a viable cause of action.
The First Amendment training issue is a little different. That is because the First Amended

Complaint alleges a total lack of First Amendment training (as opposed to an insufficiency in the
training given).20 This constitutes an allegation of historical fact that must—at this stage—be
accepted as true by the Court. Even so, things don’t look good for this claim. That’s because “[a]
pattern of similar constitutional violations by untrained employees is ‘ordinarily necessary’ to
demonstrate deliberate indifference for purposes of failure to train.”21 And the First Amended
Complaint does not allege any prior conduct on the part of Officers Nelson or Salaam that would
have put the City on notice of the need for any (or additional) First Amendment training.
Indeed, there are no allegations of relevant prior conduct on the part of Officer Nelson at
all. And with respect to Officer Salaam, the First Amended Complaint merely alleges that “Officer
Salaam had had prior incidents and violations . . . .”22 The First Amended Complaint does not say

anything about the nature of such incidents.23 Without such detail, there’s nothing to plausibly

19 See, e.g., id. ¶ 43 (“Officer[s] Salaam and Nelson did not receive sufficient training on the necessary elements to
effect a seizure of a citizen.”); id. ¶ 103 (“Defendants Nelson and Salaam . . . have no[t] received sufficient training
on the requirements of probable cause and the Fourth Amendment.”).
20 Id ¶ 103. Although the Court is required to accept fact allegations pled in a complaint, the Court notes that a
defendant is not without recourse where a plaintiff pleads facts that it knows are untrue or are very unlikely to be true.
See, e.g., Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b)(3).
21 Connick, 563 U.S. at 62 (quoting Bd. of Cnty. Comm’rs v. Brown, 520 U.S. 397, 409 (1997)).
22 First Am. Compl. (Doc. 18) ¶ 44.
23 At absolute most, one could stitch together different parts of paragraph 44 of the First Amended Complaint to suggest
that the prior incidents were “similar” to the present incident. See id. But that’s a real stretch. And, in any event,
calling incidents “similar” is a conclusion, not a well-pled fact.
It is true that Exhibit C to the First Amended Complaint tells us that, as of February 25, 2021 (two days after the
incident in question), “Officer Salaam’s disciplinary history” included the receipt of “official departmental discipline
six (6) times in the last twelve (12) months.” Ex. C (Davis Memorandum) to First Am. Compl. (Doc. 18) at 28. But
suggest that the City was on notice of some specific need for Officers Salaam and Nelson to receive
First Amendment training.
But that is not the end of the story. The First Amended Complaint appears to hint at another
way in which the City may have been put on notice of the need for First Amendment training. The

crux of this argument is that prior incidents involving officers other than Nelson and Salaam were
frequent enough to place the City on notice that all of its officers needed First Amendment training.
In this vein, the First Amended Complaint alleges that “complaints and notices of First Amendment
violations were submitted from protests and protestors prior to the illegal stop of Ms. Jeffrey.”24
But the First Amended Complaint does not provide any details. Without more detail—e.g., how
many complaints and notices were submitted, whether those complaints and notices were
substantiated, to whom the complaints and notices were submitted, and when the complaints and
notices were submitted—there’s not enough to plausibly suggest that the City was on notice of
some department-wide need for First Amendment training.25
The failure to adequately allege facts to show prior First Amendment violations by Officers

Salaam and Nelson (or even by other officers in the Little Rock Police Department) all but dooms
the portion of Ms. Jeffrey’s failure-to-train claim related to the First Amendment. Still, for the
sake of completeness, it is worth noting that the Supreme Court has—at least hypothetically—
recognized that there might be “a narrow range of circumstances” wherein “a pattern of similar

nothing tells us what kind of violations led to this discipline. So, there is nothing to suggest that any of these past
violations involved conduct similar to what occurred with Ms. Jeffrey.
24 First Am. Compl. (Doc. 18) ¶ 42.
25 To the extent Ms. Jeffrey relies on the statement that “[Chief] Humphrey knew and was aware of similar incidents
by his subordinates,” the phrase “similar incidents” is conclusory. Id. ¶ 44. And the First Amended Complaint fails
to plead crucial facts such as the number of incidents of which Chief Humphrey was aware, when those incidents
occurred, and what happened in those incidents.
violations might not be necessary to show deliberate indifference.”26 And Ms. Jeffrey may be
trying to fit her failure-to-train-on-the-First Amendment claim into this hypothesized exception to
the “ordinarily necessary” pattern-of-similar-constitutional-violations requirement.27 To the
extent Ms. Jeffrey is making this argument, the Court will now explain why the argument fails.

To justify the hypothesized exception to the “ordinarily necessary” pattern-of-similar-
constitutional-violations requirement, the Supreme Court imagined a scenario in which “a city . . .
arms its police force with firearms and deploys the armed officers into the public to capture fleeing
felons without training the officers in the constitutional limitation on the use of deadly force.”28
Here’s the take-away of that imagined scenario:
Given the known frequency with which police attempt to arrest fleeing felons and
the “predictability than an officer lacking specific tools to handle that situation will
violate citizens’ rights,” the Court theorized that a city’s decision not to train the
officers about constitutional limits on the use of deadly force could reflect the city’s
deliberate indifference to the “highly predictable consequence,” namely, violations
of constitutional rights. The Court sought not to foreclose the possibility, however
rare, that the unconstitutional consequences of failing to train could be so patently
obvious that a city could be liable under § 1983 without proof of a pre-existing
pattern of violations.29

The most obvious principle to come from the foregoing is that if the need for training is not patently
obvious, then failure-to-train liability only attaches where a pattern of similar constitutional

26 Connick, 563 U.S. at 63 (2011) (quoting Brown, 520 U.S. at 409). This hypothetical exception to the “ordinarily
necessary” pattern-of-similar-constitutional-violations requirement arose in dicta in City of Canton. See 489 U.S. at
390, 390 n.10. It was then repeated as dicta in Brown and Connick. See Brown, 520 U.S. at 409; Connick, 563 U.S.
at 63–64. Although this exception has never taken the form of a Supreme Court holding, the best read of the Eighth
Circuit precedent is that the Eighth Circuit has adopted the exception. See Andrews, 98 F.3d at 1077 (“In light of the
regular law enforcement duties of a police officer, we cannot conclude that there was a patently obvious need for the
city to specifically train officers not to rape young women.”). But see Garcia v. City of New Hope, 984 F.3d 655,
670–7 1 (8th Cir. 2021) (not discussing the patently-obvious exception in setting out the standard for failure-to-train
claims), recognized as abrogated on other grounds, Laney v. City of St. Louis, 56 F.4th 1153, 1157 n.2 (8th Cir. 2023).
27 Ms. Jeffrey never quite makes this argument, but it might be generously implied from the First Amended Complaint
and her Response to Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss. Cf. First Am. Compl. (Doc. 18) ¶ 39; Resp. in Opp’n to Mot. to
Dismiss (Doc. 25) at 5.
28 Connick, 563 U.S. at 63 (citing Canton, 489 U.S. at 390 n.10).
29 Id. at 63–64 (quoting Brown, 520 U.S. at 409).
violations has been shown. But the Eighth Circuit has drawn an additional principle from this line
of Supreme Court cases. As explained by Judge Pitlyk from the Eastern District of Missouri:
A city is not liable for a failure to train its officers to refrain from engaging in
manifestly unlawful acts. The more obvious the wrong, the less obvious the need
to train officers not to do it. That is why it is essential for a city to train officers
about when the use of deadly force is appropriate to stop a fleeing felon, but it is
not necessary for a city to train its officers not to commit sexual assaults.30

The question for the instant Motion is whether the failure to train alleged by Ms. Jeffrey falls within
the goldilocks zone established by the caselaw. The potential for misconduct in the absence of
training must be patently obvious. But, at the same time, the misconduct at issue cannot be too
obviously wrong—because then a reasonable officer would not need training on the point.
Under this rubric, Ms. Jeffrey’s failure-to-train claim cannot survive. The First Amended
Complaint alleges that (1) Ms. Jeffrey gave the middle finger to Officer Salaam as she was driving
by him, and (2) solely in retaliation for this conduct, Officer Salaam pulled Ms. Jeffrey over,
detained her, handcuffed her, and repeatedly struck her. Assuming these allegations are true,
Officer Salaam’s conduct (and Officer Nelson’s acquiescence to and assistance in that conduct)
was so obviously wrong that training on the point was unnecessary absent a pattern of similar
constitutional violations. To be sure, this case presents a closer call than the sexual-assault cases
do. But the First Amendment’s protection of a citizen that uses the middle finger (like its protection
of a citizen that says “I hate cops”) is still pretty darn elementary. Ultimately, in the Court’s view,
even without training, “[a]ny reasonable officer would know that a citizen who raises [the] middle
finger engages in speech protected by the First Amendment.”31 And if that is so, then only a pattern

30 Gray v. City of St. Louis, No. 18-cv-01678, 2025 WL 961739, at *7 (citations omitted). See also Andrews, 98 F.3d
at 1077 (“In light of the regular law enforcement duties of a police officer, we cannot conclude that there was a patently
obvious need for the city to specifically train officers not to rape young women.”).
31 Cf. Garcia, 984 F.3d at 670 (quoting Cruise-Gulyas v. Minard, 918 F.3d 494, 497 (6th Cir. 2019)); see also
Thurairajah v. City of Fort Smith, 925 F.3d 979, 982, 985 (8th Cir. 2019) (holding that the right to be free from
retaliatory arrest for yelling “fuck you” at a police officer was “clearly established” such that all reasonable officers
of similar constitutional violations could put the City on notice of the need for training on the point
such that a failure to train would be actionable.32 Any other decision risks contravening Supreme
Court precedent by having the patently-obvious exception swallow the more general rule:
As our precedent makes clear, proving that a municipality itself actually caused a
constitutional violation by failing to train the offending employee presents “difficult
problems of proof,” and we must adhere to a “stringent standard of fault,” lest
municipal liability under § 1983 collapse into respondeat superior.33

Long story short, Ms. Jeffrey’s failure-to-train claims can’t survive the Motion to Dismiss.
III. Failure to Supervise
To the extent the failure-to-supervise claim is just a failure-to-train claim by another
name,34 the claim fails for the reasons set out above. To the extent Ms. Jeffrey is alleging some
supervisory failure that is distinguishable from the alleged lack of training, the claim also fails. As
the Court has essentially explained in another portion of this Order (albeit in a slightly different
context), the First Amended Complaint fails to plead facts which plausibly suggest that Officers
Salaam or Nelson engaged in past misconduct requiring more or different supervision.35 There’s
nothing in the First Amended Complaint which would plausibly suggest that the assertedly

would know such an arrest was unlawful). The Court acknowledges, of course, that training on a particular aspect of
a right may be necessary even if that aspect of the right is clearly established for purposes of qualified immunity.
32 This conclusion is consistent with the Eighth Circuit’s 2021 decision in Garcia. In that case, a police officer pulled
over a citizen after that citizen had given the middle finger to the officer. Garcia, 984 F.3d at 660. The Eighth Circuit
concluded that the City of New Hope was not liable on a failure-to-train theory because (1) “[a] failure to train claim
requires evidence that ‘the municipality received notice of a pattern of unconstitutional acts committed by its
employees,’” and (2) there was no such evidence presented in that case. Id. at 670–71. Although it is not clear whether
and to what extent the parties pressed the exception discussed here, the panel’s conspicuous omission of any discussion
of the exception suggests it does not apply to the middle-finger scenario.
33 Connick, 563 U.S. at 70 (quoting Brown, 520 U.S. at 406, 410).
34 See Liebe v. Norton, 157 F.3d 574, 579 (8th Cir. 1998) (“[B]oth [failure-to-train and failure-to-supervise] claims
ultimately require the same analysis.”).
35 See supra pp. 5–6. The closest Ms. Jeffrey gets to such an allegation is the facts set out in Exhibit C of the First
Amended Complaint. See supra note 23. But, as previously explained, it is not enough that Officer Salaam had been
subject to official disciplinary actions six times over the 12-month period immediately prior to the incident with
Ms. Jeffrey. That is because we do not know the nature or seriousness of the violations that led to the disciplinary
actions, nor do we know what disciplinary actions were taken to address the violations. See id.
unconstitutional acts visited upon Ms. Jeffrey were a result of the City failing to correct past
conduct or failing to discipline or fire the officers prior to the incident at issue in this case.
* * *
For the foregoing reasons, all the official-capacity claims brought in the First Amended
Complaint are dismissed without prejudice. Given the liberal standards of Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 15, however, the Court agrees with Ms. Jeffrey that she should have one further chance
to amend her operative Complaint. Accordingly, within 14 days of the date of this Order,
Ms. Jeffrey may seek leave to file an Amended Complaint if she believes she can remedy the
deficiencies noted in today’s Order.*© Such a request must comply with all relevant Federal Rules
of Civil Procedure and all relevant Local Rules.
IT IS SO ORDERED this 23rd day of May 2025.
_eR—
LEE P. RUDOFSKY
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

36 The Court does not address the discovery-related request embedded in Ms. Jeffrey’s Response to the Motion to
Dismiss. See Resp. in Opp’n to Mot. to Dismiss (Doc. 25) at 4. If Ms. Jeffrey desires some sort of discovery to which
she is not otherwise entitled under the normal course of events in this case, she needs to make such a request by way
of a motion that complies with all relevant Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and all relevant Local Rules.

10

---

Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11059080. Public record. Not legal advice.