Williams, Linda v. Jaglowski, Allen

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 00-2600

Linda Williams,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

Allen Jaglowski and Ronald Kelly,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 97 C 8850--Rebecca R. Pallmeyer, Judge.

Argued February 16, 2001--Decided October 15, 2001

Before Easterbrook, Manion, and Diane P.

Wood, Circuit Judges.

Diane P. Wood, Circuit Judge. On April

30, 1996, Essex Adams died in an apparent

suicide. Linda Williams, his girlfriend

and a suspended Chicago police officer,

arrived at the scene shortly after

Adams’s death. Police at the scene tried

to question Williams about the death, but

she was evasive and refused to provide

even basic identifying information such

as her date of birth. Her uncooperative

attitude led the police at the scene to

arrest her for obstructing a police

officer in his official duties. Williams

was taken into custody and detained for

approximately ten hours. Several weeks

later, the charges against Williams were

dropped. She then filed this sec. 1983

action against the officers responsible

for her arrest and detention, arguing

that they lacked probable cause to arrest

her. The district court found that the

officers had at least arguable probable

cause for the arrest and so were entitled

to qualified immunity. The court granted

summary judgment for the defendants on

this basis, and we affirm.

I

In the early morning hours of April 30,

1996, Williams was on the telephone with

Adams when she heard a sound at the other

end like a gun being fired, followed by

silence. She promptly called 911 and

reported the incident, and police

officers were dispatched to Adams’s

apartment. When the officers arrived,

Adams’s brother Henry let them into the

apartment, where the officers discovered

that Adams had been shot in the head and

that a gun was lying on the floor near

him. The officers realized that suicide

was one possible explanation, but the

position of the gun and Henry Adams’s

statement that Essex had not been

depressed made them suspect foul play.

Shortly after the police arrived,

Williams showed up at the apartment.

Detective Allen Jaglowski, one of the

officers investigating the death, knew

that someone named Williams had made the

original 911 call. Henry Adams had also

informed Jaglowski that Essex had been

dating a Chicago police officer named

Linda Williams. Based on this

information, Jaglowski began an interview

of Williams and asked her for her badge

and police ID. Williams replied that she

did not have these items, but she refused

to elaborate. In fact, Williams did not

have a badge and ID because she was on

suspension pending her discharge, but she

did not share that information with

Jaglowski. Jaglowski also asked Williams

for her address. Initially, she refused

to provide it, but she eventually

relented and told him. Jaglowski next

asked Williams for her date of birth. He

did so because he regarded "Linda

Williams" as a very common name, and he

thought that the police department might

need more information to verify

Williams’s identity and to confirm that

she was a police officer. This request

was apparently the last straw for

Williams: she refused to give her date of

birth, stating that she thought it was

irrelevant.

After Williams refused to provide her

date of birth, Jaglowski brought over a

police sergeant, in uniform, who ordered

Williams to answer Jaglowski’s questions

about her identity. Williams refused.

Jaglowski consulted with the other

officers at the scene and then warned

Williams that she would be arrested if

she did not provide the information.

Williams continued to stonewall, and

Jaglowski arrested her on a charge of

obstructing a police officer in the

performance of his official duties.

When the officers transported Williams

to the police station, Lieutenant Ronald

Kelly, the watch commander, spoke with

Jaglowski and the other officers involved

in the investigation concerning the

circumstances of Williams’s arrest.

Lieutenant Kelly questioned Williams and

told her that she had to answer the

officers’ questions concerning her

identity. Williams remained adamant that

she would not provide her date of birth,

although she did give Kelly her star

number, which enabled him to confirm that

she was a suspended police officer. After

consulting with Jaglowski and the other

officers, Kelly approved the charges

against Williams.

These charges were eventually dropped,

but the fact remained that she had been

detained for about ten hours before her

release. She brought this sec. 1983

action against Detective Jaglowski and

Lieutenant Kelly alleging that they

lacked probable cause to arrest her.

II

Whether police officers had probable

cause to arrest a suspect and whether

they are entitled to qualified immunity

for the arrest are closely related

questions, although qualified immunity

provides the officers with an "additional

layer of protection against civil

liability" if a reviewing court finds

that they did not have probable cause.

Hughes v. Meyer, 880 F.2d 967, 970 (7th

Cir. 1989). In an unlawful arrest case in

which the defendants raise qualified

immunity as a defense, this court will

"determine if the officer actually had

probable cause or, if there was no

probable cause, whether a reasonable

officer could have mistakenly believed

that probable cause existed." Humphrey v.

Staszak, 148 F.3d 719, 725 (7th Cir.

1998). If the officers can establish that

they had "arguable probable cause" to

arrest the plaintiff, then the officers

are entitled to qualified immunity, even

if a court later determines that they did

not actually have probable cause. Id.

Accordingly, we will affirm the district

court’s grant of summary judgment if we

find that "a reasonable police officer in

the same circumstances and with the same

knowledge . . . as the officer in

question could have reasonably believed

that probable cause existed in light of

well-established law." Id.

A.

The defendants’ principal argument is

that they had at least arguable probable

cause to arrest Williams for obstructing

a police officer, and thus qualified

immunity bars this suit. "Whether an

officer is authorized to make an arrest

ordinarily depends, in the first

instance, on state law." Michigan v.

DeFillippo, 443 U.S. 31, 36 (1979).

Federal law asks only whether the

officers had probable cause to believe

that the predicate offense, as the state

has defined it, has been committed.

Richardson v. Bonds, 860 F.2d 1427, 1432

n.4 (7th Cir. 1988). Here, the relevant

state law is 720 ILCS sec. 5/31-1(a),

which defines the offense of obstructing

a police officer. It reads in relevant

part as follows: "A person who knowingly

resists or obstructs the performance by

one known to the person to be a peace

officer . . . of any authorized act

within his official capacity commits a

Class A misdemeanor." In interpreting

this statute, the Illinois Supreme Court

has held that sec. 5/31-1 "do[es] not

proscribe mere argument with a policeman

about the validity of an arrest or other

police action, but proscribe[s] only some

physical act which imposes an obstacle

which may impede, hinder, interrupt,

prevent or delay the performance of the

officer’s duties, such as going limp,

forcefully resisting arrest or physically

aiding a third party to avoid arrest."

People v. Raby, 240 N.E.2d 595, 599 (Ill.

1968). The defendants do not point to any

physical act Williams committed that

would satisfy the requirement set out in

Raby. Moreover, as far as the record

reveals, Williams did not engage in any

physical act that in any way hindered or

impeded Detective Jaglowski. Her only

offense was stubbornly to refuse to

supply Detective Jaglowski with her date

of birth, which would not constitute

obstruction as the Illinois Supreme Court

defined that offense in Raby. Unless the

circumstances of this case somehow bring

it outside the Raby rule, the defendants

did not have even arguable probable cause

to arrest Williams for obstructing a

police officer.

The defendants argue that Illinois cases

since Raby have called the Raby rule into

question. We are not so sure. Our own

analysis of the cases the defendants cite

along with other recent Illinois

decisions indicates that the "physical

act" requirement is still very much an

element of the crime of obstructing a

police officer in Illinois. Since Raby,

the Illinois Appellate Court has

reaffirmed that a "physical act" is an

essential element of obstruction under

sec. 5/31-1, and has further clarified

that, under Raby, "mere silence" in the

face of requests for identifying

information, or even supplying false

information, is not enough to constitute

obstruction. See People v. Ramirez, 502

N.E.2d 1237, 1239-40 (Ill. App. Ct. 1986)

(false information); People v.

Weathington, 394 N.E.2d 1059, 1061-62

(Ill. App. Ct. 1979) (mere silence). This

court, following those cases, has also

recognized that "in Illinois the crime of

resisting an officer in the performance

of his duty requires physical

resistance." Ryan v. County of DuPage, 45

F.3d 1090, 1093 (7th Cir. 1995).

The cases that the defendants claim call

the Raby holding into question have been

distinguished by the Illinois courts. Two

involve a defendant refusing to identify

himself or giving false information to

officers attempting to serve process on

the defendant. People v. Meister, 682

N.E.2d 306, 309 (Ill. App. Ct. 1997);

Migliore v. County of Winnebago, 321

N.E.2d 476, 479 (Ill. App. Ct. 1974). The

Illinois courts have been clear that

these cases involve concerns unique to

the service of process context and do not

apply to police investigations. See,

e.g., Weathington, 394 N.E.2d at 1061

(distinguishing Migliore on this basis).

The final case on which the defendants

rely, People v. Gibbs, 253 N.E.2d 117,

119-20 (Ill. App. Ct. 1969), involved a

defendant who interrupted an encounter

between police and third parties, advised

the third parties that they did not have

to allow the police to search them, and

urged the third parties to leave the

area. Although this case offers some

support for the idea that verbal

interference alone could be sufficient to

support a finding of obstruction in some

cases, the Appellate Court has made it

clear that Gibbs involved "unusual facts"

and did not undermine the general rule

stated in Raby. Ramirez, 502 N.E.2d at

1239. In this case, nothing Williams did

interfered with the police officer’s

interactions with any third parties. In

light of this well established law, we

conclude that a reasonable officer could

not have thought the situation fit within

the narrow exception Gibbs created to the

Raby rule, nor that even arguable

probable cause existed to support an

arrest of Williams for the offense of ob

structing a police officer.

B.

This does not, however, win the day for

Williams. The fact that the officers

lacked probable cause to arrest her for

the precise offense with which she was

charged is only one part of our inquiry.

Police officers are not required to be

legal scholars. This means, among other

things, that the arresting officer’s

knowledge of facts sufficient to support

probable cause is more important to the

evaluation of the propriety of an arrest

than the officer’s understanding of the

legal basis for the arrest. Biddle v.

Martin, 992 F.2d 673, 676 (7th Cir.

1993), citing Richardson v. Bonds, 860

F.2d 1427 (7th Cir. 1988). This is why an

arrest is justified if the officers had

probable cause (or arguable probable

cause) to arrest the suspect either for

the precise offense the officers cited or

for a closely-related offense. Id. In

order to rely on a closely-related

charge, however, the officers must show

that the charge can reasonably be based

on the same set of facts that gave rise

to the arrest and that the charge offered

as justification is one that "would [have

recommended] itself to a reasonable

police officer acting in good faith" at

the time the arrest was made. Richardson,

860 F.2d at 1431. The justification for

the arrest cannot be an "ex post facto

extrapolation [ ] of all crimes that

might have been charged on a given set of

facts." Id.

Jaglowski and Kelly argue that, even if

they lacked probable cause to arrest

Williams for obstructing a police

officer, they had probable cause, or at

least arguable probable cause, to arrest

her on the closely-related charge of

failure to follow police rules. If

failure to follow police rules is a

criminal offense at all (which we discuss

in a moment), it is one that is "closely

related" on the present facts to the

charge of obstructing an officer. We turn

then to the critical question, which is

whether state law defines the rules

violation as a criminal offense, see

DeFillippo, 443 U.S. at 36, or if the

police rules are more like a

schoolteacher’s admonition not to run in

the halls--a rule, to be sure, but

nothing so dignified as a criminal law of

the state.

Although it is not entirely clear that

a Chicago police officer’s failure to

follow police rules could violate a state

criminal law, it appears likely that this

is the case. At the very least, we find

that the law is unsettled, which means

that the defendants here had at least

arguable probable cause to arrest

Williams, and any remaining question

about the propriety of the arrest raises

only an issue of state law, not a federal

constitutional problem. No Illinois court

has ever considered this question.

Nevertheless, the Chicago Municipal Code

(a "state" law for this purpose)

specifies that Chicago police officers

have the power to arrest for any

violation of the Code. Chicago Mun. Code

sec. 2-84-230. Another section of the

Municipal Code provides:

Any member of the police department who

shall neglect or refuse to perform any

duty required of him by . . . the rules

and regulations of the department of

police . . . may, in addition to any

other penalty or punishment imposed by

law, be fined not more than $100.00 for

each offense.

Id. sec. 2-84-290.

In a case with striking similarities to

this one, we held that this provision

incorporated the police rules into the

Chicago Municipal Code. See Richardson,

860 F.2d at 1432 (finding police had

arguable probable cause to arrest off-

duty officer for refusal to provide his

name and star number in violation of

police rules). This implied that a

violation of the police rules amounts to

a violation of the Municipal Code, and an

arrest may be made if probable cause

exists. Although both parties admit that

arrests for failure to follow police

rules are highly unusual (in fact, at

oral argument the City conceded that it

was not aware of any such arrests other

than the ones at issue in Richardson and

this case), the Chicago Municipal Code

has not changed materially since we

decided Richardson, and no Illinois case

since then has cast doubt on our

conclusion that the Chicago police have

the authority to arrest fellow officers

for this type of a violation of the

Municipal Code.

The Supreme Court has recently held that

arrests for misdemeanor violations that

would be punishable only by a fine do not

offend any constitutional principles.

Atwater v. City of Lago Vista, 121 S. Ct.

1536 (2001). Atwater held that "[i]f an

officer has probable cause to believe

that an individual has committed even a

very minor criminal offense in his

presence, he may, without violating the

Fourth Amendment, arrest the offender."

121 S. Ct. at 1557. Municipal Code sec.

2-84-290 describes just such a minor

criminal offense. Since a failure to

follow police rules is at least

potentially a violation of that section

of the Municipal Code, Atwater indicates

that such an arrest would be

constitutional. The only remaining issue

is whether the officer had probable cause

to believe that Williams had committed

that offense in his presence.

In our opinion, he did. At the time of

Williams’s arrest, Detective Jaglowski

had information that Williams was a

police officer, and he knew that she had

refused to answer his questions about her

identity even after having been ordered

to do so by a superior officer. These

facts formed the basis for the

obstruction arrest, and the same facts

would support a charge of failure to

follow police rules. Kelly testified that

Williams’s status as a police officer and

her failure to follow police rules played

at least some role in the decision to

charge her, which reassures us that this

justification is not an ex post facto

excuse for the arrest. Moreover, the

undisputed evidence in the record

establishes that Williams violated at

least one police rule in the presence of

the arresting officer. Police Rule 6

prohibits disobedience of a written or

oral directive of a superior officer.

Williams was ordered by a uniformed

sergeant, who was superior to her, to

provide her date of birth to Detective

Jaglowski, and she refused to obey.

Although Kelly and Jaglowski also argue

that Williams violated a number of other

police rules, we find it unnecessary to

determine whether her conduct violated

those other rules because the Rule 6

violation is clear. That is enough to

support the district court’s conclusion

that Williams suffered no deprivation of

her federal rights when she was arrested.

Williams makes two final arguments that

need not detain us long. First, she

argues that, regardless of whether an

active police officer could be arrested

for violating the police rules, she was

on suspension at the time of her arrest,

and suspended officers cannot be arrested

for violating police rules. This makes

little sense, especially on the facts of

our case. Williams admits that she did

not tell Jaglowski she was on suspension,

and, as far as the record reveals,

theofficers did not discover this

information until after Williams was

arrested and transported to the station.

Because the probable cause analysis

focuses on the information that was

available to the arresting officer at the

time of the arrest, see Humphrey, 148

F.3d at 725, the fact that, unbeknownst

to the arresting officers, Williams was

on suspension at the time of her arrest

is irrelevant to our analysis. Moreover,

Williams has not pointed to any police

rule, municipal ordinance, or case

suggesting that the police rules are not

fully applicable to suspended officers.

In the face of such silence, a reasonable

officer could easily believe that, if ac

tive officers could be arrested for

violating police rules, suspended

officers could also be arrested for the

same infractions.

Finally, Williams argues that applying

Police Rule 6 to require her to answer

Jaglowski’s questions, under threat of

arrest, violates her Fifth Amendment

right not to be compelled to incriminate

herself. Although it is possible that a

rule requiring police officers to answer

a superior officer’s questions on pain of

arrest might in some circumstances run

afoul of the Fifth Amendment, we do not

believe that Williams’s Fifth Amendment

rights are implicated here. The Fifth

Amendment privilege allows people not to

answer official questions if their

answers "might incriminate [them] in

future criminal proceedings." Minnesota

v. Murphy, 465 U.S. 420, 426 (1984). It

seems highly unlikely that Williams would

have incriminated herself in any way by

providing Detective Jaglowski with her

birth date, and Williams has not

suggested any reason why this information

might have proved incriminating. Cf.

United States v. Edwards, 885 F.2d 377,

385 (7th Cir. 1989) (noting that Miranda

warnings are not generally required

before asking arrestees for "booking

information" such as name and address

because such information is not likely to

evoke an incriminating response). In the

circumstances of this case, Williams’s

Fifth Amendment argument has no merit.

For these reasons, we find that

Detective Jaglowski and Lieutenant Kelly

had at least arguable probable cause to

arrest Williams for violating the Chicago

Police Department’s rules, and that they

are entitled to qualified immunity on

that basis. Accordingly, the judgment of

the district court is Affirmed.