8th Circuit opinion splits on St. Louis County PD ‘wanted’ notices

Asked if St. Louis County Police Department’s electronic “wanted” notices — which allow other officers to take someone into custody without questioning or a warrant — violate the U.S. Constitution, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said “it depends.”

“Because circumstances may exist under which the Wanteds System does not run afoul of the Constitution, the plaintiffs’ facial challenge to the system fails,” Judge Ralph R. Erickson wrote.

Class-action representative Dwayne Furlow claimed that officers’ wanteds violated the plaintiffs’ Fourth, Fifth and 14th Amendment rights. Furlow had two “wanteds” out for his arrest over two suspected domestic assault incidents in 2016. Though a victim recanted her statements to the officer who issued the notices a day later, the wanteds weren’t canceled, and Furlow was later stopped for a traffic violation and arrested.

The class is represented by Eric Alan Stone of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York. He did not respond to a call requesting comment.

Furlow motioned to certify people arrested since Feb. 24, 2011 due to a wanted notice without a judicial determination of probable cause before or shortly after their arrest or have been denied requests to quash the wanted notice. SLCPD, represented by Frank J. Smith Jr. from the St. Louis County Counselor’s Office, moved for summary judgment in its favor. The office did not respond to a call requesting comment.

While the 8th Circuit determined that the officers who handled Furlow’s arrest retained qualified immunity bestowed by a lower court, the detective who issued a wanted for fellow plaintiff Ralph Torres did not. The SLCPD was investigating Ralph Torres for child abuse in 2014. When a detective conducting a parallel investigation failed to reach his attorney, she issued a wanted notice more than two months after the complaint.

The official Department of Social Services investigation closed due to insufficient evidence and a state court found that the child’s mother had fabricated the claims. But the wanted was never closed, and an officer on patrol near Torres’ house arrested Torres with just the wanted in hand.

“By the time Torres was seized pursuant to the Wanted, Detective Clements should have known that probable cause had evaporated,” Erickson wrote. “While the Wanted was pending, Detective Clements did not make herself aware of the investigation’s development.”

The 8th Circuit affirmed the lower district court’s dismissed municipal liability claim and remanded the case.

Judges Bobby E. Shepherd and David R. Stras each concurred and dissented in part. Shepherd disagreed with the opinion upholding the dismissed municipal claim against the SLCPD, and believed the district court needed instructions to address “whether the record reflected an official policy or custom of St. Louis County that gave rise to the alleged violations of plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.”

Stras likened the wanteds to “old west” wanted posters, and considered the court’s opinion “a slippery slope.”

“The point is that officers still have every incentive to get an arrest warrant, especially when probable cause is a close call,” Stras wrote. “But in the ordinary case, nothing — not the common law nor the Fourth Amendment — prevents them from making a warrantless arrest.”

The case is Furlow v. Belmar, 21-2640.