The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals will allow parts of a federal civil rights lawsuit to go forward against three Papillion police officers in connection with a racially charged traffic stop in 2019 near a mall looking for two shoplifters.
Jason Storrs and Amber Smith — who everyone now acknowledges had nothing to do with the shoplifting — sued Officers Travis Rozeboom, Preston Maas and Brian Malone in 2021, saying they had pulled over the wrong car with the wrong suspects inside, approached with guns drawn and escalated the stop, one of them tasing Storrs’ groin after he accused them of racial profiling and another knocking Smith to the ground when she tried to film the encounter.
In October 2022, U.S. District Judge Brian Buescher ruled that the officers were protected from the lawsuit.
He started his 85-page order dismissing the case by saying: "This case arises after the police made a mistake."
Buescher said he was not blind to the societal issues raised by the case.
"Our country is in the middle of a great debate regarding police action, particularly police action against members of minority groups. The undersigned judge acknowledges the importance of this case, and those like it, given the highly public nature of other cases of police action involving minorities," he wrote in 2022.
But, Buescher said, police in the U.S. are given considerable protection from lawsuits arising from them performing their duties. The question wasn't whether the officers broke the law, he said, but whether they should be held personally liable for their actions in the 30-minute stop of Storrs and Smith.
He concluded they should not.Â
Storrs and Smith appealed his ruling over the stop that occurred on Dec. 26, 2019.
At about 7 that night, Storrs was picking up Smith from work at Shadow Lake Towne Center around the same time dispatch notified the officers of a shoplifting that had just happened at Dick's Sporting Goods and to be on the lookout for the suspects — a Black woman who had put items in her purse and left the store with a Black man — in a four-door silver car.Â
Malone stopped Storrs, who is Black, in his silver two-door BMW with Smith and their dog, and Rozeboom helped with the stop. Â
Buescher called what happened next "unfortunate."
Despite seeing that his passenger was white, Malone told Storrs "this goes really easy, either ... you can all go in handcuffs right now or you can answer,†according to court records that detailed the bodycam recording.
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"What'd I do?" Storrs yelled.
The officer told Storrs to turn off his car, but he wouldn't, then asked if he "did" the shoplifting. Storrs yelled, "No, I did not, sir."
Things escalated. Smith accused Malone of harassment. Storrs called the three officers racist.
Rozeboom ultimately used a taser on Storrs to detain him. He and Smith both ended up handcuffed, in separate squad cars as the officers searched the car and Smith's purse, finding nothing.
The officers then got a call and learned the shoplifters actually had been four Black women.Â
After running a records check on Storrs and Smith, the officers released them.
In a decision last month, a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals said Storrs and Smith's attorneys with the ACLU of Nebraska and Gutman Law Firm had adequately raised a claim that their continued detention was unreasonable.Â
Chief Judge Steven Colloton said the officers had reasonable suspicion to stop their car because it generally matched the description of the suspect vehicle.
"But after the officers stopped the vehicle and approached on foot, they could see that the passenger was a white female. It was then readily apparent that the passengers of the seized vehicle (one black person and one white person) did not match the description of the shoplifting suspects (two black persons). At that point, it was no longer reasonable for the officers to suspect that Storrs and Smith were the perpetrators in the shoplifting incident," the judge wrote.
Colloton said detention must be supported by reasonable suspicion, and "a reasonable officer would have known that no reasonable suspicion existed to continue detaining the pair for shoplifting after observing that Smith was white."
But, he said, at some point the officers did have probable cause to believe Smith was obstructing an officer when she stood in front of Storrs to block his detention, and that Storrs was obstructing by refusing to comply.Â
Storrs' attorneys argued excessive force for intentionally tasing Storrs in the groin. But Colloton said the video evidence contradicts that the officer had aimed. Storrs had been moving.Â
He said the case also cannot go forward on Smith's claim that they retaliated against her for recording what happened, because video showed her interfering with officers, not just filming them from a distance; or on Storrs' claim they retaliated against him for tasing him because he had called them racist.
As for their final claim, that Malone and Maas conducted an illegal search of Storrs' car and Smith's purse, Colloton said that was a question for a jury. The officers said they smelled marijuana. Storrs and Smith said they couldn't have.
Represented by the ACLU of Nebraska, Jason Storrs and his partner Amber Smith have filed a federal lawsuit against three officers with the Papillion Police Department.