Webb v. City of Minneapolis

                UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT                             
                    DISTRICT OF MINNESOTA                                


Robert Webb,                             No. 23-cv-1836 (KMM/TNL)        

          Plaintiff,                                                     

v.                                                                       

City of Minneapolis; Officer Luke                                        
Bakken; Officer Robert Calhoun; Officer                                  
Tser Cheng; Officer Christopher Lange, in                                
their individual and official capacities;                                

          Defendants.                                                    


    Plaintiff Robert Webb alleges that several City of Minneapolis Police Officers 
violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures 
and committed common law torts when he was arrested on August 22, 2021. He also asserts 
that Defendants violated the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act (“MGDPA”) in 
connection with public records requests he submitted concerning the August 22, 2021 
incident. This matter is before the Court on the Defendants’1 Motion for Judgment on the 
Pleadings. As explained below, the Court grants the motion in part and denies it in part. 

1 The City of Minneapolis, Officer Tser Cheng, and Officer Christopher Lange bring the motion 
for judgment on the pleadings. Officer Luke Bakken is deceased and the City requested that 
Plaintiff voluntarily dismiss him from the suit. The City represents that there is no Minneapolis 
Police Officer named Robert Calhoun, and the correct officer has not been named or served. Defs.’ 
Mem. 2 n.1, Doc. 26. Instead of Robert Calhoun, Defendants refer to the fourth officer involved 
in this incident as “Ryan Calhoun.” Id. at 2.                             
                        BACKGROUND2                                      
    Mr. Webb’s Arrest                                                    
    On August 22, 2021, Plaintiff Robert Webb was on work release from a state prison, 

living at Portland House, a halfway house in Minneapolis. Compl. ¶ 7 (Doc. 1). Mr. Webb 
was  staying  there  along  with  approximately  twelve  to  fifteen  other  individuals.  Id. 
Mr. Webb is a Black man, as were all the other Portland House residents at that time. Id. 
Webb lived in a room above the main floor, and others lived on the lower level beneath the 
main floor. Id. At approximately 2:30 a.m., Minneapolis Police Officers Luke Bakken, 

Ryan Calhoun, Tser Cheng, and Christopher Lange arrived at Portland House to execute 
arrest warrants for two of the residents, Deondre Jefferson and Darryl Billups. Id. ¶ 8. The 
officers had no warrant to arrest Mr. Webb.                               
    A staff member of the halfway house, M.P., witnessed portions of the events that 
form the basis of Webb’s claims. Id. ¶ 18. At approximately 2:39 a.m., Officers Bakken 

and Calhoun met with M.P outside of the halfway house. Ans., Ex. E (“Calhoun BWC”) 
6:00, Doc. 9-5; id., Ex. D (“Bakken BWC”) 6:20, Doc. 9-4. M.P. told Officers Bakken and 
Calhoun that Mr. Billups and Mr. Jefferson had been walking around the residence rather 

2 This background includes factual allegations in the complaint as well as the Court’s description 
of the relevant events that are established by the video footage attached to the Defendants’ answer 
and referenced throughout their briefing in support of the pending motion. Courts regularly 
consider such video footage as “embraced by the pleadings” in this context. E.g., LeMay v. Mays, 

 (8th Cir. 2021); Ching v. City of Minneapolis, 

 (8th Cir. 2023); 
Anderson v. St. Luke’s Hospital, No. 19-cv-106 (MJD/LIB), 

, at *3 n.5 (D. 
Minn. Nov. 19, 2019), R&R adopted, No. 19-cv-106 (MJD/LIB), 

 (D. Minn. Jan. 
17, 2020); Verino v. Higgins, No. 19-cv-3024 (DWF/LIB), 

, at *1 n.1 (D. Minn. 
June  30,  2020).  The  Court  finds  that  it  can  consider  these  videos  without  converting  the 
Defendants’ motion to a motion for summary judgment. Plaintiff does not argue otherwise, and in 
fact, cites portions of the footage in his opposition.                    
than in their room, in violation of Portland House’s rules. M.P. explained that Billups and 
Jefferson remained inside the residence. Calhoun BWC 6:10–7:00, 9:00–10:00; Bakken 
BWC 6:20–7:00. The officers asked M.P. to stay outside while they went into the halfway 

house to arrest Billups and Jefferson. Calhoun BWC 8:45–9:00, 12:50–13:10. They told 
M.P. if he went back into the house, to not discuss the officers’ plans to make the arrests. 
Calhoun BWC 8:50–9:15; Bakken BWC 8:50–9:15. M.P told the officers again that 
Mr. Billups and Mr. Jefferson were in the residence thirty minutes earlier. Calhoun BWC 
9:00–9:30; Bakken BWC 9:15–9:30. Officer Calhoun then called dispatch to request 

another squad car come to the residence to help Officers Bakken and Calhoun execute the 
warrants. Calhoun BWC 10:00–10:20.                                        
    Officers Cheng and Lange arrived at the halfway house around 2:45 a.m. and met 
with  Officers  Bakken  and  Calhoun.  Calhoun  BWC  13:40–13:44.  The  newly  arrived 
officers learned that Mr. Billups and Mr. Jefferson had felony warrants, including a warrant 

for assault, and that both warrants cautioned about the presence of weapons. Calhoun BWC 
13:45–14:30; Bakken BWC 13:45–14:30. Officer Bakken told the other officers that while 
standing on the sidewalk in front of the residence, he had seen people moving around 
inside, and M.P. confirmed that Billups and Jefferson were not in their rooms. Bakken 
BWC 14:00–15:10.                                                          

    M.P. did not provide the officers with a detailed description of Billups and Jefferson. 
For example, he did not know what they were wearing. Calhoun BWC 16:40–16:44; 
Bakken BWC 16:38–16:45. M.P. stated that “both have braids, or like dreads, but Darryl 
[Billups] has like, color on one side, like gold color on one side of his braids.” Calhoun 
BWC 16:45–17:05; Bakken BWC 16:24–17:05. M.P. provided the officers with a key to 
the room Billups and Jefferson occupied in the residence, in case they needed to use it. 
Calhoun BWC 17:05–17:15.                                                  

    At about 2:51 a.m., the officers entered the residence to execute the warrants. 
Calhoun BWC 17:30; Bakken BWC 17:30. As they did so, the officers unholstered their 
weapons. Calhoun BWC 17:30–17:39; Bakken BWC 17:30–18:00; Ans., Ex. C (“Cheng 
BWC”) 5:40–45, Doc. 9-3. Soon after entering the residence, Officer Cheng and Officer 
Lange saw a man standing in a hallway on the main level. Officer Cheng pointed his 

firearm at the man and asked for his name. Cheng BWC 6:10–6:25; Bakken BWC 18:00–
18:15.  The  man  identified  himself  as  Deondre—Mr. Jefferson’s  first  name—and  the 
officers  arrested  him.  Cheng  BWC  6:10–6:25;  Bakken  BWC  18:15–18:25.  Officer 
Calhoun led Mr. Jefferson to the front door of the residence while Officers Cheng and 
Lange continued to go through the house looking for Mr. Billups. Calhoun BWC 18:36–

18:50; Cheng BWC 6:50–6:55. Officer Calhoun asked Mr. Jefferson “where’s Darryl at?” 
and Jefferson indicated that he didn’t know where Darryl was. Calhoun BWC 18:50–18:55. 
    Around 2:50 a.m., Mr. Webb woke up and left his room to get some water and use 
the restroom. Compl. ¶ 11. While searching the house, Officer Cheng passed an open 
bathroom door, which at first appeared unoccupied. Cheng BWC 6:44–7:00. Officer Lange 

was behind Officer Cheng carrying a “less-lethal” 40mm projectile launcher. Cheng BWC 
6:40–7:00. Officer Cheng took a closer look as he was passing the open restroom door, 
turned to his left, and spotted someone standing in a darkened alcove of the bathroom. 
Cheng BWC 7:00–7:03. They later identified this individual as Mr. Webb.   
    The Officers pointed their weapons at Mr. Webb, told him to show his hands and 
face the wall. Webb perceived the weapons to be a shotgun and a handgun, and he was 
frightened. Cheng BWC 7:00–7:15; Compl. ¶ 11. The officers handcuffed Mr. Webb and 

told him he was under arrest on a warrant. Cheng BWC 7:15–7:30. They did not ask Webb 
to identify himself. Officers Cheng and Lange then led Mr. Webb outside the residence 
where Officer Calhoun was waiting with Mr. Jefferson. Cheng BWC 7:30–8:00. Officer 
Cheng helped Mr. Webb make a phone call on Webb’s cell phone. Cheng BWC 8:40–
10:10.                                                                    

    When Officers Cheng and Lange brought Mr. Webb outside the residence, M.P. was 
near the front steps. Cheng BWC 8:00–8:07. Officer Lange asked if the two men they had 
arrested were Mr. Billups and Mr. Jefferson. Ans., Ex. B (“Lange BWC”) 8:15–8:20, 
Doc. 9-2. M.P. responded, asking “Is that the guy with the color on one side of his head? 
That should be Darryl right there.” Lange BWC 8:20–8:30. He pointed at Mr. Webb as he 

said this. Lange BWC 8:20–8:30. Officer Lange then shined a flashlight on Mr. Webb’s 
face to help M.P. identify him. Lange BWC 8:20–8:30. Officer Lange asked “So that’s 
both of them, correct?” and M.P. agreed. Lange BWC 8:30–8:32. Officer Bakken asked 
again “Both of them? Both of them guys?” Again, M.P. agreed, saying “Yep.”3 Bakken 
BWC 20:20–20:25.                                                          
    Mr. Webb had his identification card in his pocket. Compl. ¶¶ 12–13. The arresting 

officers searched Mr. Webb and placed his belongings, including his ID, in a manila folder 
without looking at it first. Bakken BWC 24:20–24:25. Officer Calhoun then placed Webb 
in the back of a squad car and handed Officer Bakken the manila envelope. Bakken BWC 
24:20–24:25. Officer Bakken opened the rear door of another police vehicle to place the 
manila envelope in the back, but before doing so, he looked briefly at Mr. Webb’s 

 

Bakken BWC 24:25–24:35. Officer Bakken placed the envelope in the back of the squad 
car. Bakken BWC 24:35–25:02.                                              
    A short time later, Officer Bakken retrieved the envelope and Webb’s 

 He gave 
the ID to Officer Calhoun. Bakken BWC 25:30–26:00. Officer Calhoun saw that the name 
on Mr. Webb’s ID, Robert Webb, did not match the name on the warrant and asked 

Plaintiff, “Who’s Robert Webb?” Calhoun BWC 26:00–26:13. Mr. Webb asked Officer 
Calhoun if that was a real question and Officer Calhoun again asked “Who’s Robert 
Webb?” Ans., Ex. F (“Squad Video Forward”) 4:00–4:28, Doc. 9-6. Mr. Webb told him 


3 In the complaint, Mr. Webb asserts that M.P. told the officers “You have the wrong guy,” and 
the officers ignored him. Compl. ¶ 19. The Court has reviewed the video footage provided in 
support of Defendants’ motion and M.P. does not tell the officers they arrested the wrong person. 
In fact, the video captures M.P. confirming that the officers had arrested both men they asked him 
about before entering the residence. Plaintiff does not suggest that the officers’ bodycams are 
incomplete. Because the allegation is inconsistent with the video, the Court declines to accept the 
complaint’s allegation in Paragraph 19 as true for purposes of ruling on the pending motion for 
judgment on the pleadings. See Waters v. Madson, 

 (8th Cir. 2019) (explaining 
that a court need not “adopt the plaintiff’s version of the facts if they are blatantly contradicted by 
video evidence”) (cleaned up).                                            
“that’s a hard question” and then said he had been “known, doing business as Robert 
Webb.” Squad Video Forward 4:28–4:40. Officer Calhoun asked, “What?” and Mr. Webb 
again  said  “I  do  business  as  Robert  Webb.”  Squad  Video  Forward  4:40–4:44.  Still 

believing he was speaking to Darryl Billups, Officer Calhoun asked “So you’re using a 
false name?” Mr. Webb denied that he was. Squad Video Forward 4:44–4:48. Officer 
Calhoun asked Mr. Webb what he meant by saying that he does business as Robert Webb, 
and Plaintiff told him “I’m not trying to be difficult with you. Look at the ID and look at 
me.” Squad Video Forward 4:48–5:00. In response, Officer Calhoun said, “Well, you have 

his ID, man, so I’m asking you, who’s Robert Webb?” After a brief silence, Officer 
Calhoun stated, “Alright, well you both are under arrest, okay? Okay?” To this, Mr. Webb 
responded: “Yeah.” Squad Video Forward 5:00–5:13.                         
    Around nine minutes later, while Officer Calhoun was looking up the warrant 
information on his squad computer, he began discussing the warrants with Mr. Webb and 

Mr. Jefferson, and addressed them with the name “Darryl.” Bakken BWC 35:00–35:40. In 
response, Mr. Jefferson said there was no one named “Darryl” in the back of the car. 
Bakken BWC 35:40–35:53. When Officer Calhoun asked Jefferson if his name was Darryl, 
Jefferson said “No, my name’s Deondre.” Bakken BWC 35:53–35:56. Officer Calhoun 
then asked Mr. Webb, “What’s your name?” to which Webb responded “Rob.” Officer 

Calhoun asked “What?” and again Mr. Webb said “Rob. You have my ID.” Bakken BWC 
35:55–36:05.                                                              
    This exchange occurred just after 3:09 a.m., and the officers initially arrested 
Mr. Webb approximately seventeen minutes earlier at 2:52 a.m. The officers had driven a 
short distance from Portland House with Mr. Webb and Mr. Jefferson in the rear seat of 
the vehicle. The officers told Mr. Webb that they were looking for Darryl Billups and that 
M.P. had identified him as Mr. Billups. Bakken BWC 36:05–36:40. They explained they 

were checking on Mr. Webb’s ID through their squad computer and looking at the warrant 
so they could verify his identity before taking him all the way to a jail. Bakken BWC 36:40–
36:52. As he checked Mr. Webb’s  ID on the computer,  Officer  Calhoun asked why 
Mr. Webb had not answered more clearly when he asked him earlier “who’s Robert 
Webb.” Mr. Webb said that because they had his ID and he obviously looked like the 

person in the photograph on it, he was unsure whether Officer Calhoun had asked him a 
“real question.” Mr. Webb said he thought the officers might have been joking. Bakken 
BWC 37:25–37:50. At that point, Officer Calhoun said “Well, Robert’s going to be going 
back to the house,” and made it clear to Mr. Webb they were taking him back home. 
Bakken BWC 37:50–38:00.                                                   

    Officers Bakken and Calhoun drove back to Portland House to look for Mr. Billups 
and release Mr. Webb at his home. Bakken BWC 38:00–41:30. It was 3:15 a.m. when they 
arrived, about twenty-three minutes after Mr. Webb’s arrest. Bakken BWC 41:30. Before 
exiting the vehicle, the officers explained that they were going back into the residence, but 
that they would “be quick.” Bakken BWC 41:25–41:35. At the door, Officers Calhoun and 

Bakken told M.P. that the person they had arrested was not Darryl Billups but Mr. Webb. 
M.P. said, “Oh, that was Robert Webb?” and apologized to the officers for the confusion. 
Bakken BWC 42:54–43:20. Officers Calhoun and Bakken went inside Portland House and 
searched Mr. Billups’ room to see if he was still there. He was not. The officers then 
returned to the squad car and released Mr. Webb. This occurred approximately twenty-
eight minutes after his arrest. Bakken BWC 46:00–46:30. After returning Mr. Webb’s 
belongings to him, one of the officers apologized to Mr. Webb. Bakken BWC 46:30–47:13. 

    A photograph of Mr. Billups that would have been available to the officers shows 
that  he  and  Mr.  Webb  differ  in  appearance.  Compl.  ¶ 16.  Mr. Webb  has  a  darker 
complexion, stands over six feet tall, and weighs 270 pounds. Compl. ¶ 16; Riach Decl., 
Ex. D, Doc. 43-4. The information the officers had available to them regarding the warrant 
for Mr. Billups’ arrest indicated that he was 5’10” tall and weighed 224 pounds. Other 

records indicated that at some point he may have weighed as little as 164 pounds.4 Ans., 
Ex. A at 5, 7; see also Riach Decl., Ex. A at 5 (listing Mr. Billups as 5’10” tall and weighing 
214 pounds), Doc. 43-1.                                                   



4 Unlike video evidence, when ruling on a motion for judgment on the pleadings, courts should 
not accept as true officers’ statements in narrative reports that contradict the complaint. LeMay, 

. Accordingly, the Court disregards the portions of the incident reports submitted by 
Defendants as Exhibit A to their Answer that contain the officers’ narrative accounts. However, 
Exhibit A also contains call details regarding the warrants and the subjects of those warrants, 
including identifying information for both Mr. Billups and Mr. Jefferson. These portions of the 
reports include their age, sex, race, height, and weight, among other details. Ans., Ex. A at 7–8, 
11–13. Notably, the Complaint alleges that Officers Calhoun and Bakken arrived at Portland 
House to execute arrest warrants for both Jefferson and Billups. Compl. ¶¶ 8, 16. And the video 
evidence supports the inference that, prior to arriving at Portland House, Officer Calhoun, Officer 
Bakken, or both, had reviewed such information. See Crow v. Rasmussen, No. 23-cv-2403 
(KMM/TNL), 

, at *3–4 (D. Minn. May 7, 2024) (on a motion for judgment on 
the pleadings, considering exhibit containing warrant information regarding a suspect because it 
was neither “extraneous to [n]or contradict[ed] the Complaint” and the video evidence supported 
the reasonable inference that officers saw it before encountering the plaintiff). Mr. Webb does not 
argue that the Court should disregard this material, and he cites to information about Billups’s 
height and weight contained in Exhibit A in his response. Pl.’s Opp’n at 4 (citing Doc. No. 9-1 at 
5).                                                                       
    Plaintiff’s Claims                                                   
    Mr. Webb alleges that he was shaken by the incident, has had trouble sleeping, and 
had “nightmares about guns being pointed at him and other frightening images.” Compl. 

¶ 21; see also id. ¶ 33 (discussing psychological harm). He presents his claims as five 
separate counts, three of which are relevant here. In Count 1, pursuant to 

, 
Mr. Webb asserts that the individual Defendants violated his right to remain free from 
unreasonable seizure, false arrest, and excessive force under the Fourth Amendment. He 
emphasizes that the Defendants handcuffed, arrested, and held him without probable cause 

or legal justification. Compl. ¶ 35. In Count 2, Webb also brings Fourth Amendment 
unreasonable-seizure and false-arrest claims against the City of Minneapolis pursuant to 
§ 1983 and Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York, 

 
(1978). Count 2 asserts that the City developed constitutionally deficient training practices 
regarding the execution of arrest warrants and identification of subjects of the warrants. 

Compl.  ¶¶ 37–40.  Count  3  asserts  state  law  tort  claims  for  false  arrest  and  false 
imprisonment against all Defendants. 

 ¶¶ 41–44. Counts 4 and 55 both allege violations 
of the MGDPA by failing to provide access to requested government data.   
                          DISCUSSION                                     
    Defendants ask the Court to grant judgment on the pleadings in their favor because 

the officers made a reasonable mistake of fact when they arrested Mr. Webb. They further 

5 The complaint contains two separate counts asserting violations of the MGDPA, both of which 
are labeled “Count 5,” presumably mistakenly. Defendants do not address these claims in their 
motion to dismiss, but because the Court concludes that the state claims should be dismissed 
pursuant to 

(c), the Court does not address them in detail. 
contend that Mr. Webb fails to state any claim for excessive force; that the individual 
officers are entitled to qualified immunity; that Mr. Webb has inadequately alleged his 
Monell claim against the City; and finally, that they are entitled to official immunity on the 

supplemental state law claims for false arrest and false imprisonment. For the reasons that 
follow, the Defendants’ motion is granted in part and denied in part.     
I.   Legal Standards                                                      
    A. Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings                              
    A motion for judgment on the pleadings pursuant to Rule 12(c) is reviewed under 

the same standard as a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6). Clemons v. Crawford, 

 (8th Cir. 2009). The distinction between a Rule 12(c) motion and a 
12(b)(6) motion is “purely formal.” Westcott v. City of Omaha, 

 (8th 
Cir. 1990).                                                               
    To withstand a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, “a complaint must 

contain sufficient factual allegations to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” 
Smithrud v. City of St. Paul, 

 (8th Cir. 2014) (quotation omitted). The 
facts alleged in the complaint must “raise a right to relief above the speculative level.” Bell 
Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 

 (2007). A complaint “that offers ‘labels and 
conclusions’ or ‘a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.’” 

Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 

 (2009) (quoting Twombly, 

). When 
considering a motion to dismiss, the court takes all factual allegations in the complaint as 
true and construes all reasonable inferences therefrom in favor of the plaintiff. Usenko v. 
MEMC LLC, 

 (8th Cir. 2019). However, the court does not take as true 
wholly conclusory allegations or the legal arguments offered by the plaintiff. Hager v. Ark. 
Dep’t of Health, 

 (8th Cir. 2013).                     
    B. Section 1983 Fourth Amendment Claims                              

    To plead a § 1983 action, a plaintiff must allege that a person acting under color of 
state law violated his or her constitutional rights. 

; Iqbal, 

. 
However, government officials have qualified immunity from § 1983 claims. As a result, 
plaintiffs must allege that the defendant engaged in conduct that violated a constitutional 
right and that, at the time of the alleged violation, the right was clearly established. E.g., 

Ryno v. City of Waynesville, 

 (8th Cir. 2023).          
    The Fourth Amendment prohibits law enforcement from effecting unreasonable 
seizures. U.S. Const. amend. IV. Through it, the constitution protects individuals from law 
enforcement arresting them without cause and using excessive force.       
    “The Fourth Amendment right of citizens not to be arrested without probable cause 

is clearly established.” Hill v. Scott, 

 (8th Cir. 2003). A plaintiff must 
allege facts showing that the defendant lacked probable cause to arrest him and that 
reasonable officers would have known that the defendant’s conduct violated the Fourth 
Amendment. See 

 Where officers have a “facially valid warrant” to make an arrest, but 
they mistake the arrestee for the person named in the warrant, they do not violate the Fourth 

Amendment if the mistake was reasonable. Id.; Peterson v. City of Pine River, 

 (D. Minn. 2014) (citing Hill, 

); see also Hill v. California, 

 (1971) (explaining that “[w]hen the police have probable cause to arrest 
one party, and when they reasonably mistake a second party for the first party, then the 
arrest of the second party is a valid arrest”); Baker v. McCollan, 

, 143–45 
(1979) (explaining that there is generally no Fourth Amendment violation when a person 
is mistakenly detained pursuant to a valid warrant for another individual).6 Whether an 

officer’s mistake is reasonable depends on the “‘totality of the circumstances’ at the time 
of the arrest; ‘hindsight is not the standard.’” Peterson, 

 (quoting Hill 
v. Scott, 

). The innocence of the person who has been seized does not 
suffice to allege a constitutional violation. McCollan, 

. A plaintiff cannot 
adequately allege a constitutional violation by claiming that the arresting officer acted 

negligently. See Lane v. Sarpy Cnty., 

, 624 (8th Cir. 1999); Young v. City of 
Little Rock, 

 (8th Cir. 2001).                           
    Reasonableness is also the governing standard for assessing excessive-force claims. 
Henderson v. Munn, 

 (8th Cir. 2006). “An officer’s use of force violates 
the Fourth Amendment if it was ‘objectively unreasonable.’” Pollreis v. Marzolf, 

 (8th Cir. 2021) (citing Graham v. Connor, 

, 394–96 (1989)). 
Objective reasonableness is assessed “from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the 
scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.” Graham, 

; Bishop v. 
Glazier, 

 (8th Cir. 2013) (same). Reasonableness is based on the factual 
circumstances of each case, including “the severity of the crime at issue, whether the 

suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers” and whether he is actively 

    6 See also Rivera v. Cnty. of Los Angeles, 

 (9th Cir. 2014); Rodriguez v. 
Farrell, 

, 1344 (11th Cir. 2002); Brady v. Dill, 

, 106–07 (1st Cir. 1999); 
Johnson v. Miller, 

 (7th Cir. 1982); Brown v. Patterson, 

, 168–69 (7th 
Cir. 1987); Blackwell v. Barton, 

, 300 n.1 (5th Cir. 1994).    
resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest. . . .” Pollreis, 

 (quoting Graham, 

).                                                         
    C. Monell Claims                                                     

    In Monell, the Supreme Court held that although § 1983 refers to violations of 
constitutional rights by any “person” acting under color of state law, a plaintiff can bring a 
suit against a municipality when an official policy or custom was the moving force for the 
alleged violation. 436 U.S. at 690–91; Mettler v. Whitledge, 

, 1204 (8th Cir. 
1999). “Under a Monell claim, Section 1983 liability may attach to a municipality if the 

violation resulted from (1) an official municipal policy, (2) an unofficial custom, or (3) a 
deliberately indifferent failure to train or supervise.” Smithrud, 

 n.4 (cleaned 
up). A plaintiff can show that a municipal policy caused the constitutional violation by 
demonstrating that the policy affirmatively sanctions unconstitutional actions. Szabla v. 
City of Brooklyn Park, 

, 390–91 (8th Cir. 2007). To show that a failure to train 

or supervise was the moving force behind a constitutional violation, the plaintiff must 
allege that the “municipality’s failure to adopt adequate safeguards was the product of 
deliberate indifference to the constitutional rights of its inhabitants.” 

. 
    If a court finds that a plaintiff has failed to adequately allege a constitutional 
violation by individual officers and dismisses such individual claims, a Monell claim 

necessarily fails as well. E.g., Stockley v. Joyce, 

 (8th Cir. 2020) 
(“‘Without a constitutional violation by the individual officers, there can be no § 1983 or 
Monell . . . liability.’”) (quoting Sanders v. City of Minneapolis, 

, 527 (8th 
Cir. 2007).                                                               
II.  Analysis                                                             
    A. Unreasonable Arrest                                               
    There is no dispute in this case that the Defendants had a facially valid arrest warrant 

for Darryl Billups. Nor do the parties dispute that the officers arrested Mr. Webb because 
they incorrectly believed he was Billups. Instead, the parties disagree about whether 
Plaintiff has adequately alleged facts showing that the officers’ mistake was reasonable 
under the circumstances.                                                  
    Defendants argue that they made a reasonable mistake because Mr. Webb was in a 

place  (out  of  his  room)  that  they  expected  Mr. Billups  to  be,  because  of  M.P.’s 
identification of Mr. Webb as Billups, and because Mr. Webb failed to tell them his identity 
when they questioned him before leaving the scene. They also argue that the officers acted 
reasonably when they left Mr. Webb handcuffed in the squad car for several minutes after 
they confirmed his identity and returned to Portland House. In response, Mr. Webb argues 

that the Defendants’ mistake was unreasonable because: the information available to them 
indicated that Mr. Webb did not match the description of Mr. Billups and the officers failed 
to conduct a more thorough investigation that would have alerted them sooner to their error. 
Specifically, Mr. Webb asserts that the Defendants ignored obvious differences between 
the physical description of Billups and Webb’s own appearance, including (1) a four-inch 

difference in height, (2) a significant disparity of weight, (3) the length of each man’s hair, 
and (4) the absence of any gold or blonde dye on the left side of Mr. Billups’ dreads. He 
argues that the officers should have asked Mr. Webb his name, looked more quickly at the 
ID they took from him, checked his driver’s license against their database sooner, or asked 
Mr. Jefferson earlier in the encounter if Mr. Webb was, in fact, Darryl Billups. And 
Plaintiff contends that the officers unreasonably relied on M.P.’s identification of Webb as 
Billups because M.P. was twenty feet away from Mr. Webb, Webb had his back turned, 

they were in the dark, and M.P. said that the man with dyed hair on the side of his head 
“should be Darryl.”                                                       
    The Court is thus faced with a straightforward question in considering whether 
Mr. Webb sufficiently alleges a constitutional claim of false arrest: was the officers’ 
mistake a reasonable one? The Court concludes that it was.                

    Dispatch directed Officer Calhoun and Officer Bakken to Portland House to execute 
facially valid warrants for Darryl Billups and Deondre Jefferson. The call details in the 
record regarding the subjects of the warrants indicated that Mr. Billups was a Black male, 
twenty-three years old, standing 5’10” tall, and weighing 224 pounds. Officer Bakken and 
Officer Calhoun learned that Jefferson and Billups had been known to carry weapons, and 

as they stood outside, Officer Bakken saw people moving around inside Portland House. 
When they spoke with M.P., a Portland House staff member who knew Billups and 
Jefferson, he told the officers that both targets of the warrant were inside the house, and 
that they had been out of their room, in violation of house rules. M.P. did not say what 
Billups or Jefferson was wearing, but he said that both had “dreads.” He added the detail 

that “Darryl [Billups] has like, color on one side, like gold color on one side of his braids.” 
Officers Cheng and Lange arrived on the scene and Officers Calhoun and Bakken filled 
them in about the warrants for Jefferson and Billups, relayed the concern about the possible 
presence of weapons, and shared the information they learned from M.P. So before they 
entered Portland House, the officers had a physical description of Billups, and they had 
information reasonably indicating that they would encounter Billups and Jefferson out of 
their room.                                                               

    After entering the residence, the officers very quickly encountered Mr. Jefferson—
out of his room as M.P. had said—asked him his name, and placed him under arrest. At 
that point, they had one out of the two men in custody. Within seconds of that encounter, 
Officer Cheng and Officer Lange saw Mr. Webb. Although Webb does not perfectly match 
the description they received for Billups in the call details reflected in the record, he was 

close in age, the same race, within approximately 60 pounds, and he wore his hair in a style 
that could reasonably accord with M.P.’s description that Billups had “dreads.”7 Although 
they did not ask Webb to identify himself, having just arrested Jefferson, the officers could 
reasonably infer from the situation facing them that the second person they encountered 
was Billups. Webb was a male, outside of his room, whose physical appearance was within 

reasonable bounds of the description they had of Billups.                 
    After Officers Cheng and Lange placed Mr. Webb in handcuffs, they led him 
outside the front of the residence where the other officers were holding Mr. Jefferson. Once 
outside, they did not simply take Mr. Webb immediately to a squad vehicle. Instead, they 


7 Defendants suggest that because people can change their hairstyles, the Court should disregard 
the fact that Mr. Webb did not have gold or blond dye on one side of his dreads as M.P. suggested. 
The Court disagrees that this reasoning would support dismissal here. It would not be a reasonable 
inference in favor of the nonmoving party to hypothesize that Billups had altered the appearance 
of his hair in the time between M.P. telling the officers about his appearance and the officers 
encountering Webb inside the house. Nevertheless, considering the totality of the circumstances, 
the Court finds that the absence of that detail in Webb’s appearance did not make the arrest 
objectively unreasonable.                                                 
asked M.P. if the men they had arrested were the two men for whom they had warrants. 
Officer Lange or Officer Bakken shined a flashlight on Mr. Webb’s face as they asked M.P. 
to make an identification. M.P. agreed that the officers had “both of them.” Although 

Mr. Webb  is  correct  that  M.P.  brought  up  Mr. Billups’s  dyed  hair  again  during  this 
exchange, it did not stop M.P. from making a positive identification. The officers could 
reasonably rely on that identification from a staff member of Portland House who was 
personally familiar with Billups.                                         
    Next, the officers took Mr. Webb’s identification, and shortly after placing it in a 

manila envelope in the back of a squad car, Officer Bakken retrieved it so Officer Calhoun 
could review it. Officer Calhoun did not ignore the ID—he asked Mr. Webb about it prior 
to leaving the scene. Officer Calhoun saw that the name on the ID wasn’t Darryl Billups, 
so he asked Mr. Webb “who’s Robert Webb?” Rather than tell the Defendants that he was, 
in fact, Robert Webb, Mr. Webb said that he had been “doing business” as Robert Webb 

and that he had been known as Robert Webb. Officer Calhoun asked what Mr. Webb meant 
by those answers, and Mr. Webb provided no greater clarity on the subject. These answers 
reasonably could have conveyed that the man they arrested was Darryl Billups and that he 
was being evasive about a driver’s license in his possession bearing a different name. See 
Hill v. California, 

 (observing that officers did not act unreasonably in 

arresting Miller, who produced ID with his own name, when officers had a warrant for Hill 
because “aliases and false identifications are not uncommon”). It was not objectively 
unreasonable, at that point, for the officers to continue to believe they arrested the man they 
were after.                                                               
    Between eight and nine minutes after that discussion, the officers had driven a short 
distance away from Portland House, and Officer Calhoun began discussing the nature of 
the warrants the officers had just executed. At that point, he learned that nobody in the back 

seat was named “Darryl.” He asked Mr. Webb “what’s your name?”, and at this point 
Mr. Webb identified himself as “Rob” and said “you have my ID.” Officer Calhoun 
checked Mr. Webb’s driver’s license in the squad computer and discovered the mistake. 
They told Mr. Webb that they would take him back to Portland House, turned around, and 
arrived back at the residence within five minutes. But prior to Mr. Webb’s definitive 

statements that he is Robert Webb, the totality of the circumstances facing the officers did 
not make their mistake of him for Billups unreasonable.                   
    Mr. Webb argues that the Court should find otherwise, relying on Bell v. Neukirch, 

 (8th Cir. 2020). But Bell is distinguishable. Unlike here, Bell is not a case in 
which the officers had a facially valid arrest warrant for an individual they had never seen 

in person. Rather, Bell considered whether there was probable cause for an arresting officer 
to determine that Mr. Bell was the same person he had just observed fleeing. 

 at 599–
602. The officer obtained a significant array of details about the suspect’s appearance. 
Based on his own observations, the officer first described the suspect as a “Black male. 
Dreads. Blue shorts[,]” then “elaborated: ‘Juvenile black male, 17–18, about 5’10,” skinny, 

blue shorts, white t-shirt, shoulder-length dreads. He was taking his shoes off. However, 
the  Bell  court  explained  that  “Bell’s  appearance  and  that  of  the  suspect  differ[ed] 
markedly.” 

. All that Bell had in common with the suspect was that they were 
“both black male juveniles wearing white t-shirts.” 

 Moreover, Bell’s clothing did not 
match the suspect’s clothing in myriad ways and the context in which the officers found 
him undermined any real suggestion that he was the suspect they were after. 

 (reasoning 
that it was unlikely Bell was the suspect because he would have had to just completed a 

mile running in warm weather, but was not sweating significantly, had just finished a call 
on his cell phone, and was not out of breath).                            
    Mr. Webb emphasizes that the difference in height at issue in Bell is only 1-inch 
greater than the difference at issue here, and he asserts that the warrant information 
suggested Billups weighed only 164 pounds, more than 100 pounds less than Webb. He 

also contends that just as the officers in Bell failed to ask two other juveniles they detained 
at the scene about whether Mr. Bell was the suspect who had fled, 

 at 601–02, the 
Defendants in this case did not initially ask Jefferson if Mr. Webb was, in fact, Billups. 
    But the similarities between this case and Bell fall short. The arresting officer in Bell 
had just personally seen the suspect fleeing, whereas there is no allegation that any of the 

Defendants in this case had ever laid eyes on Billups before they arrived at Portland House 
to execute the warrant. The arresting officer in Bell also provided a detailed description of 
the clothing the suspect was wearing moments earlier, and before taking Bell to jail, the 
arresting officer reviewed video footage of the fleeing suspect. The officer therefore had a 
first-hand knowledge of what the suspect looked like and  the video depicted details 

consistent with the description he sent out over the radio prior to arresting Bell. The officers 
acted unreasonably because Bell bore little resemblance to those first-hand observations of 
the fleeing suspect. The Defendants in this case had no information about what Billups was 
wearing before they arrested Mr. Webb, nor was the physical description they had as 
detailed as the one at issue in Bell.                                     
    Moreover, while Mr. Webb argues that the difference in weight at issue in this case 

is extraordinary, he overlooks the fact that the information contained in the call details for 
the warrant indicates that Billups weighed 214 or 224. It is more reasonable to mistake a 
person who weighs approximately 270 pounds for someone who at some point has weighed 
225 pounds, though the Court acknowledges that the difference is not insignificant. Perhaps 
in a different fact pattern, one in which Mr. Webb provided less evasive answers to Officer 

Calhoun’s  questions  of  “who’s  Robert  Webb”  and  M.P.  had  not  made  a  positive 
identification,  the  differences  in  Mr. Webb’s  appearance  from  the  description  of 
Mr. Billups would have rendered a mistaken arrest less reasonable. But the test is based on 
all the circumstances, and there is no formula that says certain differences in physical 
characteristics necessarily render a mistake of fact unreasonable. See Miller v. Eslinger, 

No. 6:10-cv-1221-ORL-31, 

, at *4 (M.D. Fla. Sept. 27, 2011) (granting 
summary judgment on a false arrest claim in a case where there was a 40-pound difference 
in weight and a 3-inch difference in height between the plaintiff and the subject of the 
warrant where other details supported the reasonableness of the arresting officer’s actions); 
cf. Johnson v. Miller, 

, 41–42 (7th Cir. 1982) (finding no Fourth Amendment 

violation where officers mistakenly arrested a white female based on a facially valid 
warrant to arrest a woman of a different race).                           
    Further, the portion of Exhibit A to the Defendants’ Answer listing Mr. Billups’s 
weight as 164 pounds is not part of the dispatch call details concerning the warrant, but a 
separate part of the report. It appears just beneath a mugshot of Billups from September 
2018  where  the  report  summarizes  information  the  Minneapolis  Police  Department 
compiled for Billups, Jefferson, and Mr. Webb. Defs.’ Ans., Ex. A at 5. This makes it 

extremely unlikely that the Defendant officers saw either that photograph of Billups or the 
indication that he weighed 164 pounds before they entered Portland House to execute the 
warrant, and there is no allegation that they did. Admittedly, an official’s awareness of 
such a substantial discrepancy in weight could support a determination that an arrest was 
unreasonable. See Maxwell v. City of Indianapolis, 

, 434–35 (7th Cir. 1993) 

(finding summary judgment was not appropriate where plaintiff was 6 inches taller and 
almost 100 pounds heavier than the person to be arrested); Taylor v. City of Michigan City, 
No. 3:16-cv-836 JD, 

, at *5 (N.D. Ind. Dec. 11, 2018) (difference of 7-
inches and 90 pounds between plaintiff and the person to be arrested supported finding that 
mistaken arrest was not reasonable). But given that the description of Billups’s weight 

being 164 pounds was from information gathered three years before the incident at issue 
here, and the fact that a person’s weight can vary significantly over time, the difference 
would  have  only  been  one  factor  to  consider  in  the  reasonableness  of  the  mistake. 
Rodriguez v. Farrell, 

, 1348 n.14 (11th Cir. 2002) (observing that physical 
characteristics such as “weight are all easily variable, especially over six years”). 

    Mr.  Webb’s  remaining  arguments  primarily  challenge  the  sufficiency  of  the 
Defendants’ investigation. To be sure, Mr. Webb raises valid concerns about the fact that 
the Defendant officers arrested an innocent person whose physical characteristics do not 
exactly match the description of the subject of the warrant. The Court appreciates the 
frustration  that  Mr. Webb  feels  at  having  been  subjected  to  an  arrest  based  on  a 
misidentification that might have been avoided if the officers had been more careful about 
their identification procedures. But “[t]he law does not require law enforcement officers to 

conduct a perfect investigation to avoid suit for false arrest.” Joseph v. Allen, 

 (8th Cir. 2013).8                                              
    More importantly, Mr. Webb’s argument overlooks key aspects of the investigation 
the officers did conduct. They sought and obtained a description of Billups and Jefferson 
from M.P., and M.P. expressed familiarity with both men. They also learned that both 

Billups and Jefferson were inside the house and outside of their room. After the officers 
placed Webb in handcuffs and led him out of the residence, they didn’t cease their 
investigation,  but  asked  M.P.  to  confirm  that  Webb  and  Jefferson  were  Billups  and 
Jefferson. Because it was dark, they shined a flashlight on Mr. Webb’s face to help with 
the identification, and M.P. twice agreed that they had the man they intended to arrest. 

Later, in the squad vehicle, when Officer Calhoun saw that Webb’s ID had a different 
name, he did not ignore that detail; rather, he asked “who’s Robert Webb.” Mr. Webb’s 
responses to such questions and requests for clarification of what Mr. Webb meant by those 
answers, did not clearly indicate that Plaintiff definitively claimed to be Robert Webb. The 



8 In his opposition, Plaintiff cites Kuehl v. Burtis, 

 (8th Cir. 1999) for the proposition 
that “[a]n officer contemplating an arrest is not free to disregard plainly exculpatory evidence, 
even if substantial inculpatory evidence (standing by itself) suggests that probable cause exists.” 

. But in Hill v. Scott, the Eighth Circuit distinguished Kuehl because “the officer was 
investigating a possible crime after the fact and based his assessment of probable cause for the 
arrest on his shoddy investigation.” 

. Kuehl does not suggest that officers executing 
a facially valid warrant must be perfect.                                 
investigation into Mr. Webb’s identity did not stop there. When Officer Calhoun became 
aware that Jefferson and Mr. Webb claimed there was no one named “Darryl” in the squad 
vehicle, and Webb said his name is “Rob,” Calhoun ran Webb’s ID through the computer 

and determined they had taken the wrong person into custody.              
    The investigation wasn’t perfect, and had the Defendants asked certain questions of 
M.P. or Mr. Webb sooner or checked Mr. Webb’s identification in the computer earlier in 
the process, they might have discovered more quickly that Webb was not Billups. But that 
is clear through the lens of hindsight and “[a]lthough the Supreme Court has acknowledged 

the significant negative consequences of arrest, it has afforded police significant latitude to 
make mistakes of fact when arresting individuals on the basis of warrants.” Wayne A. 
Logan & Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Policing Criminal Justice Data, 

, 577 (2016). Under the circumstances presented by the pleadings in this case, the 
Defendants’ investigation did not make their mistake objectively unreasonable. 

    The Eighth Circuit’s decision in Hill v. Scott, 

, 1073–74 (8th Cir. 
2003) supports this conclusion. There, if the defendant officer had verified information 
with dispatch prior to telling other officers to arrest the plaintiff, he very well might have 
learned that the warrant he believed was for the plaintiff was in fact for a person who shared 
the plaintiff’s first and last name, but had a different date of birth, different middle name, 

and  was  of  a  different  race.  

  Nevertheless,  the  court  emphasized  that  “further 
investigation would have cast doubt on whether [the plaintiff] was the subject of the 
warrant. But that is always the case where an arrestee denies being the subject of a facially 
valid warrant.” 

 The same is true here.                                
    In another case of mistaken identity, the Eighth Circuit found that an arresting 
officer made a reasonable mistake in arresting the plaintiff believing she was the subject of 
an active warrant that had been issued for the plaintiff’s sister-in-law, who had used the 

plaintiff’s name as an alias. Young v. City of Little Rock, 

 (8th Cir. 
2001) (affirming district court’s finding that plaintiff failed to state a claim against the 
arresting officer and the dispatcher). In Young, although further investigation or more 
careful review of the information the officers had might have revealed their mistake, the 
court found the officers did not act unreasonably in proceeding as they did. 

. In 

particular, the court found that the dispatcher’s mistake in failing to convey more complete 
information about the target of the arrest warrant “was occasioned . . . by the press of 
business and by the speed with which officers in [her] position were required to act.” 

 
These same observations undermine Mr. Webb’s argument that the officers in this case 
violated his Fourth Amendment rights by not conducting a more thorough investigation. 

    In sum, based on the totality of the circumstances, the Court finds that Defendants’ 
arrest of Mr. Webb was based on a reasonable mistake of fact and, therefore, Mr. Webb 
fails to state a claim that he was unreasonably seized in violation of his Fourth Amendment 
rights based on his arrest.9                                              





9 Because Mr. Webb fails to state a plausible claim that his arrest was the result of an unreasonable 
mistake of fact, the Court does not address the individual Defendants’ argument that the law did 
not clearly establish that their actions were unconstitutional.           
    B. Continued Detention                                               
    In his Complaint, Mr. Webb asserts that after the officers drove him back to Portland 
House, “they still did not free [him]. Instead, they went inside and, upon information and 

belief, spoke to the staff and searched for Mr. Billups for approximately 15 minutes.” 
Compl. ¶ 17. His false arrest claim asserts that the officers unreasonably “held Plaintiff 
without probable cause or legal justification.” Id. ¶ 35.10               
    Defendants argue that Mr. Webb fails to state a claim that his Fourth Amendment 
rights were violated during the time Officers Calhoun and Bakken left him in their squad 

vehicle to go back into Portland House to search for Billups, suggesting that this continued 
detention was justified because releasing Webb might have allowed Billups to escape and 
could have placed Webb in danger. Defs.’ Mem. at 16–19 (relying on Wright v. United 
States, 

 (8th Cir. 2015)). Aside from a passing reference to being “left 
handcuffed  in  the  squad  car  while  [Defendants]  checked  Portland  House  to  see  if 

Mr. Billups was still there,” Pl.’s Opp’n at 7, Mr. Webb does not respond to the caselaw 
cited by Defendants in support of this argument and makes no argument that the decision 
by Officers Calhoun and Bakken to leave him in the vehicle was an independent violation 
of his constitutional rights from his mistaken arrest. The Court construes Mr. Webb’s 




10 Mr. Webb’s complaint also asserts that he was “held for approximately 3 hours.” Compl. ¶ 33. 
However, the Court notes that the video footage contradicts that allegation, as it shows that the 
entire incident lasted less than half an hour, and the portion of the encounter following the return 
to Portland House lasted approximately five minutes. Mr. Webb does not repeat the 3-hour 
detention assertion in his opposition to the Defendants’ motion.          
failure to respond to these arguments as a concession that his continued detention in the 
squad vehicle during this five-minute period did not violate his constitutional rights.11 
    The Court notes that Defendants have also argued that Mr. Webb’s status as a 

parolee at the time of his arrest and his accompanying diminished expectation of privacy 
undermine any claim that he was unreasonably seized during the time that the officers left 
him  in  the  squad  vehicle  while  they  briefly  reentered  Portland  House  to  search  for 
Mr. Billups  because  Mr. Webb.  Defs.’  Mem.  19–21.  But  Defendants  cite  no  case 
suggesting that parolees may be arrested without probable cause, nor any case holding that 

government officials may subject a parolee to prolonged detention even after they have 
determined the parolee should be released simply because of parolee status. In any event, 
the Court need not address this argument because it finds Mr. Webb has failed to state a 
claim upon which relief may be granted.                                   
    For the foregoing reasons, the Court dismisses Mr. Webb’s Fourth Amendment 

seizure claim in Count 1 of the Complaint to the extent he alleges that his arrest was 
unreasonable.                                                             





11 In Baker v. McCollan, where the plaintiff was mistakenly arrested on a facially valid warrant 
and detained for three days over the New Year’s holiday before he was eventually released, the 
Court held that his ongoing detention despite his protests that he was innocent did not violate his 
Fourth Amendment rights, but indicated that after a certain passage of time, continued detention 
in the face of such protests could violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. 

, 144–45 (1979). Mr. Webb has not alleged that his continued detention in this case 
violated his right to due process.                                        
    C. Excessive Force Claim                                             
    The Court also finds that Mr. Webb fails to state a claim of excessive force. In 
Count 1 of the Complaint he alleges that Defendants engaged in excessive force when 

effecting his arrest because they pointed weapons at him and placed him in handcuffs. 
Compl. ¶ 35. In support of their Rule 12 motion, Defendants argued that under Pollreis v. 
Marzolf, 

 (8th Cir. 2021) and given the circumstances of this case, it was 
not unreasonable for the officers to briefly point their weapons at Mr. Webb when they 
effected his arrest. Defs.’ Mem. 21–24. In response, Mr. Webb argues that the Defendants’ 

“use of force against Plaintiff violated the Constitution for the same reason that their arrest 
and continued detention violated the Constitution: Plaintiff obviously did not match the 
description  of  Mr. Billups.”  Pl.’s  Opp’n  16.  Further,  he  asserts  that  “just  as  it  was 
unreasonable to arrest him, it was unreasonable and unconstitutional to effectuate his arrest 
and continued detention through the use of force.” 

 Mr. Webb does not argue that the 

officers in this case used force that was excessive because of the specific manner in which 
it was applied.                                                           
    Given Mr. Webb’s position that the officers’ use of any force was unreasonable 
because the arrest itself was unreasonable, the Court finds that it need not address the 
applicability of Pollreis to the facts here. It is true that courts have recognized the use of 

any level of force to effectuate an unreasonable arrest would be excessive. E.g., Smith v. 
Appledorn, No. 11-cv-2966 (JNE/SER), 

, at *3 (D. Minn. Feb. 6, 2013) 
(“If Appledorn’s seizure of Smith was unreasonable, any force used in the course of the 
seizure would also have been unreasonable.”). Because Mr. Webb’s complaint fails to state 
a claim that he was subjected to an unreasonable arrest for the reasons explained above, 
the Court finds that he has not sufficiently alleged that the officers’ use of force was 
necessarily  unreasonable.  Therefore,  the  Court  dismisses  Mr. Webb’s  claim  that  the 

officers used excessive force.                                            
    D. Monell Claim                                                      
    Mr. Webb argues that he has sufficiently pled a Monell claim. He asserts that a 
custom of racially discriminatory police practices and failure to provide sufficient training 
to officers concerning implicit bias were the motivating force that caused a violation of his 

Fourth Amendment rights. He asserts that such a custom is amply demonstrated in reports 
issued by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights in August 2022 and the Department 
of Justice in June 2023. Because the Court finds that Mr. Webb fails to state a claim that 
Defendants violated his constitutional rights, he fails to state an actionable Monell claim. 
Stockley, 

.                                                

    Accordingly, the Court dismisses Count 2 of the Complaint.           
    E. Supplemental State Law Claims                                     
    Although Defendants argue that Mr. Webb fails to state any claim under state law 
because they are entitled to official immunity, the Court declines to reach the merits of this 
issue. District Courts have supplemental jurisdiction over state law claims when they are 

“so related to” the federal law claims in that action. 

, 1367(a). However, 
a district court may decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over a state law claim 
when the court dismisses the accompanying federal claims. 

 § 1367(c)(3). Here, because 
the Court dismisses Mr. Webb’s § 1983 claims, and there are no other federal law claims 
remaining, the Court declines to exercise jurisdiction over his state law claims. Therefore, 
the Court dismisses the false arrest and false imprisonment claims without prejudice. The 
Court also declines to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Counts 4 and 5 of the 

Complaint, which allege violations of the MGDPA. Those claims are likewise dismissed 
without prejudice.                                                        

    For the reasons set forth above, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT           
    1.   Defendants’ Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings is GRANTED IN PART 

and DENIED IN PART.                                                       
    2.   Plaintiff’s 

 claims against the individual officers in Count 1 
of the Complaint, and Plaintiff’s Monell claim against the City of Minneapolis in Count 2 
of the Complaint, are DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE.                           
    3.   Pursuant to 

(c), the Court declines to exercise jurisdiction 

over Plaintiff’s state law claims in Counts 3, 4, and 5 of the Complaint. Those claims are 
DISMISSED WITHOUT PREJUDICE. The Court therefore denies Defendants’ motion 
to the extent they seek an order dismissing these state law claims with prejudice. 
    Let Judgment be entered accordingly.                                 

Date: September 9, 2024         s/Katherine Menendez                     
                                Katherine Menendez                       
                                United States District Judge             

                UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT                             
                    DISTRICT OF MINNESOTA                                


Robert Webb,                             No. 23-cv-1836 (KMM/TNL)        

          Plaintiff,                                                     

v.                                                                       

City of Minneapolis; Officer Luke                                        
Bakken; Officer Robert Calhoun; Officer                                  
Tser Cheng; Officer Christopher Lange, in                                
their individual and official capacities;                                

          Defendants.                                                    


    Plaintiff Robert Webb alleges that several City of Minneapolis Police Officers 
violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures 
and committed common law torts when he was arrested on August 22, 2021. He also asserts 
that Defendants violated the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act (“MGDPA”) in 
connection with public records requests he submitted concerning the August 22, 2021 
incident. This matter is before the Court on the Defendants’1 Motion for Judgment on the 
Pleadings. As explained below, the Court grants the motion in part and denies it in part. 

1 The City of Minneapolis, Officer Tser Cheng, and Officer Christopher Lange bring the motion 
for judgment on the pleadings. Officer Luke Bakken is deceased and the City requested that 
Plaintiff voluntarily dismiss him from the suit. The City represents that there is no Minneapolis 
Police Officer named Robert Calhoun, and the correct officer has not been named or served. Defs.’ 
Mem. 2 n.1, Doc. 26. Instead of Robert Calhoun, Defendants refer to the fourth officer involved 
in this incident as “Ryan Calhoun.” Id. at 2.                             
                        BACKGROUND2                                      
    Mr. Webb’s Arrest                                                    
    On August 22, 2021, Plaintiff Robert Webb was on work release from a state prison, 

living at Portland House, a halfway house in Minneapolis. Compl. ¶ 7 (Doc. 1). Mr. Webb 
was  staying  there  along  with  approximately  twelve  to  fifteen  other  individuals.  Id. 
Mr. Webb is a Black man, as were all the other Portland House residents at that time. Id. 
Webb lived in a room above the main floor, and others lived on the lower level beneath the 
main floor. Id. At approximately 2:30 a.m., Minneapolis Police Officers Luke Bakken, 

Ryan Calhoun, Tser Cheng, and Christopher Lange arrived at Portland House to execute 
arrest warrants for two of the residents, Deondre Jefferson and Darryl Billups. Id. ¶ 8. The 
officers had no warrant to arrest Mr. Webb.                               
    A staff member of the halfway house, M.P., witnessed portions of the events that 
form the basis of Webb’s claims. Id. ¶ 18. At approximately 2:39 a.m., Officers Bakken 

and Calhoun met with M.P outside of the halfway house. Ans., Ex. E (“Calhoun BWC”) 
6:00, Doc. 9-5; id., Ex. D (“Bakken BWC”) 6:20, Doc. 9-4. M.P. told Officers Bakken and 
Calhoun that Mr. Billups and Mr. Jefferson had been walking around the residence rather 

2 This background includes factual allegations in the complaint as well as the Court’s description 
of the relevant events that are established by the video footage attached to the Defendants’ answer 
and referenced throughout their briefing in support of the pending motion. Courts regularly 
consider such video footage as “embraced by the pleadings” in this context. E.g., LeMay v. Mays, 

 (8th Cir. 2021); Ching v. City of Minneapolis, 

 (8th Cir. 2023); 
Anderson v. St. Luke’s Hospital, No. 19-cv-106 (MJD/LIB), 

, at *3 n.5 (D. 
Minn. Nov. 19, 2019), R&R adopted, No. 19-cv-106 (MJD/LIB), 

 (D. Minn. Jan. 
17, 2020); Verino v. Higgins, No. 19-cv-3024 (DWF/LIB), 

, at *1 n.1 (D. Minn. 
June  30,  2020).  The  Court  finds  that  it  can  consider  these  videos  without  converting  the 
Defendants’ motion to a motion for summary judgment. Plaintiff does not argue otherwise, and in 
fact, cites portions of the footage in his opposition.                    
than in their room, in violation of Portland House’s rules. M.P. explained that Billups and 
Jefferson remained inside the residence. Calhoun BWC 6:10–7:00, 9:00–10:00; Bakken 
BWC 6:20–7:00. The officers asked M.P. to stay outside while they went into the halfway 

house to arrest Billups and Jefferson. Calhoun BWC 8:45–9:00, 12:50–13:10. They told 
M.P. if he went back into the house, to not discuss the officers’ plans to make the arrests. 
Calhoun BWC 8:50–9:15; Bakken BWC 8:50–9:15. M.P told the officers again that 
Mr. Billups and Mr. Jefferson were in the residence thirty minutes earlier. Calhoun BWC 
9:00–9:30; Bakken BWC 9:15–9:30. Officer Calhoun then called dispatch to request 

another squad car come to the residence to help Officers Bakken and Calhoun execute the 
warrants. Calhoun BWC 10:00–10:20.                                        
    Officers Cheng and Lange arrived at the halfway house around 2:45 a.m. and met 
with  Officers  Bakken  and  Calhoun.  Calhoun  BWC  13:40–13:44.  The  newly  arrived 
officers learned that Mr. Billups and Mr. Jefferson had felony warrants, including a warrant 

for assault, and that both warrants cautioned about the presence of weapons. Calhoun BWC 
13:45–14:30; Bakken BWC 13:45–14:30. Officer Bakken told the other officers that while 
standing on the sidewalk in front of the residence, he had seen people moving around 
inside, and M.P. confirmed that Billups and Jefferson were not in their rooms. Bakken 
BWC 14:00–15:10.                                                          

    M.P. did not provide the officers with a detailed description of Billups and Jefferson. 
For example, he did not know what they were wearing. Calhoun BWC 16:40–16:44; 
Bakken BWC 16:38–16:45. M.P. stated that “both have braids, or like dreads, but Darryl 
[Billups] has like, color on one side, like gold color on one side of his braids.” Calhoun 
BWC 16:45–17:05; Bakken BWC 16:24–17:05. M.P. provided the officers with a key to 
the room Billups and Jefferson occupied in the residence, in case they needed to use it. 
Calhoun BWC 17:05–17:15.                                                  

    At about 2:51 a.m., the officers entered the residence to execute the warrants. 
Calhoun BWC 17:30; Bakken BWC 17:30. As they did so, the officers unholstered their 
weapons. Calhoun BWC 17:30–17:39; Bakken BWC 17:30–18:00; Ans., Ex. C (“Cheng 
BWC”) 5:40–45, Doc. 9-3. Soon after entering the residence, Officer Cheng and Officer 
Lange saw a man standing in a hallway on the main level. Officer Cheng pointed his 

firearm at the man and asked for his name. Cheng BWC 6:10–6:25; Bakken BWC 18:00–
18:15.  The  man  identified  himself  as  Deondre—Mr. Jefferson’s  first  name—and  the 
officers  arrested  him.  Cheng  BWC  6:10–6:25;  Bakken  BWC  18:15–18:25.  Officer 
Calhoun led Mr. Jefferson to the front door of the residence while Officers Cheng and 
Lange continued to go through the house looking for Mr. Billups. Calhoun BWC 18:36–

18:50; Cheng BWC 6:50–6:55. Officer Calhoun asked Mr. Jefferson “where’s Darryl at?” 
and Jefferson indicated that he didn’t know where Darryl was. Calhoun BWC 18:50–18:55. 
    Around 2:50 a.m., Mr. Webb woke up and left his room to get some water and use 
the restroom. Compl. ¶ 11. While searching the house, Officer Cheng passed an open 
bathroom door, which at first appeared unoccupied. Cheng BWC 6:44–7:00. Officer Lange 

was behind Officer Cheng carrying a “less-lethal” 40mm projectile launcher. Cheng BWC 
6:40–7:00. Officer Cheng took a closer look as he was passing the open restroom door, 
turned to his left, and spotted someone standing in a darkened alcove of the bathroom. 
Cheng BWC 7:00–7:03. They later identified this individual as Mr. Webb.   
    The Officers pointed their weapons at Mr. Webb, told him to show his hands and 
face the wall. Webb perceived the weapons to be a shotgun and a handgun, and he was 
frightened. Cheng BWC 7:00–7:15; Compl. ¶ 11. The officers handcuffed Mr. Webb and 

told him he was under arrest on a warrant. Cheng BWC 7:15–7:30. They did not ask Webb 
to identify himself. Officers Cheng and Lange then led Mr. Webb outside the residence 
where Officer Calhoun was waiting with Mr. Jefferson. Cheng BWC 7:30–8:00. Officer 
Cheng helped Mr. Webb make a phone call on Webb’s cell phone. Cheng BWC 8:40–
10:10.                                                                    

    When Officers Cheng and Lange brought Mr. Webb outside the residence, M.P. was 
near the front steps. Cheng BWC 8:00–8:07. Officer Lange asked if the two men they had 
arrested were Mr. Billups and Mr. Jefferson. Ans., Ex. B (“Lange BWC”) 8:15–8:20, 
Doc. 9-2. M.P. responded, asking “Is that the guy with the color on one side of his head? 
That should be Darryl right there.” Lange BWC 8:20–8:30. He pointed at Mr. Webb as he 

said this. Lange BWC 8:20–8:30. Officer Lange then shined a flashlight on Mr. Webb’s 
face to help M.P. identify him. Lange BWC 8:20–8:30. Officer Lange asked “So that’s 
both of them, correct?” and M.P. agreed. Lange BWC 8:30–8:32. Officer Bakken asked 
again “Both of them? Both of them guys?” Again, M.P. agreed, saying “Yep.”3 Bakken 
BWC 20:20–20:25.                                                          
    Mr. Webb had his identification card in his pocket. Compl. ¶¶ 12–13. The arresting 

officers searched Mr. Webb and placed his belongings, including his ID, in a manila folder 
without looking at it first. Bakken BWC 24:20–24:25. Officer Calhoun then placed Webb 
in the back of a squad car and handed Officer Bakken the manila envelope. Bakken BWC 
24:20–24:25. Officer Bakken opened the rear door of another police vehicle to place the 
manila envelope in the back, but before doing so, he looked briefly at Mr. Webb’s 

 

Bakken BWC 24:25–24:35. Officer Bakken placed the envelope in the back of the squad 
car. Bakken BWC 24:35–25:02.                                              
    A short time later, Officer Bakken retrieved the envelope and Webb’s 

 He gave 
the ID to Officer Calhoun. Bakken BWC 25:30–26:00. Officer Calhoun saw that the name 
on Mr. Webb’s ID, Robert Webb, did not match the name on the warrant and asked 

Plaintiff, “Who’s Robert Webb?” Calhoun BWC 26:00–26:13. Mr. Webb asked Officer 
Calhoun if that was a real question and Officer Calhoun again asked “Who’s Robert 
Webb?” Ans., Ex. F (“Squad Video Forward”) 4:00–4:28, Doc. 9-6. Mr. Webb told him 


3 In the complaint, Mr. Webb asserts that M.P. told the officers “You have the wrong guy,” and 
the officers ignored him. Compl. ¶ 19. The Court has reviewed the video footage provided in 
support of Defendants’ motion and M.P. does not tell the officers they arrested the wrong person. 
In fact, the video captures M.P. confirming that the officers had arrested both men they asked him 
about before entering the residence. Plaintiff does not suggest that the officers’ bodycams are 
incomplete. Because the allegation is inconsistent with the video, the Court declines to accept the 
complaint’s allegation in Paragraph 19 as true for purposes of ruling on the pending motion for 
judgment on the pleadings. See Waters v. Madson, 

 (8th Cir. 2019) (explaining 
that a court need not “adopt the plaintiff’s version of the facts if they are blatantly contradicted by 
video evidence”) (cleaned up).                                            
“that’s a hard question” and then said he had been “known, doing business as Robert 
Webb.” Squad Video Forward 4:28–4:40. Officer Calhoun asked, “What?” and Mr. Webb 
again  said  “I  do  business  as  Robert  Webb.”  Squad  Video  Forward  4:40–4:44.  Still 

believing he was speaking to Darryl Billups, Officer Calhoun asked “So you’re using a 
false name?” Mr. Webb denied that he was. Squad Video Forward 4:44–4:48. Officer 
Calhoun asked Mr. Webb what he meant by saying that he does business as Robert Webb, 
and Plaintiff told him “I’m not trying to be difficult with you. Look at the ID and look at 
me.” Squad Video Forward 4:48–5:00. In response, Officer Calhoun said, “Well, you have 

his ID, man, so I’m asking you, who’s Robert Webb?” After a brief silence, Officer 
Calhoun stated, “Alright, well you both are under arrest, okay? Okay?” To this, Mr. Webb 
responded: “Yeah.” Squad Video Forward 5:00–5:13.                         
    Around nine minutes later, while Officer Calhoun was looking up the warrant 
information on his squad computer, he began discussing the warrants with Mr. Webb and 

Mr. Jefferson, and addressed them with the name “Darryl.” Bakken BWC 35:00–35:40. In 
response, Mr. Jefferson said there was no one named “Darryl” in the back of the car. 
Bakken BWC 35:40–35:53. When Officer Calhoun asked Jefferson if his name was Darryl, 
Jefferson said “No, my name’s Deondre.” Bakken BWC 35:53–35:56. Officer Calhoun 
then asked Mr. Webb, “What’s your name?” to which Webb responded “Rob.” Officer 

Calhoun asked “What?” and again Mr. Webb said “Rob. You have my ID.” Bakken BWC 
35:55–36:05.                                                              
    This exchange occurred just after 3:09 a.m., and the officers initially arrested 
Mr. Webb approximately seventeen minutes earlier at 2:52 a.m. The officers had driven a 
short distance from Portland House with Mr. Webb and Mr. Jefferson in the rear seat of 
the vehicle. The officers told Mr. Webb that they were looking for Darryl Billups and that 
M.P. had identified him as Mr. Billups. Bakken BWC 36:05–36:40. They explained they 

were checking on Mr. Webb’s ID through their squad computer and looking at the warrant 
so they could verify his identity before taking him all the way to a jail. Bakken BWC 36:40–
36:52. As he checked Mr. Webb’s  ID on the computer,  Officer  Calhoun asked why 
Mr. Webb had not answered more clearly when he asked him earlier “who’s Robert 
Webb.” Mr. Webb said that because they had his ID and he obviously looked like the 

person in the photograph on it, he was unsure whether Officer Calhoun had asked him a 
“real question.” Mr. Webb said he thought the officers might have been joking. Bakken 
BWC 37:25–37:50. At that point, Officer Calhoun said “Well, Robert’s going to be going 
back to the house,” and made it clear to Mr. Webb they were taking him back home. 
Bakken BWC 37:50–38:00.                                                   

    Officers Bakken and Calhoun drove back to Portland House to look for Mr. Billups 
and release Mr. Webb at his home. Bakken BWC 38:00–41:30. It was 3:15 a.m. when they 
arrived, about twenty-three minutes after Mr. Webb’s arrest. Bakken BWC 41:30. Before 
exiting the vehicle, the officers explained that they were going back into the residence, but 
that they would “be quick.” Bakken BWC 41:25–41:35. At the door, Officers Calhoun and 

Bakken told M.P. that the person they had arrested was not Darryl Billups but Mr. Webb. 
M.P. said, “Oh, that was Robert Webb?” and apologized to the officers for the confusion. 
Bakken BWC 42:54–43:20. Officers Calhoun and Bakken went inside Portland House and 
searched Mr. Billups’ room to see if he was still there. He was not. The officers then 
returned to the squad car and released Mr. Webb. This occurred approximately twenty-
eight minutes after his arrest. Bakken BWC 46:00–46:30. After returning Mr. Webb’s 
belongings to him, one of the officers apologized to Mr. Webb. Bakken BWC 46:30–47:13. 

    A photograph of Mr. Billups that would have been available to the officers shows 
that  he  and  Mr.  Webb  differ  in  appearance.  Compl.  ¶ 16.  Mr. Webb  has  a  darker 
complexion, stands over six feet tall, and weighs 270 pounds. Compl. ¶ 16; Riach Decl., 
Ex. D, Doc. 43-4. The information the officers had available to them regarding the warrant 
for Mr. Billups’ arrest indicated that he was 5’10” tall and weighed 224 pounds. Other 

records indicated that at some point he may have weighed as little as 164 pounds.4 Ans., 
Ex. A at 5, 7; see also Riach Decl., Ex. A at 5 (listing Mr. Billups as 5’10” tall and weighing 
214 pounds), Doc. 43-1.                                                   



4 Unlike video evidence, when ruling on a motion for judgment on the pleadings, courts should 
not accept as true officers’ statements in narrative reports that contradict the complaint. LeMay, 

. Accordingly, the Court disregards the portions of the incident reports submitted by 
Defendants as Exhibit A to their Answer that contain the officers’ narrative accounts. However, 
Exhibit A also contains call details regarding the warrants and the subjects of those warrants, 
including identifying information for both Mr. Billups and Mr. Jefferson. These portions of the 
reports include their age, sex, race, height, and weight, among other details. Ans., Ex. A at 7–8, 
11–13. Notably, the Complaint alleges that Officers Calhoun and Bakken arrived at Portland 
House to execute arrest warrants for both Jefferson and Billups. Compl. ¶¶ 8, 16. And the video 
evidence supports the inference that, prior to arriving at Portland House, Officer Calhoun, Officer 
Bakken, or both, had reviewed such information. See Crow v. Rasmussen, No. 23-cv-2403 
(KMM/TNL), 

, at *3–4 (D. Minn. May 7, 2024) (on a motion for judgment on 
the pleadings, considering exhibit containing warrant information regarding a suspect because it 
was neither “extraneous to [n]or contradict[ed] the Complaint” and the video evidence supported 
the reasonable inference that officers saw it before encountering the plaintiff). Mr. Webb does not 
argue that the Court should disregard this material, and he cites to information about Billups’s 
height and weight contained in Exhibit A in his response. Pl.’s Opp’n at 4 (citing Doc. No. 9-1 at 
5).                                                                       
    Plaintiff’s Claims                                                   
    Mr. Webb alleges that he was shaken by the incident, has had trouble sleeping, and 
had “nightmares about guns being pointed at him and other frightening images.” Compl. 

¶ 21; see also id. ¶ 33 (discussing psychological harm). He presents his claims as five 
separate counts, three of which are relevant here. In Count 1, pursuant to 

, 
Mr. Webb asserts that the individual Defendants violated his right to remain free from 
unreasonable seizure, false arrest, and excessive force under the Fourth Amendment. He 
emphasizes that the Defendants handcuffed, arrested, and held him without probable cause 

or legal justification. Compl. ¶ 35. In Count 2, Webb also brings Fourth Amendment 
unreasonable-seizure and false-arrest claims against the City of Minneapolis pursuant to 
§ 1983 and Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York, 

 
(1978). Count 2 asserts that the City developed constitutionally deficient training practices 
regarding the execution of arrest warrants and identification of subjects of the warrants. 

Compl.  ¶¶ 37–40.  Count  3  asserts  state  law  tort  claims  for  false  arrest  and  false 
imprisonment against all Defendants. 

 ¶¶ 41–44. Counts 4 and 55 both allege violations 
of the MGDPA by failing to provide access to requested government data.   
                          DISCUSSION                                     
    Defendants ask the Court to grant judgment on the pleadings in their favor because 

the officers made a reasonable mistake of fact when they arrested Mr. Webb. They further 

5 The complaint contains two separate counts asserting violations of the MGDPA, both of which 
are labeled “Count 5,” presumably mistakenly. Defendants do not address these claims in their 
motion to dismiss, but because the Court concludes that the state claims should be dismissed 
pursuant to 

(c), the Court does not address them in detail. 
contend that Mr. Webb fails to state any claim for excessive force; that the individual 
officers are entitled to qualified immunity; that Mr. Webb has inadequately alleged his 
Monell claim against the City; and finally, that they are entitled to official immunity on the 

supplemental state law claims for false arrest and false imprisonment. For the reasons that 
follow, the Defendants’ motion is granted in part and denied in part.     
I.   Legal Standards                                                      
    A. Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings                              
    A motion for judgment on the pleadings pursuant to Rule 12(c) is reviewed under 

the same standard as a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6). Clemons v. Crawford, 

 (8th Cir. 2009). The distinction between a Rule 12(c) motion and a 
12(b)(6) motion is “purely formal.” Westcott v. City of Omaha, 

 (8th 
Cir. 1990).                                                               
    To withstand a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, “a complaint must 

contain sufficient factual allegations to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” 
Smithrud v. City of St. Paul, 

 (8th Cir. 2014) (quotation omitted). The 
facts alleged in the complaint must “raise a right to relief above the speculative level.” Bell 
Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 

 (2007). A complaint “that offers ‘labels and 
conclusions’ or ‘a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.’” 

Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 

 (2009) (quoting Twombly, 

). When 
considering a motion to dismiss, the court takes all factual allegations in the complaint as 
true and construes all reasonable inferences therefrom in favor of the plaintiff. Usenko v. 
MEMC LLC, 

 (8th Cir. 2019). However, the court does not take as true 
wholly conclusory allegations or the legal arguments offered by the plaintiff. Hager v. Ark. 
Dep’t of Health, 

 (8th Cir. 2013).                     
    B. Section 1983 Fourth Amendment Claims                              

    To plead a § 1983 action, a plaintiff must allege that a person acting under color of 
state law violated his or her constitutional rights. 

; Iqbal, 

. 
However, government officials have qualified immunity from § 1983 claims. As a result, 
plaintiffs must allege that the defendant engaged in conduct that violated a constitutional 
right and that, at the time of the alleged violation, the right was clearly established. E.g., 

Ryno v. City of Waynesville, 

 (8th Cir. 2023).          
    The Fourth Amendment prohibits law enforcement from effecting unreasonable 
seizures. U.S. Const. amend. IV. Through it, the constitution protects individuals from law 
enforcement arresting them without cause and using excessive force.       
    “The Fourth Amendment right of citizens not to be arrested without probable cause 

is clearly established.” Hill v. Scott, 

 (8th Cir. 2003). A plaintiff must 
allege facts showing that the defendant lacked probable cause to arrest him and that 
reasonable officers would have known that the defendant’s conduct violated the Fourth 
Amendment. See 

 Where officers have a “facially valid warrant” to make an arrest, but 
they mistake the arrestee for the person named in the warrant, they do not violate the Fourth 

Amendment if the mistake was reasonable. Id.; Peterson v. City of Pine River, 

 (D. Minn. 2014) (citing Hill, 

); see also Hill v. California, 

 (1971) (explaining that “[w]hen the police have probable cause to arrest 
one party, and when they reasonably mistake a second party for the first party, then the 
arrest of the second party is a valid arrest”); Baker v. McCollan, 

, 143–45 
(1979) (explaining that there is generally no Fourth Amendment violation when a person 
is mistakenly detained pursuant to a valid warrant for another individual).6 Whether an 

officer’s mistake is reasonable depends on the “‘totality of the circumstances’ at the time 
of the arrest; ‘hindsight is not the standard.’” Peterson, 

 (quoting Hill 
v. Scott, 

). The innocence of the person who has been seized does not 
suffice to allege a constitutional violation. McCollan, 

. A plaintiff cannot 
adequately allege a constitutional violation by claiming that the arresting officer acted 

negligently. See Lane v. Sarpy Cnty., 

, 624 (8th Cir. 1999); Young v. City of 
Little Rock, 

 (8th Cir. 2001).                           
    Reasonableness is also the governing standard for assessing excessive-force claims. 
Henderson v. Munn, 

 (8th Cir. 2006). “An officer’s use of force violates 
the Fourth Amendment if it was ‘objectively unreasonable.’” Pollreis v. Marzolf, 

 (8th Cir. 2021) (citing Graham v. Connor, 

, 394–96 (1989)). 
Objective reasonableness is assessed “from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the 
scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.” Graham, 

; Bishop v. 
Glazier, 

 (8th Cir. 2013) (same). Reasonableness is based on the factual 
circumstances of each case, including “the severity of the crime at issue, whether the 

suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers” and whether he is actively 

    6 See also Rivera v. Cnty. of Los Angeles, 

 (9th Cir. 2014); Rodriguez v. 
Farrell, 

, 1344 (11th Cir. 2002); Brady v. Dill, 

, 106–07 (1st Cir. 1999); 
Johnson v. Miller, 

 (7th Cir. 1982); Brown v. Patterson, 

, 168–69 (7th 
Cir. 1987); Blackwell v. Barton, 

, 300 n.1 (5th Cir. 1994).    
resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest. . . .” Pollreis, 

 (quoting Graham, 

).                                                         
    C. Monell Claims                                                     

    In Monell, the Supreme Court held that although § 1983 refers to violations of 
constitutional rights by any “person” acting under color of state law, a plaintiff can bring a 
suit against a municipality when an official policy or custom was the moving force for the 
alleged violation. 436 U.S. at 690–91; Mettler v. Whitledge, 

, 1204 (8th Cir. 
1999). “Under a Monell claim, Section 1983 liability may attach to a municipality if the 

violation resulted from (1) an official municipal policy, (2) an unofficial custom, or (3) a 
deliberately indifferent failure to train or supervise.” Smithrud, 

 n.4 (cleaned 
up). A plaintiff can show that a municipal policy caused the constitutional violation by 
demonstrating that the policy affirmatively sanctions unconstitutional actions. Szabla v. 
City of Brooklyn Park, 

, 390–91 (8th Cir. 2007). To show that a failure to train 

or supervise was the moving force behind a constitutional violation, the plaintiff must 
allege that the “municipality’s failure to adopt adequate safeguards was the product of 
deliberate indifference to the constitutional rights of its inhabitants.” 

. 
    If a court finds that a plaintiff has failed to adequately allege a constitutional 
violation by individual officers and dismisses such individual claims, a Monell claim 

necessarily fails as well. E.g., Stockley v. Joyce, 

 (8th Cir. 2020) 
(“‘Without a constitutional violation by the individual officers, there can be no § 1983 or 
Monell . . . liability.’”) (quoting Sanders v. City of Minneapolis, 

, 527 (8th 
Cir. 2007).                                                               
II.  Analysis                                                             
    A. Unreasonable Arrest                                               
    There is no dispute in this case that the Defendants had a facially valid arrest warrant 

for Darryl Billups. Nor do the parties dispute that the officers arrested Mr. Webb because 
they incorrectly believed he was Billups. Instead, the parties disagree about whether 
Plaintiff has adequately alleged facts showing that the officers’ mistake was reasonable 
under the circumstances.                                                  
    Defendants argue that they made a reasonable mistake because Mr. Webb was in a 

place  (out  of  his  room)  that  they  expected  Mr. Billups  to  be,  because  of  M.P.’s 
identification of Mr. Webb as Billups, and because Mr. Webb failed to tell them his identity 
when they questioned him before leaving the scene. They also argue that the officers acted 
reasonably when they left Mr. Webb handcuffed in the squad car for several minutes after 
they confirmed his identity and returned to Portland House. In response, Mr. Webb argues 

that the Defendants’ mistake was unreasonable because: the information available to them 
indicated that Mr. Webb did not match the description of Mr. Billups and the officers failed 
to conduct a more thorough investigation that would have alerted them sooner to their error. 
Specifically, Mr. Webb asserts that the Defendants ignored obvious differences between 
the physical description of Billups and Webb’s own appearance, including (1) a four-inch 

difference in height, (2) a significant disparity of weight, (3) the length of each man’s hair, 
and (4) the absence of any gold or blonde dye on the left side of Mr. Billups’ dreads. He 
argues that the officers should have asked Mr. Webb his name, looked more quickly at the 
ID they took from him, checked his driver’s license against their database sooner, or asked 
Mr. Jefferson earlier in the encounter if Mr. Webb was, in fact, Darryl Billups. And 
Plaintiff contends that the officers unreasonably relied on M.P.’s identification of Webb as 
Billups because M.P. was twenty feet away from Mr. Webb, Webb had his back turned, 

they were in the dark, and M.P. said that the man with dyed hair on the side of his head 
“should be Darryl.”                                                       
    The Court is thus faced with a straightforward question in considering whether 
Mr. Webb sufficiently alleges a constitutional claim of false arrest: was the officers’ 
mistake a reasonable one? The Court concludes that it was.                

    Dispatch directed Officer Calhoun and Officer Bakken to Portland House to execute 
facially valid warrants for Darryl Billups and Deondre Jefferson. The call details in the 
record regarding the subjects of the warrants indicated that Mr. Billups was a Black male, 
twenty-three years old, standing 5’10” tall, and weighing 224 pounds. Officer Bakken and 
Officer Calhoun learned that Jefferson and Billups had been known to carry weapons, and 

as they stood outside, Officer Bakken saw people moving around inside Portland House. 
When they spoke with M.P., a Portland House staff member who knew Billups and 
Jefferson, he told the officers that both targets of the warrant were inside the house, and 
that they had been out of their room, in violation of house rules. M.P. did not say what 
Billups or Jefferson was wearing, but he said that both had “dreads.” He added the detail 

that “Darryl [Billups] has like, color on one side, like gold color on one side of his braids.” 
Officers Cheng and Lange arrived on the scene and Officers Calhoun and Bakken filled 
them in about the warrants for Jefferson and Billups, relayed the concern about the possible 
presence of weapons, and shared the information they learned from M.P. So before they 
entered Portland House, the officers had a physical description of Billups, and they had 
information reasonably indicating that they would encounter Billups and Jefferson out of 
their room.                                                               

    After entering the residence, the officers very quickly encountered Mr. Jefferson—
out of his room as M.P. had said—asked him his name, and placed him under arrest. At 
that point, they had one out of the two men in custody. Within seconds of that encounter, 
Officer Cheng and Officer Lange saw Mr. Webb. Although Webb does not perfectly match 
the description they received for Billups in the call details reflected in the record, he was 

close in age, the same race, within approximately 60 pounds, and he wore his hair in a style 
that could reasonably accord with M.P.’s description that Billups had “dreads.”7 Although 
they did not ask Webb to identify himself, having just arrested Jefferson, the officers could 
reasonably infer from the situation facing them that the second person they encountered 
was Billups. Webb was a male, outside of his room, whose physical appearance was within 

reasonable bounds of the description they had of Billups.                 
    After Officers Cheng and Lange placed Mr. Webb in handcuffs, they led him 
outside the front of the residence where the other officers were holding Mr. Jefferson. Once 
outside, they did not simply take Mr. Webb immediately to a squad vehicle. Instead, they 


7 Defendants suggest that because people can change their hairstyles, the Court should disregard 
the fact that Mr. Webb did not have gold or blond dye on one side of his dreads as M.P. suggested. 
The Court disagrees that this reasoning would support dismissal here. It would not be a reasonable 
inference in favor of the nonmoving party to hypothesize that Billups had altered the appearance 
of his hair in the time between M.P. telling the officers about his appearance and the officers 
encountering Webb inside the house. Nevertheless, considering the totality of the circumstances, 
the Court finds that the absence of that detail in Webb’s appearance did not make the arrest 
objectively unreasonable.                                                 
asked M.P. if the men they had arrested were the two men for whom they had warrants. 
Officer Lange or Officer Bakken shined a flashlight on Mr. Webb’s face as they asked M.P. 
to make an identification. M.P. agreed that the officers had “both of them.” Although 

Mr. Webb  is  correct  that  M.P.  brought  up  Mr. Billups’s  dyed  hair  again  during  this 
exchange, it did not stop M.P. from making a positive identification. The officers could 
reasonably rely on that identification from a staff member of Portland House who was 
personally familiar with Billups.                                         
    Next, the officers took Mr. Webb’s identification, and shortly after placing it in a 

manila envelope in the back of a squad car, Officer Bakken retrieved it so Officer Calhoun 
could review it. Officer Calhoun did not ignore the ID—he asked Mr. Webb about it prior 
to leaving the scene. Officer Calhoun saw that the name on the ID wasn’t Darryl Billups, 
so he asked Mr. Webb “who’s Robert Webb?” Rather than tell the Defendants that he was, 
in fact, Robert Webb, Mr. Webb said that he had been “doing business” as Robert Webb 

and that he had been known as Robert Webb. Officer Calhoun asked what Mr. Webb meant 
by those answers, and Mr. Webb provided no greater clarity on the subject. These answers 
reasonably could have conveyed that the man they arrested was Darryl Billups and that he 
was being evasive about a driver’s license in his possession bearing a different name. See 
Hill v. California, 

 (observing that officers did not act unreasonably in 

arresting Miller, who produced ID with his own name, when officers had a warrant for Hill 
because “aliases and false identifications are not uncommon”). It was not objectively 
unreasonable, at that point, for the officers to continue to believe they arrested the man they 
were after.                                                               
    Between eight and nine minutes after that discussion, the officers had driven a short 
distance away from Portland House, and Officer Calhoun began discussing the nature of 
the warrants the officers had just executed. At that point, he learned that nobody in the back 

seat was named “Darryl.” He asked Mr. Webb “what’s your name?”, and at this point 
Mr. Webb identified himself as “Rob” and said “you have my ID.” Officer Calhoun 
checked Mr. Webb’s driver’s license in the squad computer and discovered the mistake. 
They told Mr. Webb that they would take him back to Portland House, turned around, and 
arrived back at the residence within five minutes. But prior to Mr. Webb’s definitive 

statements that he is Robert Webb, the totality of the circumstances facing the officers did 
not make their mistake of him for Billups unreasonable.                   
    Mr. Webb argues that the Court should find otherwise, relying on Bell v. Neukirch, 

 (8th Cir. 2020). But Bell is distinguishable. Unlike here, Bell is not a case in 
which the officers had a facially valid arrest warrant for an individual they had never seen 

in person. Rather, Bell considered whether there was probable cause for an arresting officer 
to determine that Mr. Bell was the same person he had just observed fleeing. 

 at 599–
602. The officer obtained a significant array of details about the suspect’s appearance. 
Based on his own observations, the officer first described the suspect as a “Black male. 
Dreads. Blue shorts[,]” then “elaborated: ‘Juvenile black male, 17–18, about 5’10,” skinny, 

blue shorts, white t-shirt, shoulder-length dreads. He was taking his shoes off. However, 
the  Bell  court  explained  that  “Bell’s  appearance  and  that  of  the  suspect  differ[ed] 
markedly.” 

. All that Bell had in common with the suspect was that they were 
“both black male juveniles wearing white t-shirts.” 

 Moreover, Bell’s clothing did not 
match the suspect’s clothing in myriad ways and the context in which the officers found 
him undermined any real suggestion that he was the suspect they were after. 

 (reasoning 
that it was unlikely Bell was the suspect because he would have had to just completed a 

mile running in warm weather, but was not sweating significantly, had just finished a call 
on his cell phone, and was not out of breath).                            
    Mr. Webb emphasizes that the difference in height at issue in Bell is only 1-inch 
greater than the difference at issue here, and he asserts that the warrant information 
suggested Billups weighed only 164 pounds, more than 100 pounds less than Webb. He 

also contends that just as the officers in Bell failed to ask two other juveniles they detained 
at the scene about whether Mr. Bell was the suspect who had fled, 

 at 601–02, the 
Defendants in this case did not initially ask Jefferson if Mr. Webb was, in fact, Billups. 
    But the similarities between this case and Bell fall short. The arresting officer in Bell 
had just personally seen the suspect fleeing, whereas there is no allegation that any of the 

Defendants in this case had ever laid eyes on Billups before they arrived at Portland House 
to execute the warrant. The arresting officer in Bell also provided a detailed description of 
the clothing the suspect was wearing moments earlier, and before taking Bell to jail, the 
arresting officer reviewed video footage of the fleeing suspect. The officer therefore had a 
first-hand knowledge of what the suspect looked like and  the video depicted details 

consistent with the description he sent out over the radio prior to arresting Bell. The officers 
acted unreasonably because Bell bore little resemblance to those first-hand observations of 
the fleeing suspect. The Defendants in this case had no information about what Billups was 
wearing before they arrested Mr. Webb, nor was the physical description they had as 
detailed as the one at issue in Bell.                                     
    Moreover, while Mr. Webb argues that the difference in weight at issue in this case 

is extraordinary, he overlooks the fact that the information contained in the call details for 
the warrant indicates that Billups weighed 214 or 224. It is more reasonable to mistake a 
person who weighs approximately 270 pounds for someone who at some point has weighed 
225 pounds, though the Court acknowledges that the difference is not insignificant. Perhaps 
in a different fact pattern, one in which Mr. Webb provided less evasive answers to Officer 

Calhoun’s  questions  of  “who’s  Robert  Webb”  and  M.P.  had  not  made  a  positive 
identification,  the  differences  in  Mr. Webb’s  appearance  from  the  description  of 
Mr. Billups would have rendered a mistaken arrest less reasonable. But the test is based on 
all the circumstances, and there is no formula that says certain differences in physical 
characteristics necessarily render a mistake of fact unreasonable. See Miller v. Eslinger, 

No. 6:10-cv-1221-ORL-31, 

, at *4 (M.D. Fla. Sept. 27, 2011) (granting 
summary judgment on a false arrest claim in a case where there was a 40-pound difference 
in weight and a 3-inch difference in height between the plaintiff and the subject of the 
warrant where other details supported the reasonableness of the arresting officer’s actions); 
cf. Johnson v. Miller, 

, 41–42 (7th Cir. 1982) (finding no Fourth Amendment 

violation where officers mistakenly arrested a white female based on a facially valid 
warrant to arrest a woman of a different race).                           
    Further, the portion of Exhibit A to the Defendants’ Answer listing Mr. Billups’s 
weight as 164 pounds is not part of the dispatch call details concerning the warrant, but a 
separate part of the report. It appears just beneath a mugshot of Billups from September 
2018  where  the  report  summarizes  information  the  Minneapolis  Police  Department 
compiled for Billups, Jefferson, and Mr. Webb. Defs.’ Ans., Ex. A at 5. This makes it 

extremely unlikely that the Defendant officers saw either that photograph of Billups or the 
indication that he weighed 164 pounds before they entered Portland House to execute the 
warrant, and there is no allegation that they did. Admittedly, an official’s awareness of 
such a substantial discrepancy in weight could support a determination that an arrest was 
unreasonable. See Maxwell v. City of Indianapolis, 

, 434–35 (7th Cir. 1993) 

(finding summary judgment was not appropriate where plaintiff was 6 inches taller and 
almost 100 pounds heavier than the person to be arrested); Taylor v. City of Michigan City, 
No. 3:16-cv-836 JD, 

, at *5 (N.D. Ind. Dec. 11, 2018) (difference of 7-
inches and 90 pounds between plaintiff and the person to be arrested supported finding that 
mistaken arrest was not reasonable). But given that the description of Billups’s weight 

being 164 pounds was from information gathered three years before the incident at issue 
here, and the fact that a person’s weight can vary significantly over time, the difference 
would  have  only  been  one  factor  to  consider  in  the  reasonableness  of  the  mistake. 
Rodriguez v. Farrell, 

, 1348 n.14 (11th Cir. 2002) (observing that physical 
characteristics such as “weight are all easily variable, especially over six years”). 

    Mr.  Webb’s  remaining  arguments  primarily  challenge  the  sufficiency  of  the 
Defendants’ investigation. To be sure, Mr. Webb raises valid concerns about the fact that 
the Defendant officers arrested an innocent person whose physical characteristics do not 
exactly match the description of the subject of the warrant. The Court appreciates the 
frustration  that  Mr. Webb  feels  at  having  been  subjected  to  an  arrest  based  on  a 
misidentification that might have been avoided if the officers had been more careful about 
their identification procedures. But “[t]he law does not require law enforcement officers to 

conduct a perfect investigation to avoid suit for false arrest.” Joseph v. Allen, 

 (8th Cir. 2013).8                                              
    More importantly, Mr. Webb’s argument overlooks key aspects of the investigation 
the officers did conduct. They sought and obtained a description of Billups and Jefferson 
from M.P., and M.P. expressed familiarity with both men. They also learned that both 

Billups and Jefferson were inside the house and outside of their room. After the officers 
placed Webb in handcuffs and led him out of the residence, they didn’t cease their 
investigation,  but  asked  M.P.  to  confirm  that  Webb  and  Jefferson  were  Billups  and 
Jefferson. Because it was dark, they shined a flashlight on Mr. Webb’s face to help with 
the identification, and M.P. twice agreed that they had the man they intended to arrest. 

Later, in the squad vehicle, when Officer Calhoun saw that Webb’s ID had a different 
name, he did not ignore that detail; rather, he asked “who’s Robert Webb.” Mr. Webb’s 
responses to such questions and requests for clarification of what Mr. Webb meant by those 
answers, did not clearly indicate that Plaintiff definitively claimed to be Robert Webb. The 



8 In his opposition, Plaintiff cites Kuehl v. Burtis, 

 (8th Cir. 1999) for the proposition 
that “[a]n officer contemplating an arrest is not free to disregard plainly exculpatory evidence, 
even if substantial inculpatory evidence (standing by itself) suggests that probable cause exists.” 

. But in Hill v. Scott, the Eighth Circuit distinguished Kuehl because “the officer was 
investigating a possible crime after the fact and based his assessment of probable cause for the 
arrest on his shoddy investigation.” 

. Kuehl does not suggest that officers executing 
a facially valid warrant must be perfect.                                 
investigation into Mr. Webb’s identity did not stop there. When Officer Calhoun became 
aware that Jefferson and Mr. Webb claimed there was no one named “Darryl” in the squad 
vehicle, and Webb said his name is “Rob,” Calhoun ran Webb’s ID through the computer 

and determined they had taken the wrong person into custody.              
    The investigation wasn’t perfect, and had the Defendants asked certain questions of 
M.P. or Mr. Webb sooner or checked Mr. Webb’s identification in the computer earlier in 
the process, they might have discovered more quickly that Webb was not Billups. But that 
is clear through the lens of hindsight and “[a]lthough the Supreme Court has acknowledged 

the significant negative consequences of arrest, it has afforded police significant latitude to 
make mistakes of fact when arresting individuals on the basis of warrants.” Wayne A. 
Logan & Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Policing Criminal Justice Data, 

, 577 (2016). Under the circumstances presented by the pleadings in this case, the 
Defendants’ investigation did not make their mistake objectively unreasonable. 

    The Eighth Circuit’s decision in Hill v. Scott, 

, 1073–74 (8th Cir. 
2003) supports this conclusion. There, if the defendant officer had verified information 
with dispatch prior to telling other officers to arrest the plaintiff, he very well might have 
learned that the warrant he believed was for the plaintiff was in fact for a person who shared 
the plaintiff’s first and last name, but had a different date of birth, different middle name, 

and  was  of  a  different  race.  

  Nevertheless,  the  court  emphasized  that  “further 
investigation would have cast doubt on whether [the plaintiff] was the subject of the 
warrant. But that is always the case where an arrestee denies being the subject of a facially 
valid warrant.” 

 The same is true here.                                
    In another case of mistaken identity, the Eighth Circuit found that an arresting 
officer made a reasonable mistake in arresting the plaintiff believing she was the subject of 
an active warrant that had been issued for the plaintiff’s sister-in-law, who had used the 

plaintiff’s name as an alias. Young v. City of Little Rock, 

 (8th Cir. 
2001) (affirming district court’s finding that plaintiff failed to state a claim against the 
arresting officer and the dispatcher). In Young, although further investigation or more 
careful review of the information the officers had might have revealed their mistake, the 
court found the officers did not act unreasonably in proceeding as they did. 

. In 

particular, the court found that the dispatcher’s mistake in failing to convey more complete 
information about the target of the arrest warrant “was occasioned . . . by the press of 
business and by the speed with which officers in [her] position were required to act.” 

 
These same observations undermine Mr. Webb’s argument that the officers in this case 
violated his Fourth Amendment rights by not conducting a more thorough investigation. 

    In sum, based on the totality of the circumstances, the Court finds that Defendants’ 
arrest of Mr. Webb was based on a reasonable mistake of fact and, therefore, Mr. Webb 
fails to state a claim that he was unreasonably seized in violation of his Fourth Amendment 
rights based on his arrest.9                                              





9 Because Mr. Webb fails to state a plausible claim that his arrest was the result of an unreasonable 
mistake of fact, the Court does not address the individual Defendants’ argument that the law did 
not clearly establish that their actions were unconstitutional.           
    B. Continued Detention                                               
    In his Complaint, Mr. Webb asserts that after the officers drove him back to Portland 
House, “they still did not free [him]. Instead, they went inside and, upon information and 

belief, spoke to the staff and searched for Mr. Billups for approximately 15 minutes.” 
Compl. ¶ 17. His false arrest claim asserts that the officers unreasonably “held Plaintiff 
without probable cause or legal justification.” Id. ¶ 35.10               
    Defendants argue that Mr. Webb fails to state a claim that his Fourth Amendment 
rights were violated during the time Officers Calhoun and Bakken left him in their squad 

vehicle to go back into Portland House to search for Billups, suggesting that this continued 
detention was justified because releasing Webb might have allowed Billups to escape and 
could have placed Webb in danger. Defs.’ Mem. at 16–19 (relying on Wright v. United 
States, 

 (8th Cir. 2015)). Aside from a passing reference to being “left 
handcuffed  in  the  squad  car  while  [Defendants]  checked  Portland  House  to  see  if 

Mr. Billups was still there,” Pl.’s Opp’n at 7, Mr. Webb does not respond to the caselaw 
cited by Defendants in support of this argument and makes no argument that the decision 
by Officers Calhoun and Bakken to leave him in the vehicle was an independent violation 
of his constitutional rights from his mistaken arrest. The Court construes Mr. Webb’s 




10 Mr. Webb’s complaint also asserts that he was “held for approximately 3 hours.” Compl. ¶ 33. 
However, the Court notes that the video footage contradicts that allegation, as it shows that the 
entire incident lasted less than half an hour, and the portion of the encounter following the return 
to Portland House lasted approximately five minutes. Mr. Webb does not repeat the 3-hour 
detention assertion in his opposition to the Defendants’ motion.          
failure to respond to these arguments as a concession that his continued detention in the 
squad vehicle during this five-minute period did not violate his constitutional rights.11 
    The Court notes that Defendants have also argued that Mr. Webb’s status as a 

parolee at the time of his arrest and his accompanying diminished expectation of privacy 
undermine any claim that he was unreasonably seized during the time that the officers left 
him  in  the  squad  vehicle  while  they  briefly  reentered  Portland  House  to  search  for 
Mr. Billups  because  Mr. Webb.  Defs.’  Mem.  19–21.  But  Defendants  cite  no  case 
suggesting that parolees may be arrested without probable cause, nor any case holding that 

government officials may subject a parolee to prolonged detention even after they have 
determined the parolee should be released simply because of parolee status. In any event, 
the Court need not address this argument because it finds Mr. Webb has failed to state a 
claim upon which relief may be granted.                                   
    For the foregoing reasons, the Court dismisses Mr. Webb’s Fourth Amendment 

seizure claim in Count 1 of the Complaint to the extent he alleges that his arrest was 
unreasonable.                                                             





11 In Baker v. McCollan, where the plaintiff was mistakenly arrested on a facially valid warrant 
and detained for three days over the New Year’s holiday before he was eventually released, the 
Court held that his ongoing detention despite his protests that he was innocent did not violate his 
Fourth Amendment rights, but indicated that after a certain passage of time, continued detention 
in the face of such protests could violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. 

, 144–45 (1979). Mr. Webb has not alleged that his continued detention in this case 
violated his right to due process.                                        
    C. Excessive Force Claim                                             
    The Court also finds that Mr. Webb fails to state a claim of excessive force. In 
Count 1 of the Complaint he alleges that Defendants engaged in excessive force when 

effecting his arrest because they pointed weapons at him and placed him in handcuffs. 
Compl. ¶ 35. In support of their Rule 12 motion, Defendants argued that under Pollreis v. 
Marzolf, 

 (8th Cir. 2021) and given the circumstances of this case, it was 
not unreasonable for the officers to briefly point their weapons at Mr. Webb when they 
effected his arrest. Defs.’ Mem. 21–24. In response, Mr. Webb argues that the Defendants’ 

“use of force against Plaintiff violated the Constitution for the same reason that their arrest 
and continued detention violated the Constitution: Plaintiff obviously did not match the 
description  of  Mr. Billups.”  Pl.’s  Opp’n  16.  Further,  he  asserts  that  “just  as  it  was 
unreasonable to arrest him, it was unreasonable and unconstitutional to effectuate his arrest 
and continued detention through the use of force.” 

 Mr. Webb does not argue that the 

officers in this case used force that was excessive because of the specific manner in which 
it was applied.                                                           
    Given Mr. Webb’s position that the officers’ use of any force was unreasonable 
because the arrest itself was unreasonable, the Court finds that it need not address the 
applicability of Pollreis to the facts here. It is true that courts have recognized the use of 

any level of force to effectuate an unreasonable arrest would be excessive. E.g., Smith v. 
Appledorn, No. 11-cv-2966 (JNE/SER), 

, at *3 (D. Minn. Feb. 6, 2013) 
(“If Appledorn’s seizure of Smith was unreasonable, any force used in the course of the 
seizure would also have been unreasonable.”). Because Mr. Webb’s complaint fails to state 
a claim that he was subjected to an unreasonable arrest for the reasons explained above, 
the Court finds that he has not sufficiently alleged that the officers’ use of force was 
necessarily  unreasonable.  Therefore,  the  Court  dismisses  Mr. Webb’s  claim  that  the 

officers used excessive force.                                            
    D. Monell Claim                                                      
    Mr. Webb argues that he has sufficiently pled a Monell claim. He asserts that a 
custom of racially discriminatory police practices and failure to provide sufficient training 
to officers concerning implicit bias were the motivating force that caused a violation of his 

Fourth Amendment rights. He asserts that such a custom is amply demonstrated in reports 
issued by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights in August 2022 and the Department 
of Justice in June 2023. Because the Court finds that Mr. Webb fails to state a claim that 
Defendants violated his constitutional rights, he fails to state an actionable Monell claim. 
Stockley, 

.                                                

    Accordingly, the Court dismisses Count 2 of the Complaint.           
    E. Supplemental State Law Claims                                     
    Although Defendants argue that Mr. Webb fails to state any claim under state law 
because they are entitled to official immunity, the Court declines to reach the merits of this 
issue. District Courts have supplemental jurisdiction over state law claims when they are 

“so related to” the federal law claims in that action. 

, 1367(a). However, 
a district court may decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over a state law claim 
when the court dismisses the accompanying federal claims. 

 § 1367(c)(3). Here, because 
the Court dismisses Mr. Webb’s § 1983 claims, and there are no other federal law claims 
remaining, the Court declines to exercise jurisdiction over his state law claims. Therefore, 
the Court dismisses the false arrest and false imprisonment claims without prejudice. The 
Court also declines to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Counts 4 and 5 of the 

Complaint, which allege violations of the MGDPA. Those claims are likewise dismissed 
without prejudice.                                                        

    For the reasons set forth above, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT           
    1.   Defendants’ Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings is GRANTED IN PART 

and DENIED IN PART.                                                       
    2.   Plaintiff’s 

 claims against the individual officers in Count 1 
of the Complaint, and Plaintiff’s Monell claim against the City of Minneapolis in Count 2 
of the Complaint, are DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE.                           
    3.   Pursuant to 

(c), the Court declines to exercise jurisdiction 

over Plaintiff’s state law claims in Counts 3, 4, and 5 of the Complaint. Those claims are 
DISMISSED WITHOUT PREJUDICE. The Court therefore denies Defendants’ motion 
to the extent they seek an order dismissing these state law claims with prejudice. 
    Let Judgment be entered accordingly.                                 

Date: September 9, 2024         s/Katherine Menendez                     
                                Katherine Menendez                       
                                United States District Judge