[00:00:00] Speaker 01: Good morning. [00:00:01] Speaker 01: David Pruitt on behalf of the plaintiffs and appellants, Ima Khalif and Howie Awash. [00:00:08] Speaker 01: May it please the court? [00:00:12] Speaker 01: The district court and my friends on the other side have started this case with the premise that police were investigating suspicious activities [00:00:23] Speaker 01: And with a view that starts with that that would be a reasonable thing for police to do. [00:00:31] Speaker 01: The problem with that point of view is that it disregards facts that have been affirmatively pled in the complaint, including the facts that the officers involved knew who these shop owners were when they confronted them. [00:00:49] Speaker 01: When someone knows the identity of another person [00:00:54] Speaker 01: and challenges them to identify themselves, that is an act of intimidation. [00:01:01] Speaker 01: The other thing that the facts that were overlooked were it's very affirmatively pled that the plaintiffs were restocking their store. [00:01:15] Speaker 01: The activity of restocking a store is different than the activity of burglarizing a store [00:01:24] Speaker 01: or doing something of that nature. [00:01:27] Speaker 01: So in this case, we have two sets of facts that, for the purposes of pleadings, should have been accepted as true for the sake of a motion to dismiss under 12b6 that contradict this idea of starting with an inference that the police were appropriately responding to some suspicious activity. [00:01:54] Speaker 01: With that, that leads to a viable claim for relief under the Civil Rights Act and under both section 1983 and section 1985-3. [00:02:11] Speaker 01: The facts that I have pointed to so far, those do indicate that there was [00:02:21] Speaker 01: a conspiracy in 1985-3 provides for relief against those who conspire to deprive, and the statute uses the words, directly or indirectly. [00:02:33] Speaker 03: The cases, I guess, got narrowed in terms of the number of defendants, so now what we're left with is [00:02:43] Speaker 03: Is the Belvedere police officer? [00:02:46] Speaker 03: Yes. [00:02:47] Speaker 03: So he came in sort of midway into this exchange? [00:02:53] Speaker 01: I believe that he came in, I believe the order of progression was Madfas, then Clark Belvedere, and then Blassey, a sergeant from Tiburon. [00:03:05] Speaker 03: Did Clark ever have any interactions with the plaintiffs here? [00:03:09] Speaker 03: Yes. [00:03:10] Speaker 03: In terms of, you know, conversation? [00:03:12] Speaker 03: Because you hear in the video, you hear Madfeece and then the sergeant. [00:03:15] Speaker 03: But how about Clark? [00:03:18] Speaker 01: I'm not aware of a verbal statement by Clark. [00:03:23] Speaker 01: I'm aware of his presence. [00:03:24] Speaker 02: Yeah, he's there to provide backup according to an agreement between the two cities. [00:03:29] Speaker 02: What makes you think he knew something fishy was going on and that he had conspired with the Tiburon officer to racially profile and embarrass and humiliate these people? [00:03:44] Speaker 01: Sure. [00:03:45] Speaker 01: I understand the question. [00:03:47] Speaker 01: The store, as we allege in the complaint, opened in February 2020. [00:03:50] Speaker 01: This confrontation occurred in August 2020, actually August 21, so almost just four years ago, or just one day past. [00:03:59] Speaker 01: Anyway, the complaint says that the plaintiffs were familiar with the officers, including Officer Clark, and they were known that their business was on a prominent corner. [00:04:13] Speaker 01: It was known to be [00:04:14] Speaker 01: a black-owned business, that there were times where Clark himself walked or drove by. [00:04:25] Speaker 01: So paragraph 40 of the complaint says Clark, during that six-month period of time, had driven or walked past the store many times as both a police officer and a private citizen. [00:04:37] Speaker 01: Paragraph 41 alleges that the plaintiffs were stopped by police officers of both agencies [00:04:44] Speaker 01: detained, questioned, and I realize this might kind of morph a bit also into Menell, but the point is that officers with both agencies were aware of these plaintiffs' identities, and that Officer Clark, in particular, was alleged to be familiar to the plaintiffs, and it seems to me that- What facts have you pledged to show that, other than that he had been on the police force for a certain amount of time and had driven by this business? [00:05:12] Speaker 03: Is there anything else? [00:05:14] Speaker 01: The fact that the plaintiffs are alleging that they saw him. [00:05:18] Speaker 03: Is there an allegation that he knew them? [00:05:21] Speaker 03: Yes. [00:05:22] Speaker 03: There's an allegation, but there's no evidence. [00:05:25] Speaker 03: What's the factual basis for the allegation? [00:05:29] Speaker 01: The factual basis for the allegation is the ability to recognize a person. [00:05:36] Speaker 01: And so the plaintiffs are saying that they recognize Clark from their prior six months experience at the store. [00:05:44] Speaker 01: And that is a familiarity that any of us could have. [00:05:47] Speaker 02: OK, but they recognize him doesn't mean he knew them. [00:05:52] Speaker 02: And even if he did know them, he's there to back up the Tiburon officer. [00:05:59] Speaker 02: And what does he do that shows this was a conspiracy? [00:06:05] Speaker 02: I mean, there was some talk about his hand was on the gun. [00:06:12] Speaker 02: You don't see anything on the video that backs that up. [00:06:16] Speaker 02: I mean, really, what are you doing with this Belvedere thing? [00:06:20] Speaker 02: Shouldn't you be satisfied with the result you got on Tiburon? [00:06:27] Speaker 02: I mean, you have Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. [00:06:29] Speaker 02: She's a great district judge. [00:06:31] Speaker 02: She heard the testimony. [00:06:32] Speaker 02: She saw the video. [00:06:34] Speaker 02: She made her rulings. [00:06:36] Speaker 02: And, you know, under Twombly and Iqbal, where are you going with this? [00:06:41] Speaker 01: Well, we're going with the facts that the police did know these people. [00:06:49] Speaker 01: And I understand that you're challenging that right now. [00:06:54] Speaker 01: And my response to it is that that is, it truly is a basic human function. [00:06:59] Speaker 01: That there is a basic human function of now that I've seen you, [00:07:04] Speaker 01: I recognize you. [00:07:05] Speaker 01: And if I see you again, I can say, oh, I saw him somewhere before. [00:07:09] Speaker 01: And I'm saying that they had that. [00:07:12] Speaker 01: And we also know that people can recognize the recognition that occurred between two other people. [00:07:17] Speaker 01: If a human is walking down the street and they see two people walk by and they look at each other in a familiar way, people are able to testify about that all the time. [00:07:29] Speaker 01: There are, I'm sure, a myriad of crimes where there are [00:07:34] Speaker 01: There's testimony about people operating in concert with each other because they are looking at each other in a certain way and cooperating by way of recognition. [00:07:46] Speaker 01: And that's where this really boils down to is the facts are alleged that there is a recognition. [00:07:52] Speaker 01: And the analysis of the district court. [00:07:55] Speaker 03: I don't think there's not facts alleged that there was a recognition in that moment. [00:07:59] Speaker 03: I don't think there's any allegation in the complaint that when Clark appeared on the scene, he indicated knowledge of the plaintiffs. [00:08:08] Speaker 03: Is there? [00:08:09] Speaker 01: I think it's paragraph 42. [00:08:12] Speaker 01: I know it's ER 118, line four. [00:08:15] Speaker 01: He knew who they were. [00:08:17] Speaker 01: Look, that's not a fact. [00:08:20] Speaker 02: Yeah, that's an allegation in a complaint. [00:08:23] Speaker 02: But under Iqbal and Twombly, you have to do more than just throw something out there. [00:08:29] Speaker 02: You have to have some plausibility to things. [00:08:32] Speaker 02: And your plausibility is they recognized him, therefore he must have recognized them. [00:08:40] Speaker 02: And that's a stretch. [00:08:43] Speaker 01: Well, I think that that is taking [00:08:46] Speaker 01: the allegations and putting an inference on them in a way that is not required. [00:08:52] Speaker 01: And I think the inference actually would go the other way. [00:08:54] Speaker 01: I think that, you know, the circumstances that we have talked about, about being on a street corner, about actually encountering Clark himself on the street, you know, I'm not sure why the court is viewing that only as a one-way occasion, because what the plaintiffs are saying is that they saw him [00:09:16] Speaker 01: in front of their store. [00:09:18] Speaker 01: And then when he was in the store and he was cooperating with these other officers for the purpose of intimidating these people, that that was at least in that moment circumstantial evidence that they were acting on a conspiracy because they were acting as though they don't know these people, that these people [00:09:39] Speaker 01: And these people are actually familiar to them. [00:09:43] Speaker 03: I question whether it's been plausibly alleged in the complaint, but one could actually question whether the allegation is implausible. [00:09:51] Speaker 03: If what you're saying is true, that the plaintiffs knew Clark, why in this 10, 15 minute interaction on video that we've all watched, did the plaintiffs not say, Officer Clark, you know us, please stop this interaction? [00:10:04] Speaker 03: There's none of that in the video. [00:10:06] Speaker 01: I think what you saw in the video, though, is indignation and, you know, being... I know, but what you're... That's true, but what you're arguing here is that the plaintiffs knew Clark knew them. [00:10:16] Speaker 03: Why is there... If that's true, why is this nowhere expressed during the 10-minute interaction in which your clients are trying to have the police leave their shop? [00:10:25] Speaker 01: I would say it was expressed by the indignation that when someone asks for your identification, they know perfectly well who you are and you act indignant to them, it is an expression of, [00:10:36] Speaker 01: disbelief and challenging the credibility of the person who is asking for identification to be shown. [00:10:43] Speaker 01: We're just in here doing our thing. [00:10:45] Speaker 01: We're doing our business. [00:10:47] Speaker 01: And on top of that, they were in there, not burglarizing, stocking shelves. [00:10:52] Speaker 01: It's affirmatively alleged that they were restocking shelves. [00:10:55] Speaker 02: I don't know why you bring up burglary. [00:10:58] Speaker 02: Nobody's talking about a burglary or anything. [00:11:00] Speaker 02: But when [00:11:02] Speaker 02: Lights are on in a store at that particular time. [00:11:06] Speaker 02: I know you talk about white people sometimes work at night too. [00:11:09] Speaker 02: What's wrong with the cops just checking to make sure everything's okay? [00:11:13] Speaker 02: And even if it's the owner, sometimes somebody might get in and be doing something like, hey, the cops are coming, I got the gun on this person, you better not do anything. [00:11:27] Speaker 02: Why can't they just investigate what's going on? [00:11:31] Speaker 01: I think that they could, first of all, it would have been obvious if they sat outside and watched for five minutes what was going on, and under these facts, no one can say that that didn't occur, and that they still went in and treated them as though there was some suspicion. [00:11:48] Speaker 01: If I'm sitting outside of a store and I see someone stocking the shelves, there's no reason for me to be suspicious about what they're doing. [00:11:54] Speaker 01: They're doing what shop owners do. [00:11:56] Speaker 01: They're stocking the shelves. [00:12:02] Speaker 01: I just would say that you're reviewing the video and you're accepting that that is the universe of what the officers did. [00:12:13] Speaker 01: And if that is not the universe of what the officers did, if they did, if they did conspire and if they did walk in with a plan to act like, to persuasively act like they don't know these people, [00:12:27] Speaker 01: that would be for the purpose of intimidating them. [00:12:30] Speaker 01: And these people are saying, look, we get stopped on the street all the time. [00:12:33] Speaker 01: These same police officers bother us on the street. [00:12:36] Speaker 01: They make us stop because we're black. [00:12:38] Speaker 01: and identify ourselves. [00:12:40] Speaker 01: And this is just the culminating moment. [00:12:43] Speaker 01: It's the middle of the night. [00:12:44] Speaker 01: And then there's the part about even the keys. [00:12:47] Speaker 01: If in that situation, we all know that a gesture to a pocket can be misunderstood and should be described as a misunderstood move. [00:12:57] Speaker 01: And all of this is a very compromising position to be in in the middle of night surrounded by three police officers. [00:13:03] Speaker 02: And I get that's why the city of Tiburon said, you know, we have some exposure here because our officer was the one taking this posture. [00:13:13] Speaker 02: But the other officer is just there on backup. [00:13:18] Speaker 02: You have to have some evidence that the two of them conspired to do this together. [00:13:23] Speaker 02: Yeah, I'm not just going to be there for backup. [00:13:26] Speaker 02: I'm going to support your intimidating, harassing, [00:13:29] Speaker 02: And I want to be part of this conspiracy to show these black people they do not belong in our neighborhoods. [00:13:36] Speaker 02: But you're surmising it, but there's no evidence to support it. [00:13:43] Speaker 01: I mean, I will reiterate, and I realize that this will be the third time that I'm saying it, so forgive me, but that is taking the police officer's point of view, and it is not allowing for any potential inference on the plaintiff's side. [00:14:00] Speaker 01: what we are describing. [00:14:02] Speaker 01: And if this is inartfully, then so be it. [00:14:05] Speaker 01: But the complaint does describe that these police officers knew them, and it described facts that would support how they knew them. [00:14:14] Speaker 01: The fact that he's back up or not, the fact that he's back up just lends more police power to the circumstance. [00:14:22] Speaker 01: If I could, I'd like to just reserve a little time. [00:14:24] Speaker 01: Yes, thank you. [00:14:25] Speaker 03: We'll put two minutes on the clock when you come back. [00:14:27] Speaker 01: Thank you. [00:14:34] Speaker 00: Thank you, Your Honor. [00:14:35] Speaker 00: May it please the court, Laurie Sobranski on behalf of the appellees. [00:14:39] Speaker 00: We are very lucky in this case that we have a video that shows exactly what happened with this interaction from the very start to the very end. [00:14:49] Speaker 00: The video was incorporated by reference. [00:14:51] Speaker 00: The district court relied on it. [00:14:53] Speaker 00: They don't challenge that decision here. [00:14:54] Speaker 00: So you can rely on that video when determining the plausibility of these claims. [00:14:59] Speaker 00: I want to talk about [00:15:01] Speaker 00: the allegations about Officer Clark knowing the plaintiffs. [00:15:06] Speaker 00: But first, I want to just frame what the plaintiffs are asking this court to conclude here. [00:15:12] Speaker 00: The video that you have obviously seen tells the story. [00:15:18] Speaker 00: A Tiburon police officer sees three unidentified people in a store at one in the morning, goes to the store to find out what is going on. [00:15:26] Speaker 00: If everything's okay, that is his job as a Tiburon police officer. [00:15:31] Speaker 00: knocks on the door, politely ask them, says, hey, guys, is everything OK? [00:15:37] Speaker 00: One o'clock in the morning, kind of late. [00:15:39] Speaker 00: Who are you? [00:15:40] Speaker 00: What are you doing here? [00:15:42] Speaker 00: Just checking to make sure everything's OK. [00:15:45] Speaker 00: You can see on that video, they are immediately defiant. [00:15:48] Speaker 00: They are immediately confrontational. [00:15:50] Speaker 00: They refuse to answer any questions. [00:15:53] Speaker 00: Plaintiff Khalif demands that [00:15:56] Speaker 00: Officer Mathis called the supervisor. [00:15:58] Speaker 00: That's Sergeant Blasey. [00:15:59] Speaker 00: He comes in about five minutes into the interaction. [00:16:02] Speaker 00: When Sergeant Blasey gets there, still the plaintiffs will not answer these questions with Sergeant Blasey. [00:16:09] Speaker 00: About nine minutes into this discussion that's going on, a neighbor yells down, this is his store. [00:16:19] Speaker 00: The police officer say, thank you very much and leave. [00:16:23] Speaker 00: That was the information they were looking for that the plaintiffs refused to give them. [00:16:29] Speaker 00: If the plaintiffs would have just answered Mathis's question when he first knocked on that door, hey, who are you? [00:16:36] Speaker 00: What are you doing in here? [00:16:37] Speaker 00: By saying, oh, hey, I'm the owner. [00:16:40] Speaker 00: We're just doing some inventory. [00:16:42] Speaker 00: Everything's good. [00:16:43] Speaker 00: This interaction would have been over in about 15 seconds. [00:16:48] Speaker 00: But that's not what happened. [00:16:49] Speaker 00: Officer Clark, as you point out, is the only officer that we are concerned with today. [00:16:54] Speaker 00: He works for Belvedere, not Tiburon. [00:16:56] Speaker 00: He arrived about the same time Sergeant Blasey did, so he comes in five minutes into this 10-minute interaction. [00:17:04] Speaker 00: When he comes in, he walks right past the door. [00:17:06] Speaker 00: He stands to the side. [00:17:08] Speaker 00: He says nothing to the plaintiffs. [00:17:10] Speaker 00: He never engages with the plaintiffs in any way. [00:17:13] Speaker 00: He is, as Your Honor says, just there from backup. [00:17:16] Speaker 00: And when the neighbor confirms that, yes, the plaintiff is the owner of the store, Officer Clark does what the other officers do and just leaves the scene. [00:17:26] Speaker 00: What plaintiffs are asking the court to do now, despite what that video objectively and clearly shows, [00:17:33] Speaker 00: is to disregard the video and accept the allegations, the conclusory allegations of the complaint, that this was all a setup, that this was all feigned, that these officers actually knew who the plaintiffs were and somehow orchestrated this interaction in advance of it happening to send this message to the plaintiffs that they should leave town because they're black. [00:18:03] Speaker 00: The problem with this is, number one, the allegations are just not factually supported by the complaint. [00:18:09] Speaker 00: There's no facts to support these. [00:18:10] Speaker 00: And number two, this conspiracy idea makes absolutely no sense in the context of what was happening and how this situation unfolded. [00:18:20] Speaker 00: I won't belabor the pleading standard. [00:18:22] Speaker 00: You know we're all familiar with Twombly, but that's the pleading standard that applies. [00:18:27] Speaker 00: And the court's job is to do two things, number one, [00:18:31] Speaker 00: eliminate the allegations that have no factual support because those are not entitled to an assumption of truth, and then once that's done, determine whether the remaining properly pled factual allegations can state a plausible claim for relief in the context of the claims that are asserted and in the context of common sense, which is really important here. [00:18:52] Speaker 00: A claim is not plausible if there is an alternative [00:18:57] Speaker 00: to liability and a turn of explanation for it, then the dismissal is proper. [00:19:01] Speaker 00: And that's what the judge did in this case. [00:19:04] Speaker 00: The off-camera allegations are what plaintiff is talking about. [00:19:08] Speaker 00: They offer three of them. [00:19:09] Speaker 00: The first is that Clark knew plaintiffs before this incident ever happened. [00:19:15] Speaker 00: The second is that Clark conspired. [00:19:17] Speaker 00: And the third is that he treated other non-black business owners differently. [00:19:22] Speaker 00: The first one that Clark knew plain was before the incident is, as we've heard, kind of the key foundational allegation that they assert. [00:19:30] Speaker 00: But as the court has pointed out, there is no factual support for it, and it cannot be assumed true. [00:19:36] Speaker 00: First of all, for context, the store opened in February of 2020. [00:19:44] Speaker 00: And the allegation of the complaint is that Clark began work with the police department in the same month, in February of 2020. [00:19:51] Speaker 00: In March 2020, COVID happened and shut down everything. [00:19:56] Speaker 00: So for most of this time between February of 2020 and August 2020, when this incident happened, everything was shut down. [00:20:06] Speaker 00: The stores were closed. [00:20:08] Speaker 00: So there was very little opportunity for Clark in the real world to have come in contact with these folks. [00:20:16] Speaker 00: But second, the allegation, this is more important, the allegations themselves in the complaint are insufficient. [00:20:22] Speaker 00: There is no allegation in the complaint that I can recall where plaintiffs alleged that they saw Clark before and knew Clark, that he was standing outside their door. [00:20:32] Speaker 00: That's not in the complaint. [00:20:33] Speaker 00: And there's no allegation that Clark had seen them before or knew them from before. [00:20:39] Speaker 00: They simply alleged that Clark, that the plaintiffs were well known to town officials, including Clark, but they don't say, [00:20:46] Speaker 00: They don't allege that Clark had ever met them, had ever spoken to them, had ever seen them, had ever come into the store. [00:20:54] Speaker 00: There's none of those factual allegations for support. [00:20:57] Speaker 00: They do allege that Clark had driven by or walked by many times, but we can't reasonably infer that because someone walks by a store or drives by a store, they know who the owners of that store are. [00:21:09] Speaker 00: I personally have walked by that store a hundred times. [00:21:11] Speaker 00: I never knew who owned that store until this case. [00:21:15] Speaker 00: They alleged that the plaintiffs were well known to the agencies because the Belvedere police and the Tiburon police had stopped the plaintiffs at some time. [00:21:25] Speaker 00: But they never alleged that Officer Clark ever stopped these folks. [00:21:29] Speaker 00: And Officer Clark would have known them through some kind of a stop, which they don't describe in the complaint. [00:21:37] Speaker 00: And third, I would say that this broader allegation that [00:21:44] Speaker 00: all the officers knew the plaintiffs is disputed by the video and the radio dispatch. [00:21:51] Speaker 00: The radio dispatch and the video were the exhibits that we sent over to the court separately. [00:21:56] Speaker 00: But on the video and the radio, just both, you can hear Officer Madfuss, when this first happens, you can see him walking toward the store and you can hear the video, him saying, [00:22:08] Speaker 00: three unidentified people are in the store. [00:22:13] Speaker 00: Then later in the video, about four minutes in, the plaintiff asks Officer Madfess, who are you? [00:22:21] Speaker 00: And he says, oh, my name is Isaac. [00:22:23] Speaker 00: Later, Officer Blasi says, he's never seen these plaintiffs in the store before. [00:22:28] Speaker 00: And as soon as the neighbor identifies them, they all leave. [00:22:32] Speaker 00: So the video evidence, which is not disputed for authenticity and is objective [00:22:38] Speaker 00: Dispels this notion that these officers knew these folks and that this was all a Masterful performance by them to feign that they didn't know them and they did this for some discriminatory purpose The conspiracy allegations of the seconds of these what they have called off-camera allegations That allegation also cannot be assumed true on the face of this pleading [00:23:04] Speaker 00: First of all, conspiracy requires some factual specificity to be sufficiently pled. [00:23:09] Speaker 00: And the allegation here is just that they conspired, that they met in advance, that they planned and prepared, and that Clark was part of this planning and preparation process, and that he participated in this conspiracy. [00:23:24] Speaker 00: But the only thing pled, as the court has pointed out, were the elements of the claim. [00:23:29] Speaker 00: And that's not enough under Twombly. [00:23:31] Speaker 00: But second, and as I'd mentioned at the beginning, and what has really kind of been the most interesting thing to me about this, is that the conspiracy notion doesn't make any sense. [00:23:43] Speaker 00: It is implausible on its face, because besides the fact that there's no factual allegations to support the argument that Clark knew these folks, [00:23:57] Speaker 00: Clark and the other officers would not have known that at 1 o'clock in the morning on this particular day, these folks would be in this store. [00:24:05] Speaker 00: So the allegations, they planned this whole thing in advance. [00:24:09] Speaker 00: But they would not have known that these folks were going to be in the store at 1 o'clock on this day. [00:24:15] Speaker 00: They would not have known that if the officers approached the store and knocked on the door, that the plaintiffs would refuse to converse with them and tell them [00:24:25] Speaker 00: who they are or why they were there. [00:24:27] Speaker 00: And that would set up the situation where they could intimidate them with this alleged prolonged detention. [00:24:36] Speaker 00: They just could not have planned in advance how to respond to something that they didn't know was ever going to happen. [00:24:44] Speaker 00: I mean, if you think about it, if this was a pre-incident agreement of some kind, [00:24:52] Speaker 00: What could it have been? [00:24:54] Speaker 00: I mean, the agreement would have had to be, if someday these plaintiffs that we know are in the store in the middle of the night, and if we all three happen to be on duty at that time, and if we all three happen to respond to the call at that time, then we're all going to pretend that we don't know these folks, and if those [00:25:18] Speaker 00: If the plaintiffs refuse to tell us who they are, then we're going to detain them and try to intimidate them because we don't want them in this town because they're black. [00:25:30] Speaker 00: That is nonsensical. [00:25:33] Speaker 00: It defies common sense, and it is implausible. [00:25:37] Speaker 02: Ms. [00:25:37] Speaker 02: Zabranski, you've talked about as soon as the guy across the street said, hey, it's their shop. [00:25:43] Speaker 02: They're the owners. [00:25:45] Speaker 02: They just packed up and left. [00:25:46] Speaker 02: But isn't it true that [00:25:47] Speaker 02: The Tiburon officer still wanted Mr. Kaleef to show that his key actually worked. [00:25:55] Speaker 02: And wasn't that maybe a step too far? [00:25:58] Speaker 00: Well, if that was, that was the Tiburon's officer's problem and not Officer Clark. [00:26:02] Speaker 00: I mean, Officer Clark was there just standing in the background doing nothing. [00:26:07] Speaker 02: But I just, you know, Mr. Kaleef may have a reason to suspect the worst here. [00:26:11] Speaker 02: Believe me, I've been a trial judge for 26 years in federal court, nine years in state court in Seattle. [00:26:19] Speaker 02: And I've seen a lot of things happen to African-American people from cops that you wouldn't [00:26:26] Speaker 02: So, I don't blame Mr. Kalief for having his guard up. [00:26:30] Speaker 02: I don't blame him for asking for a supervisor. [00:26:33] Speaker 02: And I don't blame him for not wanting to show that the key worked. [00:26:38] Speaker 02: But as you point out, Belvedere and the officer, there's not enough there to go forward. [00:26:43] Speaker 00: Right. [00:26:43] Speaker 00: There's not enough there to go forward. [00:26:46] Speaker 00: And to be, I mean, from the Tiburon officer point of view, I don't represent them. [00:26:51] Speaker 00: The officer that did ask him at the end to just put the key in the door was the young officer. [00:26:55] Speaker 00: When Sergeant Blasey heard that, he said, no, no, no, no. [00:26:58] Speaker 00: We just walk away. [00:26:59] Speaker 00: Next time, just walk away. [00:27:00] Speaker 00: So it was a learning moment for that particular officer. [00:27:05] Speaker 00: In terms of the allegations that Officer Clark treated non-black star owners differently, of course, there's no [00:27:18] Speaker 00: pleading in the complaint that there was any similarly situated people that they treated differently at any time. [00:27:24] Speaker 00: No allegation that there was another situation that was like that, that Clark was there and Clark decided to intervene and not let the investigating officers do their job. [00:27:33] Speaker 00: There's just none of it. [00:27:34] Speaker 00: This is the problem with the complaint on whole. [00:27:38] Speaker 00: When it comes to the gun, because your honor raised the point that there was [00:27:43] Speaker 00: an allegation that Officer Clark was intimidating or threatening or something because he put his hand on the gun. [00:27:50] Speaker 00: There's no, the video actually, the two officer's videos show from different angles Officer Clark through this interaction. [00:27:59] Speaker 00: The moment the allegation is that he put his hand on the gun, the video does not show that. [00:28:05] Speaker 00: There's no authority that's cited by the plaintiffs either that says if an officer is on scene and puts his hand on the gun or near the gun, [00:28:13] Speaker 00: that that somehow creates a detention where none exists. [00:28:18] Speaker 00: But they do allege in the complaint that at the moment when plaintiff was going to reach for the keys to put the key in the door, at that moment of this interaction, the plaintiffs allege that they perceived that Officer Clark was starting to remove the gun from the holster. [00:28:40] Speaker 00: We happen to have on the video [00:28:43] Speaker 00: tape of those moments when that was happening, when he was about to reach for the keys. [00:28:49] Speaker 00: And you can see Officer Clark clearly standing with his elbow kind of resting on the gun, his hand completely dangling in front of his body, and he is in a very relaxed position. [00:29:02] Speaker 00: So there's no indication on this video that Officer Clark was doing what the allegation is. [00:29:10] Speaker 00: And in that situation, [00:29:12] Speaker 00: the court is entitled to look at the video for an objective statement of what the actual facts were, even if it's pled differently in the complaint. [00:29:24] Speaker 00: I'm out of time, but if the court has any questions, I'm happy to answer them. [00:29:29] Speaker 03: Thank you. [00:29:29] Speaker 00: Thank you. [00:29:30] Speaker 03: Thank you, Ms. [00:29:30] Speaker 03: Zabronski. [00:29:33] Speaker 03: Mr. Pruitt, rebuttal. [00:29:39] Speaker 01: Thank you. [00:29:40] Speaker 01: Quickly. [00:29:42] Speaker 01: The kind of sarcastic tone about the idea that it's impossible for three people to, in the moment, decide that they are going to confront people. [00:29:56] Speaker 01: That's pure speculation. [00:29:58] Speaker 01: And again, we believe that we have affirmatively alleged an awareness of who these people are, that they were systematically being treated unfairly in this town. [00:30:12] Speaker 01: And that when, yes, when the opportunity came up to get in their face, [00:30:17] Speaker 01: these people took the opportunity. [00:30:20] Speaker 01: How they arranged that is another story that we don't know all the details of. [00:30:25] Speaker 01: And yeah, it's not recorded on video, but the facts alleged are that these police officers knew who these people were. [00:30:32] Speaker 01: And if the facts were perceived as somehow not quite sufficient on that, it seems that the complaint was close enough [00:30:40] Speaker 01: by alleging that these people knew who the police were, that the police knew who they were. [00:30:46] Speaker 01: And this idea that the video just resolves all things, that this is somehow turned into a summary judgment, that's not right either. [00:30:53] Speaker 01: The fact that judicial notice was taken of the video doesn't mean that all of the other factual allegations about what people perceive during a circumstance or what they knew before or after the circumstance are to be ignored. [00:31:06] Speaker 01: That's just not the law. [00:31:08] Speaker 01: And that was cited in our brief. [00:31:11] Speaker 01: I forget the Kaji case. [00:31:12] Speaker 01: I think it was something along those lines that talked about the danger of what just happened in this courtroom. [00:31:20] Speaker 01: Presenting the video as though there's no reason for us to ever send a case like this to trial. [00:31:26] Speaker 01: All we got to do is look at the video. [00:31:28] Speaker 01: It doesn't matter whether or not these police officers did know these people and did want to find an opportunity to intimidate them to try to send them a message. [00:31:38] Speaker 01: So I appreciate the opportunity to argue. [00:31:43] Speaker 03: Thank you, Mr. Pruitt. [00:31:44] Speaker 03: Thank you, Mr. Sipronsky. [00:31:46] Speaker 03: This matter is submitted.