CA8: QI denied for entering the wrong house at 3 am looking for taxi fare skipper

Police looking for a taxicab fare skipper at 3 am found a door to a garage ajar and entered plaintiffs’ home with guns drawn. They encountered plaintiffs outside their bedroom but never found the fare skipper. Plaintiffs sued. The court gives the officers the benefit of the doubt for entry on to the curtilage and the open door to the garage, but not being inside the house no longer even in hot pursuit, if it ever was. Luer v. Clinton, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 4265 (8th Cir. Feb. 16, 2021). This is a remarkable case.

That brings us to the most consequential actions at issue: the officers’ entry into and extensive search of the Luer-Steinebach home, ending with a frightening confrontation with the awakened family. The officers found no one in the attached garage but observed that the door from the garage into the kitchen of the home was ajar. They knocked, announced police, entered the kitchen with guns drawn, and made “loud verbal commands” that anyone in the house “make themselves known.” Up to this point, we conclude that the officers are entitled to qualified immunity under the community caretaker exception because an open door into a home late at night, when no one had responded to their repeated knocking at the outside doors, arguably warranted a limited protective entry. However, even if their intrusions to this point were justified, we must assess whether they sufficiently tailored their subsequent activity to this limited purpose. See Smith, 820 F.3d at 362; United States v. Goldenstein, 456 F.2d 1006, 1010 (8th Cir. 1972).

No one responded to the officers’ repeated announcing at the kitchen door threshold. From there, they saw a light emanating from an open door to the basement. They descended to the basement, found no signs of disturbance, returned to the main level, and continued searching the entire home until encountering Luer outside his bedroom. We conclude the community caretaker exception cannot justify this severe, warrantless intrusion into a home. In searching two yards, underneath a deck, behind an air conditioning vent, and in the Luer-Steinebach attached garage, Officer Clinton observed no sign of the intoxicated fare-skipper. The officers had no information the suspect was armed or otherwise dangerous. They got no response from inside the Luer-Steinebach home and saw no signs of criminal activity. The cab driver reported that a petty thief had run, not that a burglar was on the prowl in a residential neighborhood. Reasonable police officers acting as community caretakers should have left the home.

Whether the community caretaker exception extends to entries into the home is not a resolved Fourth Amendment question, as the recent grant of certiorari in the First Circuit’s Caniglia decision demonstrates. The First Circuit recognized that the need to limit the extent of this exception “is especially pronounced in cases involving warrantless entries into the home. … [P]olice officers must have ‘solid, noninvestigatory reasons’ for engaging in community caretaking activities.” Caniglia, 953 F.3d at 126 (quotation omitted).

The other “exigent circumstance” exceptions to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement do not apply in these circumstances. The officers were not in “hot pursuit” of the intoxicated fare-skipper, and they had no information suggesting that he was armed and dangerous. The officers argue that, because of the open doors, they had a “reasonable belief that the occupants of the [home] may be under a threat to their safety.” Of course, there may be a threat to safety in almost any situation. However, it is clearly established that “[s]omething more than a speculative hunch is needed for police to conduct a protective sweep.” United States v. Anderson, 688 F.3d 339, 346 (8th Cir. 2012), cert. denied, 568 U.S. 1182, 133 S. Ct. 1293, 185 L. Ed. 2d 223 (2013). Nor did the officers have information suggesting that anyone in the home was in need of emergency assistance. Had they confronted a person dressed as the cab driver described the fare-skipper in a place where the officers were entitled to be, they may well have had reasonable suspicion to stop and question the person and perhaps take him a short distance to see if the cab driver would identify him as the fare-skipper. But they were not entitled to enter and conduct an extensive search of the Luer-Steinebach home for this purpose without a warrant or consent. “[A]pplication of the exigent-circumstances exception in the context of a home entry should rarely be sanctioned when there is probable cause to believe that only a minor offense . . . has been committed.” Welsh, 466 U.S. at 753.