Mercurius v. Rolon

SHINN, P. J. The action is for damages for false imprisonment and alleged assault and battery. At the close of the evidence in a jury trial the court granted a motion for nonsuit upon the cause of action for false imprisonment. The cause of action for assault and battery was submitted to the jury, which failed to agree. The appeal is from the judgment of nonsuit.

Plaintiff was taken into custody by defendant police officers, Rolon and Logan, as a burglary-rape suspect and was detained about 30 minutes at a police station. He was not booked, fingerprinted or photographed, nor was any permanent record made of his detention.

The question on appeal is whether, as a matter of law, defendants had probable cause for the arrest. This depends upon whether probable cause was shown by evidence which was not in substantial conflict. (White v. Martin, 215 Cal.App.2d 641 [30 Cal.Rptr. 367].) There was evidence of the following facts: The defendants were police officers of the City of Los Angeles on the occasion in question, assigned to University Division of the Los Angeles Police Department and were on special assignment as such police officers to apprehend a burglary-rape suspect.

As a standard procedure for several months prior to plaintiff’s apprehension the defendants had attended regular roll-call sessions where they received information as to crimes committed within the City of Los Angeles. Also as a standard procedure there was a pin map depicting the various crimes and their locations within the area covered by defendants’ division of the Los Angeles Police Department. Attached to the pin map were the crime reports relating the crimes depicted on the pin map. Each of these defendants attended the rollcall training, read the crime reports and familiarized him[361]self with the crimes and their location. For a period of several months prior to November 29, 1959 (the date of plaintiff’s arrest), the defendants had information and knowledge that many burglaries and rapes had occurred within a very small area of their division, specifically within a 5-block circle of Ellendale where plaintiff was apprehended. The defendants were informed that the burglary-rape suspect would go out and look over the houses to select his victims, and that most of the burglaries and rapes occurred in the early morning hours, shortly before dawn. In September of 1959 a rape-type murder was committed within 2 or 3 blocks from where plaintiff was apprehended, which defendant Rolon believed might have been committed by this burglary-rape suspect. The general description of the burglary-rape suspect was that he was a male Negro, with short hair, about 6 feet tall, weighing between 165 and 210 pounds, very muscular and strong, with large hands, and anywhere from the middle twenties up to the thirties in age. There was a clipboard at the University Station where these defendants worked which contained just the crime reports attributed to this burglary-rape suspect and the problem of apprehending this burglary-rape suspect was so acute the Los Angeles Police Department Metropolitan Squad was brought into the area to help catch this burglary-rape suspect.