Gayle Taylor v. City of Philadelphia

NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
No. 04-3022
GAYLE TAYLOR,
Appellant
v.
CITY OF PHILADELPHIA; MICHAEL CHITWOOD, LT., BADGE 823;
GREGORY SINGLETON, BADGE 8046; JOHN RANKIN, III, BADGE 9019;
SYLVESTER JOHNSON
On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
(D.C. No. 03-CV-03068)
District Judge: Honorable James T. Giles
Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)
July 14, 2005
Before: ALITO, VAN ANTWERPEN and ALDISERT, Circuit Judges.
(Filed: July 28, 2005)
_____
OPINION OF THE COURT
VAN ANTWERPEN, Circuit Judge.
Appellant Gayle Taylor appeals from the District Court’s May 26, 2004 order granting
summary judgment in favor of the City of Philadelphia, Commissioner Sylvester Johnson,

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Specifically, we have jurisdiction to review the District Court’s decision because its1
June 24, 2004 order denying Appellant’s subsequent motion for reconsideration
constituted a final order ending the litigation. See 28 U.S.C. § 1291; Jones v. Keene
Corp., 933 F.2d 209, 211 (3d Cir. 1991) (order that ends the litigation is a final order).
2
Detective John Rankin, and Detective Gregory Singleton (“Appellees”). Taylor sued
Appellees under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and state law seeking damages and injunctive relief
arising from her arrest in 2002 and subsequent termination from the Philadelphia Police
Department. The District Court had jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331. We have
jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and will affirm.1
I.
The City of Philadelphia employed Appellant as a dispatcher from 1989 until February
24, 2002, when she was dismissed for conduct unbecoming an employee pursuant to Section
1.75 of the Police Department’s Disciplinary Code. As the District Court noted, the
underlying conduct giving rise to Appellant’s dismissal is not materially disputed. It is as
follows.
Ms. Taylor’s son, Jahil Davis, was arrested on January 24, 2002 for robbery. He
thwarted a search of his residence by instructing his girlfriend to give certain items to
Appellant. Appellant thereupon accepted, inter alia, a white plastic bag. Shortly thereafter,
Appellant declined to give police consent to search her home in connection with the robbery.
She then put the white bag in a pocket of her clothing and kept it on her person that day as
she attempted to obtain a lawyer by visiting, in person, the offices of her State
Representative, a local lawyer, her union, the Pennsylvania Bar Association, Community

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Legal Services, the Defender’s Association, and the District Attorney. Unsuccessful, she
ultimately gave up, went to the 18th Police District, and turned the bag over to police. The
record shows that Ms. Taylor knew there was a gun in the bag because she had felt it through
the bag. The record also shows that Ms. Taylor told police that the bag constituted
“discovery” that she wanted to turn in to police. When police opened the bag, they found a
loaded semi-automatic and nineteen packets of what appeared to be crack cocaine. Ms.
Taylor was then arrested and charged with tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice,
hindering apprehension, aiding consummation of a crime, violating the Uniform Firearm Act
by carrying a gun without a license, violating the Uniform Firearm Act by carrying a gun in
a public street or place, and possession of a controlled substance with knowledge and intent.
On January 28, 2002, Commissioner Sylvester Johnson suspended Appellant from her
position for 30 days with notice of intent to dismiss. On February 24, 2002, Commissioner
Johnson terminated Ms. Taylor for conduct unbecoming an employee pursuant to Section
1.75 of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Disciplinary Code. Ms. Taylor unsuccessfully
appealed to the Civil Service Commission of the City of Philadelphia. She elected not to
appeal that ruling to the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. Separately, on April 8, 2002,
the Court of Common Pleas dismissed in its entirely the criminal case against Ms. Taylor,
finding insufficient evidence to support the charges. Ms. Taylor then filed this suit in the
Court of Common Pleas on May 2, 2003; Appellees removed to the United States District
Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania; and the District Court subsequently granted

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the motion for summary judgment. This appeal followed.
III.
Our review of a district court's decision to grant summary judgment is de novo.
Marino v. Indus. Crating Co., 358 F.3d 241, 247 (3d Cir. 2004); Blair v. Scott Speciality
Gases, 283 F.3d 595, 602-03 (3d Cir. 2002). Viewing the evidence in the light most
favorable to the nonmoving party, we will affirm a district court’s order granting summary
judgment where no genuine issue as to any material fact exists. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c).
Appellant raises two arguments on appeal: first, that the policy under which she was
dismissed is unconstitutionally vague, and second, that probable cause to arrest her did not
exist as a matter of law. As to Appellant’s first argument, a regulation governing conduct
is “unconstitutionally vague when it ‘either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms
so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess as to its meaning and differ
as to its application.’” Rode v. Dellarciprete, 845 F.2d 1195, 1199 (3d Cir. 1988) (quoting
Connally v. Gen. Const. Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391 (1926)). However, if the challenged
regulation clearly applies to the challenger’s conduct, he or she cannot challenge the
regulation for facial vagueness. See Gibson v. Mayor and Council of the City of Wilmington,
355 F.3d 215, 225 (3d Cir. 2004) (citing Parker v. Levy, 417 U.S. 733, 755-56 (1974)).
Furthermore, a vagueness challenge requires a plaintiff to show that he himself was injured
by the vague language of the regulation. Gibson, 355 F.3d at 225-26; Rode, 845 F.2d at
1200.

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Here, Appellant’s vagueness argument turns on her contention that Police Department
Disciplinary Code Section 1.75 does not apply to her because she was a civilian employee
of the Police Department, not a police officer. While Article I of the Disciplinary Code is
entitled “Conduct Unbecoming an Officer,” Section 1.75 of Article I states:
Conduct Unbecoming an Employee, Section 1.75: Repeated
violations of Departmental rules and regulations, and/or other
course of conduct indicating that a member has little or no
regard for his/her responsibility as a member of the Police
Department.
Article I, Section 1.75 (emphasis added). In contending that Article I on its face applies only
to police officers, Appellant argues that she was deprived of fair notice that she would be
subject to Section 1.75's proscriptions. She also argues that Section 1.75 is also
impermissibly vague because it does not clearly state that it applies to conduct outside of
work.
The record at summary judgment revealed the following undisputed material facts.
At Appellant’s hearing before the Civil Service Commission, the head of Human Relations
at the Philadelphia Police Department testified that the Disciplinary Code governs all Police
Department employees; that for several years the Department had provided a hard copy of
the Code to all new employees; that oral notice to employees was also provided; and that the
union representing civilian employees of the Police Department had never challenged
application of any Code provision to a union member. In addition to this testimony,
Appellees proffered unrebutted evidence showing that since 2000, fifteen Police Department

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civilian employees, inclusive of Ms. Taylor, had been dismissed pursuant to Section 1.75.
On this evidence, the Commission found that no statutory authority or case law
supported Appellant’s claim that Section 1.75 applied only to police officers; that Appellant
was aware of the Code’s general applicability to her; and that it applied to everyday conduct
by civilian employees both in and out of the workplace. Appellant did not appeal these
findings of fact, rendering them conclusive and binding upon her in the District Court, which
separately found that, as a civilian employee of the Police Department, Appellant had
sufficient notice of the Code to know that she could be disciplined for inappropriate conduct
outside of work. We agree with the District Court that summary judgment in favor of
Appellees was therefore appropriate on this record, where Appellant’s employment placed
her within the scope of Section 1.75 and where her conduct on the day in question easily falls
within the substantive purview of that regulation. The undisputed material facts show that
Appellant lacked standing to challenge Section 1.75 on vagueness grounds, see Rode, 845
F.3d at 1199-1200, and that she was not injured by the purported vague language of the
regulation. See Gibson, 355 F.3d at 225-26. Rather, she was injured by her own decisions
and actions that day. See id.
As to Appellant’s second argument, she contends that the District Court erred in ruling
that there was no disputed material fact as to whether police had probable cause to arrest her.
“Probable cause exists whenever reasonably trustworthy information or circumstances within
a police officer’s knowledge are sufficient to warrant a person of reasonable caution to

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conclude that an offense has been committed by the person being arrested.” United States
v. Myers, 308 F.3d 251, 255 (3d Cir. 2002) (citing Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91 (1964)); see
also Sharrar v. Felsing, 128 F.3d 810, 818 (3d Cir. 1997). The validity of the arrest is
determined by the law of the state where the arrest occurred. Myers, 308 F.3d at 255. An
arrest violates the Fourth Amendment when it is not supported by probable cause. Orsatti
v. New Jersey State Police, 71 F.3d 480, 484 (3d Cir. 1995). The analysis must be based
upon “the objective facts available to the officers at the time of the arrest.” Sharrar, 128
F.3d at 818. We must look at the “totality of the circumstances,” id. at 818 (citing Illinois
v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 230-31 (1983)), and use a “common sense” approach. Id.
Accordingly, in evaluating a given case, we may not consider each fact in isolation. United
States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266 (2002).
“Although, generally, ‘the question of probable cause in a Section 1983 damage suit
is one for the jury,’ Montgomery v. De Simone, 159 F.3d 120, 124 (3d Cir. 1998), a district
court may conclude ‘that probable cause did exist as a matter of law if the evidence, viewed
most favorably to Plaintiff, reasonably would not support a contrary factual finding,’ and may
enter summary judgment accordingly.” Estate of Smith v. Marasco, 318 F.3d 497, 514 (3d
Cir. 2003) (quoting Sherwood v. Mulvihill, 113 F.3d 396, 401 (3d Cir. 1997)). That is the
case here, as the District Court correctly held.
At the time of Appellant’s arrest, detectives knew that she had just entered a police
station with a bag that she herself had identified to them as “discovery” that needed to be

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turned over to police. They also knew that her son was implicated in an ongoing robbery
investigation; that her son’s residence had been searched earlier that day; that Appellant’s
own residence had also been searched earlier that day; and that Appellant refused to explain
how she came into possession of the bag she was now giving to police. While it was of
course within Appellant’s rights to so refuse, this fact was nonetheless another objectively
known fact in the totality of circumstances that afternoon, as was the officers’ discovery, in
Appellant’s presence, that the bag contained a loaded semi-automatic gun and nineteen small
packets of what appeared to be crack cocaine. All of these facts were known by officers
prior to Appellant’s arrest.
Appellant does not proffer evidence raising questions of material fact or credibility
with regard to this account, arguing only that the arresting detectives may have had improper
motives and that they had little, if any, knowledge at the time they arrested her. As to her
first contention, improper motives are irrelevant to the question of whether objective facts
available to the detectives at the time reasonably could have led them to conclude Appellant
had committed an offense. See Marasco, 318 F.3d at 514 (citing Whren v. United States, 517
U.S. 806, 813 (1996)) (“Subjective intentions play no role in ordinary, probable-cause Fourth
Amendment analysis.”). As to her second contention, the record evidence, summarized
above, contradicts her position. Moreover, it is clear that the arresting officers knew these
facts prior to arrest. For example, the record shows that Detective Rankin had been briefed
by Detective Casee, who had worked the case during the day and who had searched

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Appellant’s residence; he had also been briefed by Lieutenant Chitwood, who first spoke
with Appellant when she arrived at the 18th District; and the arresting officers had obtained
their objective knowledge from Appellant herself, prior to her arrest. For example, as
Appellant herself testified at her deposition, the detectives and the lieutenant had removed
the gun from the bag prior to her arrest and unloaded it, all in her presence. Such
circumstances easily distinguish Appellant’s situation from cases where probable cause is
lacking. See, e.g., Myers, 308 F.3d at 264 (finding no probable cause where arresting officer
lacked knowledge until after arrest and still never knew if gun had remained legally
possessed at all times).
Under these undisputed material facts, we are satisfied that no rational jury could find
that the officers here were objectively unreasonable in concluding that, based on the
information available to them at the time, they had probable cause to believe that Appellant
had committed one or more of the offenses for which she was arrested. We have considered
the remaining arguments advanced by the parties and conclude that no further discussion is
necessary. Accordingly, the May 26, 2004 order is affirmed.

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