Devonte Abbas v. City of Hobart, Indiana

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Argued September 30, 2025
Decided October 17, 2025
Before
MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge
AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge
NANCY L. MALDONADO, Circuit Judge
No. 24-2464
DEVONTE ABBAS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
CITY OF HOBART, INDIANA,
Defendant-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Northern District of
Indiana, Hammond Division.
No. 2:21-cv-00150-GSL-APR
Gretchen S. Lund,
Judge.
O R D E R
Devonte Abbas sued the City of Hobart under Monell v. Department of Social Services,
436 U.S. 658 (1978), for violating his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights after
police officers pulled him over and searched him. He now appeals the district court’s
entry of summary judgment for the City. Because Abbas provided insufficient evidence
for a jury to find that the City’s failure to train its officers caused a constitutional violation,
we affirm.
I
As the party opposing summary judgment, Abbas receives the benefit of conflicts in
the evidence and we draw all reasonable inferences in his favor. See Tapley v. Chambers,
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

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No. 24-2464 Page 2
840 F.3d 370, 376 (7th Cir. 2016). Abbas, who is black, was driving to his mother’s house
in Hobart when Officer Brandon Kissee pulled him over. Officer Kissee asked Abbas for
his driver’s license and registration. When Abbas instead searched his pocket for his
insurance card and asked what prompted the stop, Officer Kissee ordered Abbas to step
out of his car. Officer Kissee then shined his flashlight on the floor of the driver’s seat of
Abbas’s car, stating he saw “specks” of marijuana. Abbas denied that there was
marijuana in his car.
About five minutes later, Officer Kevin Garber arrived with a drug-detection dog to
sniff Abbas’s car. The dog alerted near the driver’s side door, so the officers searched
Abbas’s car and person, but found nothing. The officers did not arrest Abbas or issue a
ticket. Officer Kissee stated in his incident report that he pulled Abbas over for violating
Indiana’s turn-signal law, while Abbas swore in his affidavit that he followed all traffic
laws before being stopped.
Invoking 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Abbas sued the City of Hobart under a Monell theory of
liability for violating his constitutional rights. He alleged that the City failed to train its
officers to avoid racial profiling and implicit bias when initiating and carrying out traffic
stops. The district court entered summary judgment for the City. First, the court
concluded that the officers did not violate Abbas’s Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment
rights during the stop and search. Second, it reasoned that without an underlying
constitutional violation, the City could not be liable under Monell, and in any event,
Abbas failed to present evidence from which a jury could conclude that the City’s failure
to train its officers caused any constitutional violation.
II
On appeal Abbas contends that the district court overlooked material factual disputes
in its Fourth Amendment analysis of the traffic stop and committed further error by
concluding that he presented insufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find that the
stop was racially motivated in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment. But even assuming there was an underlying constitutional violation – a
point we need not and do not resolve – Abbas’s Monell claim fails.
To hold the City liable for an officer’s violation of his rights under the Constitution,
Abbas needed to present some evidence from which a reasonable jury could conclude
that a City policy or custom caused the violation. See City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378,
388 (1989). Only if “a municipality’s failure to train its employees in a relevant respect
evidences ‘deliberate indifference’ to the rights of its inhabitants can such a shortcoming
be properly thought of as a city ‘policy or custom’ that is actionable under § 1983.” Id. at
389. A municipality is liable under a failure-to-train theory “if it has actual knowledge of

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No. 24-2464 Page 3
a pattern of criminally reckless conduct and there is an obvious need to provide training
to avert harm.” Flores v. City of South Bend, 997 F.3d 725, 733 (7th Cir. 2021). A
municipality also may be liable if the need for training is “so obvious” and the risk of
constitutional injury “so likely” that it amounts to a de facto practice or custom. City of
Canton, 489 U.S. at 390.
Abbas contends that the district court incorrectly concluded that evidence related to
an earlier traffic stop involving Abbas and other Hobart police officers was insufficient
to establish a pattern or practice. During that stop, which by Abbas’s account occurred
four months before the traffic stop here, officers accused Abbas of failing to use his turn
signal properly, removed him from his car, and violently beat him. To succeed on the
theory that the City had an established pattern or practice of carrying out unlawful traffic
stops against black drivers, Abbas needed to present some evidence from which a
reasonable jury could conclude “that the practice is widespread and that the specific
violations complained of were not isolated incidents.” Thomas v. Neenah Joint Sch. Dist.,
74 F.4th 521, 524 (7th Cir. 2023) (quoting Gill v. City of Milwaukee, 850 F.3d 335, 344
(7th Cir. 2017)).
Abbas did not do so. Our review shows that the district court correctly concluded that
this one prior incident is not sufficient for a reasonable jury to determine that the City
had knowledge of a pattern of unlawful stops based on race by its officers. See City of
Oklahoma City v. Tuttle, 471 U.S. 808, 823–24 (1985) (holding that proof of a single incident
of excessive force alone is insufficient to show inadequate training); Flores, 997 F.3d at 733
(stating that in all but the rarest of occasions, a “few sporadic examples of an improper
behavior” cannot support a finding of a policy).
Even absent a widespread pattern, Abbas argues that the City can still be liable
because the training it provided was deficient, and the need for training was obvious.
See Connick v. Thompson, 563 U.S. 51, 63 (2011). Abbas points to City of Canton, where the
Supreme Court suggested that a municipality might be liable under Monell for failing to
train armed officers who will regularly encounter fleeing felons “in the constitutional
limitations on the use of deadly force.” 489 U.S. at 390, n.10. Abbas also cites J.K.J. v. Polk
County, 960 F.3d 367 (7th Cir. 2020), where we concluded that the plaintiffs had presented
sufficient evidence at trial, including testimony from an expert on jail operations, to
support the jury’s verdict against Polk County for failing to train jail staff in the face of
an obvious risk of sexual assault to incarcerated women. Abbas asserts that, because the
City knew its officers would encounter people of different races, the need to train them
on racial profiling and implicit bias was obvious. If the City had provided that training,
Abbas maintains, his constitutional injury could have been avoided.

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No. 24-2464 Page 4
But Abbas has not presented any evidence from which a jury could conclude that the
City’s current training program is deficient. Officer Kissee testified that he received “basic
recruit police training,” regular continuing education training, and field training.
Through those trainings, Officer Kissee added, he developed an understanding of police
practice generally, and Indiana traffic laws, specifically. Abbas presents no evidence,
beyond his own speculation, that these trainings were deficient under the Constitution.
The lack of specialized training does not necessarily equate to constitutionally deficient
training. See Palmquist v. Selvik, 111 F.3d 1332, 1345 (7th Cir. 1997) (“We cannot accept
that [no specialized training is necessarily deficient training]” because “[t]o do so would
ignore the training the officers did receive.”). Whether training on avoiding racial
profiling and implicit bias in traffic stops would be prudent in light of Hobart’s
increasingly-diverse population, and now with this lawsuit as notice of one black
motorist’s claims of driving in Hobart, is a policy choice for the City.
Further, Abbas’s assertion that more or better training could have avoided the injury
here is not sufficient to establish municipal liability. See City of Canton, 489 U.S. at 391
(“Neither will it suffice to prove that an injury or accident could have been avoided if an
officer had had better or more training, sufficient to equip him to avoid the particular
injury-causing conduct.”); Lapre v. City of Chicago, 911 F.3d 424, 437 (7th Cir. 2018)
(quoting City of Canton).
Abbas also presented no evidence that the lack of the specific kind of training he
suggests caused his injury. “[F]or liability to attach … the identified deficiency in the
city’s training program must be closely related to the ultimate injury.” City of Canton, 489
U.S. at 391. Abbas speculates that specialized training on racial profiling and implicit bias
would prevent unlawful traffic stops and searches targeting black drivers. But he
presents no evidence, whether in terms of statistics, expert testimony, or otherwise, that
these kinds of training would have this effect. Abbas cannot rely on speculation to create
a genuine dispute about whether the specific deficiency in training he identifies resulted
in a constitutional violation.
For these reasons, we AFFIRM.

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