Messenger: Woman wins case over St. Louis County cop's search of home. 'I was terrified.'
ST. LOUIS — The tears flowed down Shawn Perry's face as U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp's clerk read the verdict in a civil rights lawsuit against St. Louis County and one of its former police officers, Robert Rinck.
Seven years ago , Rinck, who ran the county's problem properties unit, threatened to take Perry's children away if she didn't let the officer and other county officials into her Hanley Hills home. Rinck didn't have a warrant, but the threat did the trick.
Jurors on Wednesday found in Perry's favor, saying that her Fourth Amendment rights to protection from improper search and seizure had been violated.
They awarded her $1.
Still, these were happy tears. Perry's attorney, Mark Pedroli, had only asked for $1 for the improper search.
"She's here for the vindication," Pedroli told the jury of four men and four women on Wednesday morning during his closing arguments. "One dollar will make her happy; $1 will make her vindicated."
What Pedroli wasn't allowed to tell the jury was that the judge had divided the trial into two parts. Pedroli was allowed to present his most damaging evidence against Rinck — the officer's history of coercive behavior in kicking people out of their homes, with the county's knowledge — only after first proving that Perry's rights were violated.
Perry made that part of the case in her testimony. She told jurors that when Rinck came to the house she shared with her partner, Brian Shigemura, and their two children, the officer used the threat of arrest to force his way inside. He was allegedly at the home because of derelict cars in the front yard.
"Rinck said, 'We can do this the easy way or the hard way,'" Perry testified. "He told me that, 'If I have to get a warrant, you'll never see your kids again.' ... I was terrified."
After Perry let Rinck in, as well as other housing inspectors and officers, Rinck called the Division of Family Services. Her children were taken away for 40 days. Perry was arrested on child endangerment allegations but charges were never filed by a prosecutor.
During the trial, the county's defense of Rinck focused on the home's condition, with cluttered rooms, leaking pipes, mold and an "unlivable" condition.
"I don't think there's any question that nobody should have been living there," Willie McGarry, an attorney with the St. Louis County Counselor's office, told the jury.
But the family, which had the gas turned off because they couldn't pay the bills, mostly wasn't living there, Perry said. They stayed with friends and family, or the occasional hotel.
The case is at least the second high-profile case involving Rinck to make it to a jury in federal court. In 2019, St. Louis County settled with Angela Zorich for $750,000 in a case in which Rinck ordered the department's tactical unit to break into a south St. Louis County home because the gas had been shut off. During the raid, the family dog was killed.
Rinck no longer works for St. Louis County. He's now a code enforcement officer in the city of Fenton.
After the verdict was issued in the first part of the Perry trial, Pedroli was able to tell the jury what they didn't know about Rinck and his time with St. Louis County.
"Now you get to hear the rest of the story," Pedroli said, echoing radio broadcaster Paul Harvey's famous line.
Rinck would regularly get marching orders from former St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger or somebody from Stenger's office on the ninth floor, Pedroli said. Rinck used his power to get certain "people out of the neighborhood," in Hanley Hills and elsewhere. The tactic of threatening to arrest someone or take their children away to get into a home was well known among police and called "getting Rincked."
"They knew exactly what was going on here for years," Pedroli said.
In the second phase of the trial, Pedroli called two former supervisors of Rinck, Capt. Guy Means and Lt. Charlie Rodriguez. They both testified they had problems with Rinck's methods, but he was never disciplined.
In fact, after the two higher-ranking officers met with Rinck to raise questions about the raid on Perry's house, Rinck filed a complaint against them, suggesting his supervisors "belittled" him in a meeting. The complaint was not sustained.
For the allegation that St. Louis County had a "pattern and practice" of failing to supervise Rinck, Perry was seeking punitive damages that were only made possible by the initial $1 verdict.
The trial was scheduled to continue Thursday morning with Rinck's former partner, Mike Cross, ready to testify that Rinck's actions in the Perry incident were commonplace. He had signed an affidavit that said Rinck regularly abused his power.
"Everyone knew that Officer Rinck was in fact running Public Works Problem Properties, making all the key decisions, conducting the housing inspections without any training, making decisions independently, and he would try to coerce me into supporting and signing off on his decisions, including about Orders to Vacate, even though very often I didn't agree," Cross wrote.
He never made it to the witness stand. At 10 a.m. Thursday, Judge Schelp announced the two sides had reached a settlement, ending the trial. The county agreed to pay Perry $1.25 million, Pedroli said outside court.
"My client worked seven years to bring her case to light," he said. "She fought an uphill battle every step of the way."
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