Deputies violated the rights of barbers at Strictly Skillz barbershop during a 2010 raid in the guise of a license inspection, a federal appeal court said this week, in a strongly-worded rebuke of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
“It was a scene right out of a Hollywood movie,” the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said in an opinion issued Tuesday, which puts the Pine Hills barbers’ lawsuit against the Orange County Sheriff’s Office back on track for trial.
“Unlike previous inspections of Strictly Skillz… the August 21 [2010] search was executed with a tremendous and disproportionate show of force, and no evidence exists that such force was justified,” the appellate opinion stated.
Capt. Angelo Nieves, a spokesman for Sheriff Jerry Demings, responded Wednesday with a brief statement: “We will allow the judicial process to proceed and work through the system, until it is resolved.”
The lawsuit stems from sweeps of several minority-owned barber shops and salons in 2010. Deputies partnered with the state’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation for what officials described as inspections.
Officials with both agencies said they targeted shops where inspectors had found resistance or witnessed crimes in the past. Deputies found little illegal activity, but jailed dozens on a “barbering without an active license” charge rarely used for arrests.
After an Orlando Sentinel investigation exposed the operations, both agencies launched reviews. The DBPR fired several employees and has since settled with the barbers. The Sheriff’s Office found no wrongdoing by deputies.
No illegal or unlicensed activity was found at Strictly Skillz, a small barbershop on Pine Hills Road.
Barbers there described masked deputies in bulletproof vests detaining barbers and clearing out customers, including children, on a busy back-to-school weekend.
Tuesday’s ruling came in response to an appeal by two deputies involved in the sweeps, who argued that as law-enforcement officers performing their duties they should be immune from civil action.
A three-judge panel for the appeal court rejected that argument Tuesday, with one judge dissenting.
An inspection, the majority found, “must be ‘appropriately limited’… and may not serve as a backdoor for undertaking a warrantless search unsupported by probable cause.”
Natalie Jackson, an attorney for the barbers, said Wednesday she was pleased by the ruling’s “very strong language” and hopeful that the case will go to trial soon: “We were ready for trial when they appealed it, there was nothing else to do.”
The court’s opinion noted that a DBPR inspector confirmed the Strictly Skillz barbers had licenses days before the sweep.
The subsequent multi-agency raid “was unconstitutional from the moment that OCSO burst into Strictly Skillz in raid mode for the ostensible purpose of helping DBPR review… barbers’ licenses that it had just inspected two days earlier,” the court said.
The opinion’s author, U.S. Circuit Judge Robin Rosenbaum, wrote that one of the two “strikingly similar” cases the 11th Circuit relied on for precedent involved a 2001 raid at an auto-body shop — also by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
In that case, 100 vehicles were seized from A+ Auto Body. The store’s owner sued, alleging his civil rights were violated, and the appeal court rejected deputies’ arguments for immunity. The Sheriff’s Office later prevailed in a jury trial.
In the Strictly Skillz opinion, Rosenbaum noted the 11th Circuit has ruled twice already that conducting “a run-of-the-mill administrative inspection as though it is a criminal raid” is unconstitutional: “We hope that the third time will be the charm,” she wrote.
jeweiner@tribune.com or 407-420-5171
