AELE LAW LIBRARY OF CASE SUMMARIES:
Civil Liability of Law Enforcement Agencies
& Personnel
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Assault and Battery: Flash-Bang Devices
Monthly
Law Journal Article: Civil Liability for Use of
Distraction Devices, Part 1, 2015 (1) AELE Mo. L. J. 101.
Monthly Law Journal Article: Civil Liability for Use of
Distraction Devices, Part 2, 2015 (2) AELE Mo. L. J. 101.
A lawsuit was filed on behalf of a two-year-old girl who allegedly suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a result of the blast of a flash-bang grenade in her residence. The plaintiffs claimed that the officers in a SWAT team, even though they knew that the homicide suspect they sought was already in custody, broke open the screen door of the suspect’s residence and threw a flash-bang grenade into the living room before a young woman could open the door with keys she was holding. The only people inside the home were three women and a two-year-old girl. The girl suffered PTSD from the officers' use of the flash-bang grenade. A federal appeals court ruled that the SWAT team officers were not entitled to qualified immunity. Any reasonable officer would have known that the use of a flash-bang in these circumstances while executing a knock and announce warrant was excessive force. It was clearly established that the use of a flash-bang grenade was unreasonable when officers have no basis to believe they will face a threat of violence and when they unreasonably fail to determine whether there are any innocent bystanders in the area where the grenade will be deployed. Defendant police detectives, however, were entitled to summary judgment because there was probable cause to support the search warrant, even considering the omitted information, and because their decision to use a SWAT team, regardless of whether it was reasonable, did not violate clearly established law. Z. J. v. Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, #17-3365, 2019 U.S. App. Lexis 22205, 2019 WL 3330459 (7th Cir.).
An informant told police
that a man was engaged in selling crack cocaine from his apartment and answered
his door with a handgun in hand. A SWAT team executed a “High Risk Warrant Services” form. Their plan for the raid
called for a "dynamic entry" by 20 officers to secure the premises
within 30 seconds and authorized the use of flashbang grenades. At the time of
the raid, the man's mother was visiting and another of her sons was present
along with the suspect's girlfriend. The officers breached the door with a
battering ram, and one of them saw the suspect's mother move towards the door.
Another officer looked through the doorway, saw no one, and tossed a flashbang
inside. The blast severely injured the mother's leg. The raid found narcotics
and a handgun. A federal appeals court upheld a jury verdict for the defendants
on the mother's excessive force claim as supported by the evidence. A jury
statement that “While we agree that this was a horrible instance ... the errors
made by the Chicago Police Department as a whole cannot fall on the shoulders
of these two defendants” was consistent with the verdict. Flournoy v. City of Chicago, #14-3776, 2016 U.S. App. Lexis
13343 (7th Cir.).
Police learned of Internet threats against them
coming from an IP address located at the home of a 68-year-old African-American
woman and her two daughters. The Internet wifi network there was unsecured.
Before searching the woman's home, officers observed, two doors away, a man who
had previously been convicted of intimidating an officer. Two of the officers
believed that he was the likeliest source of the threats. Some officers,
however, mistakenly believed that another man made the threats, but
surveillance revealed no male present at the woman's house. Despite this, an
11-man all white SWAT team in body armor, accompanied by a news crew, knocked
on the door of the house and, without waiting for a response, broke open the
door and a window, tossing in two "flash-bang" grenades. The officers
then rushed into the house, conducted a search that found no evidence of any
crime, and handcuffed the women, leading them outside. The male neighbor was
subsequently convicted of using the woman's network to make the threats. A
federal appeals court upheld the denial of summary judgment to the defendant
officers in an excessive force lawsuit. The court found that the officers acted
unreasonably and "precipitately" by using the flash-bangs in the
house without a "minimally responsible" investigation of the threats.
Milan v. Bolin, #15-1207, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 13387 (7th Cir.).
A man sought under a warrant engaged in a
six-hour stalemate at his house with officers seeking to arrest him. He was
armed with a semi-automatic handgun. When he walked into his yard carrying
water and a cup, an emergency response team activated a flash bang device to distract
him and to try to prevent him from again retreating inside the house. The
officers said that he turned and tried to draw his gun and they then shot him
multiple times. He claimed that he did not reach for his gun until after the
device went off and shots were already fired. He later pled guilty to resisting
the officers with a deadly weapon. A federal appeals court held that his
excessive force claim was barred because his version of events would
necessarily imply the invalidity of the conviction. Under the facts needed to
support the conviction, the officers acted reasonably, and the conviction had
not been set aside. Helman v. Duhaime, #12-3428, 2014 U.S. App. Lexis 2302 (7th
Cir.).
Officers were not entitled to qualified immunity
in a lawsuit over their shooting and killing of a man. They deployed tear gas
into his apartment in an attempt to extricate him from the unit where he had
isolated himself threatening to commit suicide. After he still refused to come
out, the officers used additional tear gas and flash bang grenades to enter the
apartment, setting fire to the exterior room before throwing the flash bang
grenades into the darkened bedroom inches from his head and rendering him blind
and deaf before shooting him to death. The appeals court ruled that it could be
found that the excessive use of tear gas and flash-bang grenades in this manner
against a "non-threatening, non-violent, non-resisting individual"
violated clearly established rights. Estate of Escobedo v. Bender, #08-2365,
2010 U.S. App. Lexis 7016 (7th Cir.).
Throwing a "flash-bang" device
"blind" into an apartment which officers believed might have one
armed robbery suspect and up to eight other people sleeping there who were not
involved in the robbery was an excessive use of force when it was done without
a warning or the consideration of alternatives, federal appeals court rules.
Officers were entitled to qualified immunity from liability, however, as the
law on the subject was not clearly established at the time. Boyd v. Benton
County, #02-35776, 374 F.3d 773 (9th Cir. 2004). [2004 LR Oct]