CA11: Arrest for not answering knocks to door by officers with a writ of possession unreasonable and no QI

Plaintiff was arrested for ignoring knocks to the door from officers with a writ of possession. They didn’t even ring the doorbell. Officers entered through the garage area and pulled a gun on plaintiff. There was no justification asserted for the entry or the drawing of the weapon. No qualified immunity for arrest for obstruction. On the excessive force claim, officers get qualified immunity. Derowitsch v. Granger, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 26888 (11th Cir. Sept. 6, 2019):

The current record indicates that Plaintiffs were arrested based solely on Plaintiffs’ failure to answer the door in response to Defendants’ knocking. The Supreme Court has said that, “whether the person who knocks on the door and requests the opportunity to speak is a police officer or a private citizen, the occupant has no obligation to open the door or to speak.” Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. 452, 469-70 (2011). Under Georgia law, “[r]efusal to answer knocking at one’s front door, ringing of the door bell, or ringing of the phone, without more, does not constitute obstruction of the police, even if it is the police doing the knocking and ringing.” Beckom, 648 S.E.2d at 659 (reversing a conviction for misdemeanor obstruction where defendant failed for one hour to answer the door or the phone and then denied knowledge of a minor who was in fact inside defendant’s home); see Harris v. State, 726 S.E.2d 455, 457 (Ga. Ct. App. 2012) (reversing an obstruction conviction when defendant was merely uncooperative with officers doing a welfare check, but disobeyed no order and exhibited no violent or threatening conduct: a person cannot be guilty of obstruction for “peaceably asserting his constitutional rights as he understood those rights.”).

The law was sufficiently clear at the time of Plaintiffs’ arrest in 2017 — such that every reasonable officer under the circumstances would have understood — that Plaintiffs’ failure to answer the door, without more, constituted no probable cause or arguable probable cause to arrest Plaintiffs for obstruction. At this early stage in the proceedings and on these assumed facts, Defendants are unentitled to qualified immunity on Plaintiffs’ claims for false arrest and for false imprisonment.