CA9: Officers didn’t use excessive force in wrestling with and handcuffing strong woman having psychotic eposide

Plaintiff’s decedent was a large and strong woman who had an apparent psychotic break and six officers were trying to control her. She stopped breathing and died. Nothing contradicts the officer’s accounts of what happened. The police were called in the first place because of her mental illness. Moore v. City of Berkeley, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 3190 (9th Cir. Jan. 30, 2020):

The district court likewise did not err in granting summary judgment on Plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment excessive force claim. An excessive force claim fails if the officers’ use of force was objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Glenn v. Washington County, 673 F.3d 864, 871 (9th Cir. 2011). It is undisputed that Moore, who was a very large and strong person, resisted vigorously when Defendants tried to take her into custody. Defendants consistently testified that they used only the amount of force necessary to restrain Moore, that they did not apply pressure on areas of her body that would have restricted her breathing, and that they moved her into a recovery position as soon as she stopped struggling. Although we must scrutinize with particular diligence “officers’ version of events” where “the person most likely to rebut [their account]–the one killed–can’t testify,” Cruz v. City of Anaheim, 765 F.3d 1076, 1079 (9th Cir. 2014), Plaintiff has neither produced evidence to controvert Defendants’ testimony nor identified material inconsistencies in their statements. Plaintiff has thus failed to show a genuine dispute of material fact that would preclude the entry of summary judgment.

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