CA6: Where there was a threat in the house on the second floor, it wasn’t unreasonable for officers to go check it out

“We have held, however, that ‘[w]ithin a few seconds of reasonably perceiving a sufficient danger, officers may use deadly force even if in hindsight the facts show that the persons threatened could have escaped unharmed.’ … Though different decisions on the night of February 11, 2017, might have led to a better outcome, the record does not support an obvious causal connection between those alleged oversights and the officers’ decision to use force against a previously hidden and threatening Young. … Our precedent generally requires the excessive force analysis to focus on the moments immediately leading up to the use of force, which indicates the need for allegations and evidence that the immediately preceding conduct is part of the same event. … Due to the fact-intensive nature of excessive force claims, precise guidelines on what constitutes an analyzable unit of time for a particular event are absent from our cases. But our precedent shows that some causal connection between the preceding seconds or minutes to be included in the claim and the actual use of force is necessary. … Here, the record does not support the conclusion that the officers’ decision to enter the house to conduct a lawful search, and to continue that search on the second floor, is so ‘conceptually [in]distinct’ from the deadly force used that they should be analyzed as one ‘segment.’ [¶] Furthermore, the fact that a suspect has a disability is relevant to the use of force analysis, but only if the officers were aware that some disability exists.” The use of deadly force here was not unreasonable. Kirilova v. Braun, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 2649 (6th Cir. Jan. 27, 2022).*