Some damage can be expected in executing a search warrant. Whether it was so excessive to be objectively unreasonable is the question. Here, there was damage, but it wasn’t unreasonable under the circumstances, and the officers get qualified immunity. Cybernet, LLC v. David, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 9163 (4th Cir. Mar. 24, 2020). A lot here:
In the execution context, as elsewhere, Fourth Amendment reasonableness kicks in. The basic idea is to encourage officers to get warrants and to work within their terms in executing them. To be sure, the Fourth Amendment generally leaves it “to the discretion of the executing officers to determine the details of how best to proceed with the performance of a search authorized by warrant.” Dalia v. United States, 441 U.S. 238, 257, 99 S. Ct. 1682, 60 L. Ed. 2d 177 (1979). A degree of latitude is fitting—in fact, necessary—because not all searches are alike: What is reasonably necessary to execute a search warrant tracks the nature and quantity of the evidence to be seized. Illegal substances often will be hidden; stolen goods may be stored to escape the eye; and the relevance of complex business records may not be obvious at first blush. Because “the needs of any given search will vary,” some flexibility in the execution of a warrant is appropriate. Gardner v. Evans, 920 F.3d 1038, 1050 (6th Cir. 2019).
Built into this flexibility is a recognition that, during the course of a search, incidental damage to property may occur. The Supreme Court has recognized that “officers executing search warrants on occasion must damage property in order to perform their duty.” Dalia, 441 U.S. at 258. This is not at all to suggest that officers may ransack premises at will. Thus it follows that the “excessive or unnecessary destruction of property in the course of a search may violate the Fourth Amendment” and serve as a basis for liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. United States v. Ramirez, 523 U.S. 65, 71, 118 S. Ct. 992, 140 L. Ed. 2d 191 (1998).
Whether property damage is constitutionally excessive is most comfortably assessed under a standard of objective reasonableness. This choice naturally flows from the Supreme Court’s recognition that “Fourth Amendment reasonableness is predominantly an objective inquiry.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 736, 131 S. Ct. 2074, 179 L. Ed. 2d 1149 (2011) (quotation omitted). In fact, the Court has “almost uniformly rejected invitations to probe subjective intent.” Id. at 736-37. The benefits of an objective inquiry are at least two-fold: It “recognizes that the Fourth Amendment regulates conduct rather than thoughts, and it promotes evenhanded, uniform enforcement of the law.” Id. at 736 (citations omitted).
. . .
Two core principles bear on whether an officer can be held liable for damaging a plaintiff’s property while executing a search warrant. To start, because officers are afforded a degree of discretion in determining how to carry out a search, they are not required to “use the least possible destructive means to execute a search warrant.” Johnson v. Manitowoc Cty., 635 F.3d 331, 335 (7th Cir. 2011). So long as a given use of force is objectively reasonable under the totality of the circumstances, it is not dispositive that, in hindsight, the search could arguably have been conducted in a less destructive way. Id. (holding that the use of a jackhammer to gather evidence from a concrete floor was not unreasonable, even though the use of a diamond or carbide-bladed saw may have resulted in less damage).
Further, it is excessive damage to property that is objectively unreasonable—a principle that, we reiterate, the Supreme Court has long recognized. United States v. Ramirez, 523 U.S. 65, 71, 118 S. Ct. 992, 140 L. Ed. 2d 191 (1998) (stating that the “excessive or unnecessary destruction of property in the course of a search may violate the Fourth Amendment”). In determining what is considered “excessive” damage, we look to the ordinary meaning of the term. See Oxford English Dictionary (2d ed. 1989) (defining excessive as “[e]xceeding what is right, proportionate, or desirable; immoderate, inordinate, extravagant”). As applied here, this definition implies something more than accidental or incidental injury to property in the course of working within the parameters of a lawful search warrant. Accidents happen. Unfortunate as they may be, such mishaps need not dictate Fourth Amendment liability. See Brower v. Cty. of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593, 596, 109 S. Ct. 1378, 103 L. Ed. 2d 628 (1989).
III.
… We need neither approve or reject the above holdings in order to note that the quantum of destruction is not the only factor relevant to whether a search is objectively reasonable. A more salient guidepost for analyzing whether property damage exceeds constitutional bounds concerns the relationship between the damage alleged and the object of the search. The Tenth Circuit’s decision in Lawmaster v. Ward, 125 F.3d 1341 (10th Cir. 1997), is instructive. There, the court denied defendants summary judgment after finding that the officers’ actions—leaving the plaintiff’s gun in a dog’s water bowl and spreading cigarette and cigar ashes throughout his home and bedding—were not “reasonably necessary to carry out the warrant’s purpose to search for and seize a machine gun and parts.” Id. at 1349-50. In other words, damage that has little connection to the object of the search should raise judicial eyebrows, whereas some damage incident to the seizure of objects within a warrant’s scope may be unremarkable. See id.
The harm in this case falls into the latter bucket. Recall that the warrants at issue authorized officers to search for and to seize a number of items—including “video gaming machines and other forms of electrical, mechanical, or computer devices”; the “financial proceeds” thereof; “books, records, receipts … and other documents” relating to illegal video gaming; relevant “photographs/video”; “business and personal computers . . . and any other electronic media containing evidence of illegal video gaming”; and other “fruits or instrumentalities of the alleged crimes.” J.A. 52-53; see also id. at 49-63, 2455. It is plain that the damage Cybernet alleges is plausibly connected to the seizure of these items.
For example, as the district court recognized, the destruction that Cybernet attributes to Deputy Deaver—mainly, damage to some of the LED lighting track, portions of the stucco finish underneath it, and a conduit—stems from his efforts to remove the security cameras from Big Aladdin’s roof. J.A. 2485-86. Those cameras reasonably came under the search warrant’s umbrella as “instrumentalities of the alleged crimes.” Indeed, Cybernet does not dispute that the security cameras were within the warrants’ scope. Consider also the computer wiring that Cybernet maintains was cut. It, too, has a reasonable relationship to the computers and electronic devices authorized by the warrants to be seized. …
