{"id":61991,"date":"2025-09-26T11:32:43","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T16:32:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=61991"},"modified":"2025-09-26T11:33:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T16:33:07","slug":"ca11-police-shooting-and-hitting-a-car-is-a-4a-seizure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=61991","title":{"rendered":"CA11: Police shooting and hitting a car is a 4A seizure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Police shooting at and hitting a car is a Fourth Amendment seizure, drawing from a common law case that striking a horse is the same as striking the rider. <a href=\"https:\/\/media.ca11.uscourts.gov\/opinions\/pub\/files\/202313616.pdf\">Watkins v. Davis<\/a>, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 24904 (11th Cir. Sep. 25, 2025):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>We see no material difference from an officer&#8217;s bullet that strikes the car of a person driving it. Of course, we don&#8217;t see many horse-drawn carriages anymore. But that&#8217;s so because cars took their place. So if touching a carriage or the horse drawing it counted as the &#8220;force&#8221; necessary to effect a seizure of the rider inside the carriage, then touching a car with a driver inside it also amounts to the &#8220;force&#8221; necessary to effect a seizure of the driver. And because Torres teaches that touching with a bullet is the same thing as touching with a hand, the Officers&#8217; shots that hit Watkins&#8217;s car were the necessary &#8220;force&#8221; to satisfy the first requirement of effecting a seizure under the Fourth Amendment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Police shooting at and hitting a car is a Fourth Amendment seizure, drawing from a common law case that striking a horse is the same as striking the rider. Watkins v. Davis, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 24904 (11th Cir. Sep. &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=61991\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seizure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61991"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61993,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61991\/revisions\/61993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}