Pollak, Vida & Barer

In Gonzalez v. City of Phoenix, published January 8, 2026, a divided panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court decision denying summary judgment to the defendant officers on the grounds of qualified immunity.  The plaintiffs’ decedent was acting erratically.   When two officers chased him on foot, the decedent ran into traffic.  Officers caught him, pulled him down, and grabbed his hands and wrists.  The decedent was struggling.  He appeared distressed, disoriented, and out of breath.  It was a hot day, and the pavement was approximately 145 degrees.  The officers rolled the decedent onto his stomach, pressed him face down, handcuffed him, and an officer placed a knee in the decedent’s back.  The decedent complained the officers were “killing me.”  The decedent stopped struggling, and the officers held him in a prone position for nearly three minutes as other officers arrived.  An officer applied a RIPP restraint, a hobble restraint.  In violation of training and policy, the officer shortened the restraint by looping it through the handcuffs and fastening it to the decedent’s ankle restraints, pulling his legs upward into a hogtie position.  Once bound, the decedent did not move.  An officer continued to press his knee on the decedent’s back for nearly a minute.  The decedent’s condition appeared to worsen.  He went limp.  Without adjusting the restraint, three officers lifted the decedent by his arms and legs and placed him face-down in the back seat of a police vehicle, across a hard plastic hump.  Two other officers drove the decedent to a nearby parking lot, the drive lasting two minutes.  Neither turned to observe the decedent or check his condition.  At the parking lot, they removed the decedent and discovered he was unresponsive.  They removed the restraint, administered aid, and summoned paramedics.  The decedent was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.  His heirs sued the defendant officers and the city.  The defendants moved for summary judgment.  The district court granted the motion as to false arrest, 14th Amendment deprivation of familial relations, and use of force before and including the initial application of the RIPP restraint.  It denied summary judgment as to the officers’ use of force after the restraint.  The officers brought an interlocutory appeal from the district court’s denial of qualified immunity in part.

The panel majority affirmed the denial.  On the first prong of qualified immunity, genuine issues of material fact prevented summary judgment on whether the officers complied with the 4th Amendment.  The court rejected the officers’ contention that they did not use force when they placed the decedent in the vehicle and transported him because they did not apply additional pressure on the decedent.  Since the decedent could not move during these actions, the officers had seized the decedent within the meaning of the 4th Amendment.  There were genuine issues of fact as to whether the officers’ use of force was an unreasonable seizure under the 4th Amendment.  The use of force was significant, especially in light of the threat of positional asphyxiation.  A reasonable jury could find that hog-tying the decedent and placing him prone, in violation of policy and training, in light of the exacerbating factors of the decedent’s believed drug use, exertion, and the hot weather, created a high risk of sudden death or serious injury.  A jury could also find that the government’s interest in using this degree of force was minimal, since the decedent was restrained and not resisting at that point.  A jury could find that the force used was greater than is reasonable under the circumstances.  Under the second prong of qualified immunity, the officers’ use of unreasonable force would violate clearly-established law that where there is no need for force, any force used is constitutionally unreasonable, especially where the force is lethal.  Precedent establishes that an officer’s continued pressure against a prone, handcuffed, hobble-restrained subject is excessive.  This precedent would put reasonable officers on notice that the conduct here violated the 4th Amendment, particularly since their training warned them of the dangers of such conduct.  The majority viewed the actions of the officers who drove the decedent from the scene as part of the totality of the circumstances by failing to alleviate the harmful effects of the use of force by checking on the decedent or sitting him up in the vehicle.

One judge concurred that the officers who bound the suspect using the RIPP device and who placed him in the car face-down were not entitled to qualified immunity.  But the judge opined that the officers who transported the decedent did not violate clearly-established law.