In Chinaryan v. City of Los Angeles,[1] the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a District Court’s grant of partial summary judgment based on qualified immunity to individual officers. In reaching its conclusion, the Court declared that precedent clearly established that officers can be held liable for conducting a high-risk vehicle stop based on nothing more than a reasonable suspicion that the vehicle was stolen.
Background
On June 14, 2019, a black Chevrolet Suburban limousine was stolen while parked on the street overnight. The following evening, a helicopter unit in the Los Angeles Police Department’s (“LAPD”) Foothill Division detected a signal from the vehicle’s LoJack device. Officers Ramiro Gonzalez and Mario Meneses, investigating on the ground, located the signal’s approximate source. Gonzalez reported the incident to his supervisor, Sergeant Fred Cueto. They planned to return to the signal’s approximate location (which was near an industrial area with many “chop shops” that take parts off vehicles) to recover the car on the next day, Monday, June 16.
On June 16, Hasmik Chinaryan was driving home to Tujunga from a family celebration in North Hollywood with her teenage daughter and a friend in a black Suburban limousine which belonged to Chinaryan’s husband. Both Suburbans were late model vehicles—the stolen one from 2015 and Chinaryan’s from 2018—and they looked very similar. Sergeant Cueto saw Chinaryan’s vehicle on Glenoaks at Tuxford Street, less than half a mile from where the stolen Suburban’s LoJack signal had been detected. After he requested Department of Motor Vehicles (“DMV”) information on her vehicle, the communications unit informed Cueto that the Chinaryan’s license plate belonged to a Dodge Ram and gave him information regarding the registered owner. The Dodge Ram had not been reported stolen. Cueto suspected that the Suburban had been stolen because it was “cold-plated,” meaning it had a license plate other than the one registered with DMV. He called for backup, including a helicopter unit.
Cueto followed Chinaryan’s vehicle and was joined by Officers Gonzalez and Meneses in their vehicle, who began following directly behind Chinaryan’s vehicle. At that point, approximately a dozen officers were in pursuit. Meanwhile, Chinaryan drove normally and in compliance with all traffic laws while being followed for more than ten minutes. The officers decided to conduct a “high-risk” felony stop.[2]
Chinaryan believed the police vehicles were after someone else so she pulled to the side of the road to let them pass. As she did so, the officers activated their sirens. Officer Meneses ordered Chinaryan to turn off the vehicle, throw her keys outside, step out of the car, and keep her hands up. Chinaryan exited the vehicle as Meneses and several other officers pointed their pistols at her or in her direction. Meneses ordered Chinaryan to walk away from the vehicle into the rightmost lane, lie down on her stomach, put her hands out “like a plane,” and turn her head to the side, facing away from the vehicle, with her cheek touching the ground. Chinaryan remained prone on the ground for about three minutes and twenty-five seconds while the officers cleared the car, after which they holstered their weapons and handcuffed her.
Meanwhile, Officer Gonzalez ordered the two passengers, Chinaryan’s daughter and their friend to exit the passenger doors with their hands in the air, one at a time. As they did so, Gonzalez and Officer Eduardo Piche pointed firearms in their direction—Gonzalez his AR15 high-capacity police patrol rifle, and Piche his loaded 12-gauge shotgun. The officers ordered them to walk about 15-20 steps backwards (the friend in heels), where Officer Airan Potter handcuffed them. Chinaryan’s daughter cried and urinated on herself in fear. Chinaryan and the two passengers were handcuffed and seated on the street while the officers investigated.
The officers subsequently located the Suburban’s Vehicle Identification Number (“VIN”) and learned from DMV records that the VIN belonged to a 2018 Suburban registered to Levon Chinaryan with a license plate that differed by one digit from the license plates on the stopped vehicle. The vehicle had not been reported stolen. The officers realized that the DMV had issued the wrong plates. Eventually, Cueto directed officers to remove the handcuffs on Chinaryan and the two passengers. The officers removed the plates from the Suburban, completed paperwork, and instructed Chinaryan that she or her husband would need to contact DMV about new plates. The entire incident, from the time the officers stopped Chinaryan’s vehicle to the time she and her passengers were released, lasted 24 minutes.
Chinaryan and her passengers sued individual officers under 42 U.S.C. section 1983,[3] alleging that the individual officers violated their Fourth Amendment rights by arresting them without probable cause and using excessive force. The District Court granted partial summary judgment in favor of the individual officers, concluding that they were entitled to qualified immunity on the Section 1983 claims because it was not clearly established that their conduct violated plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment rights. After the case proceeded to trial on another of plaintiffs’ claims, the jury subsequently found in favor of defendants. Plaintiffs appealed.
Discussion
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals observed that “[q]ualified immunity shields government officials under [Section] 1983 unless ‘(1) they violated a federal statutory or constitutional right, and (2) the unlawfulness of their conduct was “clearly established at the time.”’” Hernandez v. Town of Gilbert, 989 F.3d 739, 743 (9th Cir. 2021) (quoting District of Columbia v. Wesby, 583 U.S. 48, 62-63 (2018)).
The Court explained that the Fourth Amendment protects persons “from the terrifying and humiliating experience of being pulled from their cars at gunpoint, handcuffed, or made to lie face down on the pavement when insufficient reason for such intrusive police conduct exists.” Washington v. Lambert, 98 F.3d 1181, 1187 (9th Cir. 1996). While circumstances may sometimes call for such intrusive tactics during a Terry stop,[4] the police may not employ them “every time they have an ‘articulable basis’ for thinking that someone may be a suspect in a crime.” Id. Rather, there must be “special circumstances” that make such tactics reasonable. Id. at 1189.
The Court of Appeals explained that whether a particular Terry stop warrants the use of intrusive tactics depends on the tactics’ objective reasonableness assessed under the totality of the circumstances.[5] Green v. City & County of San Francisco, 751 F.3d 1039, 1049 (9th Cir. 2014). In this assessment, courts are to “balance the ‘nature and quality of the intrusion’ against the ‘countervailing governmental interests at stake.’” Id. (quoting Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396 (1989)).
The Court determined that the degree of intrusion here was severe. The officers physically restricted plaintiffs’ liberty, which “is an important factor in analyzing the degree of intrusion effected by the stop.” Washington, 98 F.3d at 1189. The officers removed all three suspects from the vehicle, ordered Chinaryan to lie down on the street, and ordered the two passengers to walk to a location remote from the vehicle. The officers also handcuffed plaintiffs, which “substantially aggravates the intrusiveness of an otherwise routine investigatory detention and is not part of a typical Terry stop.” Id. at 1188 (quoting United States v. Bautista, 684 F.2d 1286, 1289 (9th Cir. 1982)). And by drawing their guns and aiming them at or near plaintiffs, the officers “greatly increase[d] the seriousness of the stop.” Id.; see Thompson v. Rahr, 885 F.3d 582, 587 (9th Cir. 2018) (“[P]ointing guns at persons who are compliant and present no danger is a constitutional violation.” (quoting Baird v. Renbarger, 576 F.3d 340, 346 (7th Cir. 2009)).
The Ninth Circuit explained that in assessing “whether this degree of intrusion was justified by the governmental interests at stake,” the Court typically considered: (1) “the severity of the crime at issue”; (2) whether the suspects pose “an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others”; and (3) whether the suspects are “actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.” Green, 751 F.3d at 1049 (quoting Chew v. Gates, 27 F.3d 1432, 1440 (9th Cir. 1994)).
Here, the plaintiffs were not “uncooperative or tak[ing] action at the scene that raise[d] a reasonable possibility of danger or flight.” Washington, 98 F.3d at 1189. During the several minutes that Sergeant Cueto followed their vehicle before stopping them, during which time Chinaryan obeyed all traffic laws and did not drive evasively. Chinaryan pulled over at the same time as the officers flashed their lights to initiate the stop. Once stopped, she and her passengers complied with all officer commands. The officers had no information that plaintiffs were “currently armed” or that “a crime that may involve violence [was] about to occur.” Id. Nor was this a situation “where the stop closely follow[ed] a violent crime.” Id. The Court explained that even if plaintiffs’ vehicle had been the stolen one, as the officers suspected, the passage of time gave rise to the possibility that the occupants were unconnected to the crime. Moreover, any safety-based justification to restrain plaintiffs in handcuffs weakened considerably once the DMV error became apparent and the officers ascertained that plaintiffs were cooperative and unarmed. However, plaintiffs were restrained for several additional minutes. Construing the facts in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, the Court of Appeals concluded that the officers’ reasonable suspicion that plaintiffs had stolen the Suburban, standing alone, was “not enough to justify such intrusive tactics.” Green, 751 F.3d at 1050.
“Clearly Established”
The Ninth Circuit next considered the second prong of the qualified immunity analysis, whether it was clearly established that the officers’ tactics violated plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment rights.
“For a right to be ‘clearly established,’ existing ‘precedent must have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate,’ such that ‘every’ reasonable official, not just ‘a’ reasonable official, would have understood that he was violating a clearly established right.” Thompson, 885 F.3d at 587 (emphasis omitted) (quoting Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741 (2011)). Courts cannot “define clearly established law at a high level of generality.” Perez v. City of Fresno, 98 F.4th 919, 924 (9th Cir. 2024) (quoting Wesby, 583 U.S. at 63). The legal principle must “clearly prohibit the officer’s conduct in the particular circumstances before him.” Wesby, 583 U.S. at 63.
Defining the rule with specificity “is ‘especially important in the Fourth Amendment context.’” Id. at 64 (quoting Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 12 (2015)). “Although there need not be a case directly on point,” Perez v. City of Fresno, 98 F.4th 919, 924 (9th Cir. 2024), or even one with “fundamentally similar” facts, Cates v. Stroud, 976 F.3d 972, 978 (9th Cir. 2020) (quoting Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741 (2002)), a plaintiff claiming excessive force normally must identify a “case that addresses facts like the ones at issue” such that the officer was “put . . . on notice that his specific conduct was unlawful.” Rivas-Villegas v. Cortesluna, 595 U.S. 1, 6 (2021) (per curiam) Rivas-Villegas. The facts of the prior case cannot be “materially distinguishable.” Id.
The Ninth Circuit in the instant case concluded that Green “addresses facts like the ones at issue” here. Id. In Green, Denise Green, a 47-year-old woman with no criminal record, was driving her car when an automated license plate reader misread her license plate number by one digit and erroneously identified the plate as belonging to a stolen vehicle. Dispatch determined that the license plate number belonged to a gray GMC truck, whereas Green was observed driving a burgundy Lexus sedan. A nearby officer observed Green’s vehicle pass him and did not realize that her license plate differed by one digit from the number reported to dispatch. The officer called for backup, and after three to five additional officers arrived, they made a high-risk stop of Green’s vehicle. The officers ordered Green out of her car, drew and pointed their weapons at her, ordered her to her knees, and handcuffed her. Green was wholly compliant and nonresistant for the entirety of the stop and there was no indication that she was armed. Officers searched Green’s vehicle, performed a pat-down search of her person,and after a record check of her correct plate number revealed they had made a mistake, uncuffed her. The District Court granted the defendants summary judgment on Green’s excessive force claim. However, the Ninth Circuit reversed, rejecting the defendants’ argument that “the crime of vehicular theft is enough in itself to support a finding that Green posed an immediate threat” because a jury could also find that Green did not pose a threat. Id. at 1050.
Defendants here argued that there were several factors that distinguished the case here from Green. Defendants asserted that unlike the officers in Washington and Green, they had “specific information that the people they were stopping, using high-risk tactics, were the proper suspects.” The Court explained that even assuming defendants here were more certain than the officers in Green that they had the right suspects, their certainty was relevant only to whether they had reasonable suspicion to investigate. It did not increase the likelihood that the suspected vehicle thieves were armed or dangerous or that any other special circumstances called for the use of high-risk tactics.
Defendants also asserted that “[t]he approaching nightfall” would have made it “more difficult to search for someone if they fled the vehicle,” but the Court noted that the Green stop occurred at approximately 11:15p when it was already dark out. Video footage here showed that there was still daylight at the time of the stop and for several minutes thereafter.
Defendants asserted that Chinaryan’s “darkly tinted windows . . . made it impossible for the officers to see how many people were inside” her vehicle, but the Court observed that prior to the stop, Officer Gonzalez was able to observe Chinaryan and her friend in the front seat through the front windshield.[6]
The Court stated that while tinted windows might justify precautions beyond the standard traffic stop in some circumstances, “police must consider less intrusive alternatives” before using extreme force. Green, at 1050 (citing Smith v. City of Hemet, 394 F.3d 689, 701 (9th Cir. 2005) (en banc)). Here, as in Green, there was evidence suggesting that the officers had alternatives available. The Court explained that even a tactical investigatory stop rather than a high-risk stop would have addressed the officers’ inability to see into the vehicle’s rear seats. From a position of cover, they could have ordered plaintiffs to step outside, lift up their clothing, and turn around to reveal if they had weapons in their waistbands.
Finally, defendants cited their “training and personal experience” that “stolen vehicles are often linked with armed and dangerous individuals.” But the Ninth Circuit explained that the officers in Green were similarly aware that the occupants of stolen vehicles can be armed and dangerous; there officers argued “that the existence of a stolen vehicle, in and of itself, is enough to satisfy the degree of force used.” The Ninth Circuit in Green disagreed, holding that the generic dangers posed by stopping a cold-plated vehicle may or may not justify a high-risk stop, and that only a jury could resolve this inherently factual question.
The Ninth Circuit held that Washington and Green established that for summary judgment purposes, reasonable suspicion of vehicle theft alone was not enough to justify the intrusive tactics used in this case absent some case-specific need for them. Because a jury could find that the totality of the circumstances here did not justify the officers’ tactics, the Court of Appeals concluded that the District Court erred in ruling that the officer defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. Accordingly, the Ninth Circuit reversed the District Court’s partial summary judgment in favor of individual officers, and remanded for a new trial on all of plaintiffs’ claims against the individual officers.
HOW THIS AFFECTS YOUR AGENCY
Agencies may observe that the Court noted that the officers chose to use the high-risk vehicle stop tactic here, despite not having any information that plaintiffs were currently armed or that a crime that involved violence was about to occur. Nor was this a situation where the stop was shortly after a violent crime. The Court stated that even if the officers could not see into the vehicle’s rear seats to determine how many passengers were in the vehicle, a tactical investigatory stop rather than a high-risk stop would have addressed this issue. From a position of cover, they could have ordered plaintiffs to step outside, lift up their clothing, and turn around to reveal if they had weapons in their waistbands. Agencies must be aware of this decision and examine their policies and training in order to comply with the principles set forth herein. Policy analysis should include taking into consideration officer safety and an assessment of the hazards a situation presents to find a balance that is lawful and reasonable.
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[1] 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 20465 (9th Cir. Aug. 14, 2024).
[2] The opinion states:
“LAPD officers perform three types of vehicle stops. In a traffic enforcement stop, the car’s occupants generally stay in their vehicle while two officers approach the vehicle from opposite sides and proceed to the driver- and passenger-side doors.
A tactical investigatory stop is used in situations that may end up in an arrest rather than a citation or warning. Officers take a position of cover, such as behind the bulletproof police car doors, and order the occupants of the stopped vehicle to step outside. Officers then instruct them to lift up their clothing and turn around to reveal if they have weapons in their waistbands. Officers keep their guns holstered and do not normally order a suspect to lie down on the street.
A high-risk vehicle stop is similar, except that officers draw and hold their weapons at the “low ready” position, meaning pointed anywhere below the suspect’s waist—whether directly at the suspect or nearby. In addition, officers place the suspect in a prone position.”
[3] Although not discussed here, the plaintiffs also made state law claims against the individual officers, and made additional claims against the City of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Police Department (“LAPD”).
[4] See Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968). A Terry stop “involves no more than a brief stop, interrogation and, under the proper circumstances, a brief check for weapons.” United States v. Robertson, 833 F.2d 777, 780 (9th Cir. 1987).
[5] The Court observed that a Terry stop requires only “reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.” Robertson, 833 F.2d at 780. Plaintiffs conceded that defendants had reasonable suspicion to conduct a Terry stop to investigate whether their vehicle was the stolen Suburban. However, “[b]eyond such a brief and narrowly circumscribed intrusion, an arrest occurs, for which probable cause is required.” Id. The officers did not assert that they had probable cause to arrest plaintiffs.
[6] As Cueto followed Chinaryan, Officers Gonzalez and Meneses initially approached in their vehicle from the opposite direction. As Meneses drove past Chinaryan’s vehicle, Gonzalez saw her and the friend passenger through the front windshield.