UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT DEJUAN MARKEISS HOPSON, No. 21-16706

Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No. 2:20-cv-00128- v. SMB-DMF JACOB ALEXANDER; BRANDON GRISSOM, OPINION

Defendants-Appellants,

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona Susan M. Brnovich, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted August 10, 2022 San Francisco, California

Filed June 16, 2023

Before: Johnnie B. Rawlinson, Bridget S. Bade, and Daniel A. Bress, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Bress; Dissent by Judge Rawlinson 2 HOPSON V. ALEXANDER

SUMMARY*

Civil Rights / Qualified Immunity

The panel reversed the district court’s denial of qualified immunity to police detectives Jacob Alexander and Brandon Grissom in an action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging defendants used excessive force when they pointed a gun at plaintiff and forcefully extracted him from a car, without identifying themselves as law enforcement officers. Believing that two men were about to engage in the armed robbery of a gas station, defendants approached the suspects’ vehicle with guns pointed, forcibly removed the driver, plaintiff DeJuan Hopson, and handcuffed him. In holding that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity, the panel first determined that it was not clearly established that the officers lacked an objectively reasonable belief that criminal activity was about to occur. Under the qualified immunity framework and given the suspicious Terry-like conduct observed here, no clearly established law gave the panel cause to second-guess Detective Alexander’s on-the-ground suspicion that an armed robbery was about to occur. And an armed robbery necessarily involves the use of weapons. Clearly established law therefore did not prevent the officers from suspecting plaintiff might be armed—which, in fact, he was. The panel held that defendants did not violate clearly established law when they pointed their guns at plaintiff. * This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. HOPSON V. ALEXANDER 3

Noting that this Circuit’s law makes clear that pointing a gun at a suspect is not categorically out of bounds, the panel could find no authority that placed the unconstitutionality of the detectives’ conduct beyond debate in the circumstances they confronted. The panel next rejected plaintiff’s contention that defendants violated clearly established law by using excessive force when removing him from the car and arresting him. No clearly established law prevented the detectives from acting quickly and with moderate force to ensure that plaintiff was detained without incident. Thus, no controlling authority clearly established beyond debate that the amount of force used during plaintiff’s arrest was objectively unreasonable. Finally, the panel rejected plaintiff’s argument that the detectives violated clearly established law in failing to identify themselves as law enforcement officers. Under the circumstances of this case, precedent did not clearly establish that the detectives’ alleged failure to identify themselves as police officers made their use of force excessive. Dissenting, Judge Rawlinson stated that under the facts of this case, viewed in the light most favorable to plaintiff, the officers violated clearly established law when they forcefully yanked plaintiff from his vehicle at gunpoint without warning and forcefully handcuffed him, when he was merely conversing with a passenger in the vehicle and posed no immediate threa