Ames v. King Cnty.

• Decision Date: 13 January 2017
• Docket Number: No. 14-36035,14-36035
• Citation: 846 F.3d 340
• Parties: Tonja AMES, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. KING COUNTY, WASHINGTON, Defendant, and Heather R. Volpe, member of the King County Sheriff's Department; Christopher Sawtelle, member of the King County Sheriff's Department; Daniel L. Christian, member of the King County Sheriff's Department, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

846 F.3d 340

Tonja AMES, Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
KING COUNTY, WASHINGTON, Defendant,
and
Heather R. Volpe, member of the King County Sheriff's Department; Christopher Sawtelle, member of the King County Sheriff's Department; Daniel L. Christian, member of the King County Sheriff's Department, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 14-36035

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted December 7, 2016, Seattle, Washington
Filed January 13, 2017

David J. Hackett (argued), Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney; Daniel T. Satterberg, Prosecuting Attorney; King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, Seattle, Washington; for Defendants-Appellants.

Darryl Parker (argued), Civil Rights Justice Center PLLC, Seattle, Washington, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Before: M. Margaret McKeown, Richard C. Tallman, and Morgan B. Christen, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

TALLMAN, Circuit Judge:

This interlocutory appeal requires us to address the reasonableness of actions taken by King County Sheriff's Deputies functioning in their community caretaking capacities during a life-and-death medical emergency. We reverse the district court's denial of qualified immunity on Appellee's excessive force and unlawful search claims because we conclude the deputies' actions were objectively reasonable in light of the urgent need to deliver life-saving care to an overdose victim, and to ensure the safety of everyone at the scene.

I

The events leading up to the use of force and search at issue in this case are largely undisputed.¹ On February 6, 2013, at 6:30 p.m., Tonja Ames called 911 to summon an ambulance for her 22-year-old son, Colin Briganti. Briganti lived in a converted garage apartment attached to his mother's home and suffered from heart and lung problems as a result of prior drug abuse. Upon arriving home from work that day, Ames found Briganti in his bedroom "slumped over on the couch drooling" and incoherent. She also found what appeared to be a suicide note and feared Briganti may have overdosed on one of his medications. Ames called her neighbors, William and Linda Eby, who came over to help.

846 F.3d 344

The 911 operator classified the call as a Priority 1 suicide attempt and dispatched a firefighter/EMT aid crew and a police officer to Ames's residence. According to the County, it is common practice for police officers to respond to attempted suicide calls in order to secure the scene and ensure the safety of the aid crew. King County Sheriff's Deputy Heather Volpe, who is an expert instructor in drug recognition, arrived at Ames's house within approximately four minutes of Ames's 911 call, pulling up at virtually the same time as an aid car from Woodinville Fire and Rescue. The aid car was manned by Lieutenant Drago Nevistic and Firefighter/EMTs Chris Mezzone and Larry Laurent. Ames met Deputy Volpe and the aid crew in her driveway by the front right corner of the house and told them about Briganti's medical history, his current condition, and the suicide note. Ames then directed Deputy Volpe and the aid crew around to the garage apartment entrance at the back of the house. Firefighter/EMTs Mezzone and Laurent were in the lead and entered the apartment, with Ames, Deputy Volpe, and Lieutenant Nevistic following behind.

As Ames, Deputy Volpe, and Lieutenant Nevistic arrived at the doorway, Ames refused entry to Deputy Volpe. Ames told Deputy Volpe that only the aid crew could enter the apartment. According to Ames, Deputy Volpe replied, "If I can't enter the home, then you get no service," and directed the aid crew to exit the apartment. Firefighter/EMTs Mezzone and Laurent withdrew from the apartment; they had not yet engaged with Briganti but Laurent had observed that he was sitting in a chair, "semi-conscious" and "lethargic," and that he "barely could keep his eyes open."

Neither Deputy Volpe nor any member of the aid crew had ever encountered a situation where the person who called 911 would not allow police to enter with the emergency medical personnel responding to the call. Because Ames's refusal was unusual, and because the call involved a possible suicide attempt, Deputy Volpe became concerned for the safety of the responders on the scene and what might have happened inside the apartment. Together, Deputy Volpe and the aid crew retreated to their vehicles parked at the curb. Deputy Volpe radioed to inform dispatch and her patrol supervisor, Sergeant Kevin Johannes, that Ames was refusing to let police enter and the aid crew was refusing to work on Briganti inside the apartment. Deputy Volpe requested backup and waited, further advising dispatch that Briganti had overdosed on pills and was semi-conscious and very lethargic. Deputy Volpe had specialized training as a Drug Recognition Expert Instructor with knowledge of various medications and their effects. She was concerned that Briganti would die. Ames had listed Briganti's medications for Deputy Volpe when the aid crew first arrived, and Deputy Volpe recognized most of them as Central Nervous System depressants.

Before leaving Briganti's apartment, the aid crew did not tell Ames that they could treat her son outside the apartment or that they would wait outside for him. When the first responders withdrew, Ames and her neighbors had remained in Briganti's apartment. Ames panicked—thinking the aid crew was going to leave—and enlisted her neighbors to help her carry Briganti outside and load him into her pickup truck parked in the driveway so she could drive him to the nearest hospital. Deputy Volpe watched as Ames and her neighbors carried Briganti, apparently unconscious, out from behind the house. She assumed Ames would now let the aid crew work on Briganti in the driveway but, once she observed their efforts to load Briganti into Ames's truck, Deputy Volpe radioed

846 F.3d 345

her patrol supervisor: "Looks like they're trying to load him up into a truck and leave.... Should I stop them[?]" Sergeant Johannes replied: "Yeah, if you have aid there they need to work on him. So, yeah." Deputy Volpe then moved her patrol car to block the truck's exit from the driveway and approached Ames as she was climbing into the driver's side of the truck cab. Ames's neighbors had finished buckling Briganti into the passenger seat, where he remained slumped over and unresponsive during the events that followed.

Deputy Volpe yelled at Ames as she approached the truck, telling Ames that she needed to let the EMTs take Briganti and that it was unlawful for Ames to leave with him. When Deputy Volpe refused to move her patrol car, Ames became angry, pointed her finger at Deputy Volpe, and yelled: "Move your f-ing vehicle. I'm taking my son to the hospital. You guys left. You won't help him. Get out of my way." She continued climbing into the driver's seat, then placed the suicide note she had retrieved from the apartment in between the truck seats and put the keys in the ignition while reaching out with her left arm to close the driver's-side door. Simultaneously, Deputy Volpe reached the driver's side of the truck and used her body to block the door from closing. She then attempted to pull Ames from the truck cab. Ames grabbed the steering wheel tightly with her right hand and Deputy Volpe employed a hair hold to distract Ames and loosen her grip so the officer could remove Ames from the truck. Deputy Volpe took Ames down to the ground into a prone handcuffing position. According to the County's police practices expert, a hair hold is a low-level distraction and minor pain compliance technique that is at the lower end of takedown options in relative level of force. Essentially, Deputy Volpe grasped Ames's hair close to her scalp, causing Ames to release the steering wheel and reach up towards her scalp, whereupon Deputy Volpe was able to pull Ames out of the cab of the truck and down to the ground.

Ames landed on the ground with her right arm pinned under her body. Deputy Volpe held onto Ames's hair with one hand and pushed her knee into Ames's back while she handcuffed Ames's left arm. She ordered Ames to provide her right arm for cuffing and, according to Ames, slammed Ames's head into the ground three times as Ames tried to explain that her arm was pinned and that she suffered from a back injury. Deputy Volpe was then able to pull Ames's right arm behind her back, handcuff her, and radio that she had her pinned on the ground. In all, 97 seconds elapsed between Sergeant Johannes's instruction that Deputy Volpe keep Ames from leaving the scene and Deputy Volpe's report that she had Ames subdued on the ground. The first backup unit did not arrive on the scene until a little under a minute after Deputy Volpe had subdued Ames.

The aid crew rushed to assist Briganti as soon as Deputy Volpe removed Ames from the truck. They first moved Briganti from the truck into the aid car and then drove approximately 100 yards down the street for initial assessment because they were concerned about the potential for further confrontations. Based on their assessment of the severity of Briganti's condition and the shallowness of his breathing, the aid crew called for a nearby advanced life support medic unit to transport Briganti to the hospital in case airway support was required en route to keep him alive.

Deputy Christopher Sawtelle, the first backup officer to...