Passive Resistance

SAN FRANCISCO — A jury could find that a man engaged in passive resistance when he refused to give a police officer his driver’s license and asked to speak to her supervisor because he believed there was no reason for her to stop him, the Ninth Circuit ruled, finding that officers who used a take-down maneuver against him are not immune from excessive force claims because the man had the right to be free from “the application of non-trivial force” for his “mere passive resistance.”

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