Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-01207/USCOURTS-ca7-15-01207-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

---

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 15-1207

LOUISE MILAN,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

BILLY BOLIN, in his individual capacity as Evansville Police

 Department Chief, et al.,

Defendants-Appellants.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Indiana, Evansville Division.

No. 3:13-cv-00001-WTL-WGH — William T. Lawrence, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED JUNE 1, 2015 — DECIDED JULY 31, 2015

____________________

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and WILLIAMS,

Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The plaintiff brought suit against

the City of Evansville, Indiana, and several of the City’s police officers, contending that the police had used excessive 

force in the search of her home. The district judge granted 

summary judgment in favor of the defendants on related 

claims by the plaintiff, but all that is before us is the defendCase: 15-1207 Document: 30 Filed: 07/31/2015 Pages: 8
2 No. 15-1207

ants’ appeal from the district judge’s denial of their motion

for summary judgment on the excessive-force claim. They 

argue that qualified immunity insulates them from liability—that is, that there was no established legal principle that 

would have informed them that they were using excessive 

force. 

On June 20, 2012, the Evansville police department became aware of Internet postings that made threats against 

the police; a typical posting said “New Indiana law. You 

have the right to shoot cops.” The posts came from an Internet Protocol (IP) address at the home of 68-year-old Louise

Milan and her 18-year-old daughter Stephanie (plus another

daughter who wasn’t however at home during the search).

An IP address is like a phone number, but it is a number 

that identifies a computer or computer network and so enables a person operating another computer to communicate 

with it. The network in Mrs. Milan’s home was an unsecured

WiFi network, meaning that a person in the vicinity of the 

home—standing in the street in front of the house, for example—could access the network and send messages from it

without needing to know a password. The threats against 

the police could have been posted by someone in her house 

on her computer, but equally they could have been posted 

through the unsecured network by someone near the house.

That the threats might have come from a person (or persons) inside the Milan home who might moreover be armed 

and dangerous was enough to make the police decide to 

have the house searched by the department’s SWAT team

forthwith, though, to repeat, the threatening messages could 

instead have emanated from outside the house because of 

the open network.

Case: 15-1207 Document: 30 Filed: 07/31/2015 Pages: 8
No. 15-1207 3

The defendants say they didn’t know that Mrs. Milan’s 

network was unsecured and therefore accessible by someone 

outside the house who could use the unsecured network to 

send the threatening messages. Although the police had discovered that there was an unsecured network near the 

house, they hadn’t bothered to find out whose network it 

was, as they could easily have done, precisely because it was 

unsecured and therefore accessible. Had they done that they 

would have known that it was Mrs. Milan’s network and, 

since it was unsecured, that it might have been used (without her knowledge) by someone outside her home to send 

the threatening messages. The failure to discover that the 

network was Mrs. Milan’s was a failure of responsible police 

practice.

The search was conducted on June 21, just one day after 

the discovery of the posted threats. Shortly before the search, 

police had spotted on the porch of a house just two doors 

from the Milan house a man named Derrick Murray, whom 

they knew to have made threats against the police in the 

past—indeed he had been convicted of intimidating a police 

officer. At least two of the officers thought him the likeliest 

source of the threats. Prudence counseled delaying the 

search for a day or so to try to get a better understanding 

both of the Milan household and of Murray’s potential responsibility for the threats. Prudence went by the board.

Some officers thought, mistakenly as it turned out, that

one or more of three men whose last name was the same as 

Mrs. Milan’s were likely threateners. One of them, Marc Milan, was believed to be a member of a gang and the nephew 

of Mrs. Milan’s deceased husband, though in her deposition 

in this case she described him as a near stranger whom she 

Case: 15-1207 Document: 30 Filed: 07/31/2015 Pages: 8
4 No. 15-1207

had met for the first time after the search. The second male 

Milan, Anthony Milan Sr., was a sex offender who had

committed other types of crime as well. He was Mrs. Milan’s 

stepson and had lived in her house years prior to the search. 

The third male Milan, Anthony Milan Jr., was the son of the 

second Milan. His Facebook pictures show him holding 

guns. He was only an occasional visitor to his stepgrandmother’s house.

At the time of the search only Mrs. Milan and her 

daughters were living in the house. No man was living, staying, or visiting there, and police surveillance revealed no

man entering or leaving between the threats and the search. 

Police did see daughter Stephanie come and go from the 

house. She happens to be small for an 18-year-old—one of

the officers who saw her thought she was 13 and the other 

that she was 15. We’ll see that her size and apparent age are 

relevant to the appeal.

So: a house occupied by an elderly woman and her two 

daughters; no evidence that any criminals would be present

during the search although the possibility could not be excluded entirely; no effort to neutralize suspect Murray during the search, as by posting police to watch his house and 

make sure he didn’t rush over to Mrs. Milan’s house when 

the search began. But despite their insouciance about Murray and the perfunctory character of their investigation before the search, the police decided to search the Milan 

house—and in a violent manner.

A search warrant was applied for and obtained, and the

search was conducted by an eleven-man SWAT team accompanied by a news team. The members of the SWAT team 

rushed to the front door of the house, knocked, and without 

Case: 15-1207 Document: 30 Filed: 07/31/2015 Pages: 8
No. 15-1207 5

allowing a reasonable time—more than a few seconds—for a 

response (though they hadn’t gotten a “no knock” warrant; 

see Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 589 (2006)) broke open

the front door and a nearby window, and through these 

openings hurled two “flash bang” grenades. These are explosive devices, similar to but a good deal less lethal than 

military hand grenades, that are intended to stun and disorient persons, thus rendering them harmless, by emitting 

blinding flashes of light and deafening sounds. They can kill 

if they land on a person, especially a child. The police call 

them “distraction devices,” an absurd euphemism; we called 

them “bombs” in Estate of Escobedo v. Bender, 600 F.3d 770, 

784–85 (7th Cir. 2010), and United States v. Jones, 214 F.3d 836, 

837–38 (7th Cir. 2000).

As the flash bangs exploded, the police rushed into the 

house, searched it from top to bottom (finding no males, and 

also no evidence of any criminal activity), handcuffed mother and daughter, led them out of the house, and questioned 

them briefly. (The newsmen did not enter the house; had 

they done so, this would have been an independent violation of the Fourth Amendment, Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 

611 (1999), because the warrant did not authorize them to

participate in the search.) The mother’s and daughter’s answers to the questions put to them by the police convinced 

the police that the women had had nothing to do with the 

threats, and so they were released to return to their damaged 

and smoking abode. The City of Evansville replaced the broken door and window, and the burned rug, at the City’s expense. There was doubtless other damage; we don’t know 

whether the City paid for any of it. (Nor do we know the nature and amount of the damages sought by Mrs. Milan in 

this suit, though we are guessing that the principal harm for 

Case: 15-1207 Document: 30 Filed: 07/31/2015 Pages: 8
6 No. 15-1207

which compensation is sought is emotional. Nor do we 

know why Stephanie is not also a plaintiff.)

That no men were found in the house during the raid 

confirmed the police in their belief that Murray was responsible for the threats. It took them only a day to discover that 

it was indeed he who was responsible—he had used Mrs. 

Milan’s open network to threaten the police. But rather than 

give him the SWAT-team treatment, the police politely requested that he come to police headquarters, which he did, 

where he was arrested without incident. (He was prosecuted

for the threats, pleaded guilty, and was given a sixteenmonth prison sentence.) The police department’s kid-gloves 

treatment of Murray is in startling contrast to their flashbang assault on Mrs. Milan’s home.

The search of her home was videotaped both by the accompanying news team and by a camera mounted on the 

helmet of a member of the SWAT team. The members of the 

team are seen on the tapes impressively clad in body armor

and big helmets and carrying formidable rifles pointed forward. It would take a brave criminal to try to fight it out 

with them, and of course there was no criminal in the house

and little reason to expect one to be there. The handcuffing 

of the daughter, looking indeed much younger than her 18 

years, is shown on the helmet video along with the rest of 

the search, and she is so small, frail, utterly harmless looking, and completely unresisting that the sight of her being 

led away in handcuffs is disturbing. All that the SWAT officer had to do was take her by the hand and lead her out of 

the house, which was rapidly filling with smoke from the 

flash bangs; there was no conceivable reason to handcuff 

her. From what we can observe on the videos, all the memCase: 15-1207 Document: 30 Filed: 07/31/2015 Pages: 8
No. 15-1207 7

bers of the SWAT team were white, Mrs. Milan and her 

daughter black; the broadcasting of the videotape cannot 

have helped race relations in Evansville.

Police are not to be criticized for taking threats against 

them and their families seriously. But flash bangs are destructive and dangerous and not to be used in a search of a 

private home occupied so far as the police knew only by an 

elderly woman and her two daughters. We cannot understand the failure of the police, before flash banging the 

house, to conduct a more extensive investigation of the actual suspects: Murray, living two doors away from the Milan 

home and thus with ready access to Mrs. Milan’s open network, and the male Milans. The police neglect of Murray is 

almost incomprehensible. His past made him a prime suspect. A day of investigating him would have nailed him, as 

we know because a day of investigating—the day after the 

violent search of the home—did nail him. The district 

judge’s denial of the defendants’ motion for summary judgment appears eminently reasonable when one puts together 

the flash bangs, the skimpy basis for the search and its 

prematurity—the failure to check whether the network was 

open and the failure to conduct a more extensive investigation before deciding that flash bangs were appropriate 

means of initiating the search, the resulting neglect of Murray, and the handcuffing of the daughter.

True, we mustn’t base our decision on the wisdom of 

hindsight. If the police had had reasonable grounds for conducting the search as they did (that is, with flash bangs, yet 

without any but the most perfunctory, indeed radically incomplete, preliminary investigation), then the doctrine of 

qualified immunity would shield them from liability even 

Case: 15-1207 Document: 30 Filed: 07/31/2015 Pages: 8
8 No. 15-1207

though the flash bangs and ensuing search yielded no benefits for law enforcement. But, to repeat for emphasis, the police acted unreasonably and precipitately in flash banging 

the house without a minimally responsible investigation of 

the threats. The open network expanded the number of possible threateners and just one extra day of surveillance, coupled with a brief investigation of Murray and the three male 

Milans, should have been sufficient to reassure the police 

that there were no dangerous men lurking in the house.

Precipitate use of flash bangs to launch a search has troubled us before, leading us to declare that “the use of a flash 

bang grenade is reasonable only when there is a dangerous 

suspect and a dangerous entry point for the police, when the 

police have checked to see if innocent individuals are 

around before deploying the device, when the police have 

visually inspected the area where the device will be used 

and when the police carry a fire extinguisher.” Estate of Escobedo v. Bender, supra, 600 F.3d at 784–85. The police in this 

case flunked the test just quoted. True, they’d brought a fire 

extinguisher with them—but, as if in tribute to Mack Sennett’s Keystone Kops, they left it in their armored SWAT vehicle.

So while the defendants are correct to point out that a 

reasonable mistake committed by police in the execution of a 

search is shielded from liability by the doctrine of qualified 

immunity, Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 641 (1987), in 

this case the Evansville police committed too many mistakes 

to pass the test of reasonableness.

AFFIRMED

Case: 15-1207 Document: 30 Filed: 07/31/2015 Pages: 8