United States Court of Appeals 

For the First Circuit 

No. 16-2107 

ALFONSO CIOLINO, 

Plaintiff, Appellee, 

CINSIA CIOLINO, 

Plaintiff, 

v. 

GEORGE GIKAS, 

Defendant, Appellant, 

DAVID EARLE; AARON EASTMAN; BRIAN CROWLEY; FRANK G. 

COUSINS, JR., Sheriff, Essex County; CITY OF GLOUCESTER, 

Commonwealth of Massachusetts; JOHN DOE, 

Defendants. 

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS 

[Hon. Allison D. Burroughs, U.S. District Judge] 

Before 

Lynch, Kayatta, and Barron, 

Circuit Judges. 

Stephen C. Pfaff, with whom Louison, Costello, Condon & Pfaff 

LLP was on brief, for appellant. 

Robert S. Sinsheimer, with whom Wesley B. Stoker and 

Sinsheimer & Associates were on brief, for appellee. 
June 28, 2017 
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LYNCH, Circuit Judge. This excessive force case, 

brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, stems from an arrest on June 30, 

2013. Defendant George Gikas, a police officer on crowd-control 

duty, grabbed plaintiff Alfonso Ciolino from behind by the collar 

and dragged him backward and downward to the pavement, after seeing 

Ciolino taunting K-9 dogs. The forceful takedown caused Ciolino 

to sustain a torn rotator cuff. The incident was captured on a 

24-second video, admitted into evidence at trial. We are faced 

with the question of whether to sustain the district court's postverdict denial of qualified immunity to Sergeant Gikas. See 

Ciolino v. Eastman, No. 13-cv-13300-ADB, 2016 WL 4148197 (D. Mass. 

Aug. 4, 2016). We affirm. 

The jury found that Gikas violated Ciolino's Fourth 

Amendment right to be free from excessive force. Responding to 

special questions on the verdict form, the jury also found that 

Ciolino failed to comply with police orders and taunted K-9 dogs 

immediately prior to his arrest and that Gikas had probable cause 

to arrest Ciolino on the night in question. The jury did not 

answer one of the special questions, which asked whether Ciolino 

was "inciting the surrounding crowd immediately prior to his 

arrest." 

The district court then denied Gikas's post-verdict 

motion for judgment as a matter of law, rejecting Gikas's argument 

that he was entitled to qualified immunity. We agree with the 
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district court that a reasonable officer in Gikas's position would 

have understood that Gikas's actions violated Ciolino's Fourth 

Amendment right to be free from excessive force. 

We also find no abuse of discretion in the district 

court's decisions not to define the word "incited" for the jury, 

in the context of the special question on the verdict form, and to 

allow the jury to leave that question unanswered. 

I. Background 

A. Facts 

We adopt the district court's recitation of the facts 

but provide the following summary. Like the district court, we 

view the facts in the light most favorable to the verdict, 

deferring "to the jury's discernible resolution of disputed 

factual issues." Raiche v. Pietroski, 623 F.3d 30, 35 (1st Cir. 

2010) (quoting Iacobucci v. Boulter, 193 F.3d 14, 23 (1st Cir. 

1999)). 

On Saturday, June 29, 2013, Alfonso Ciolino, his wife 

Cinsia, and two other couples attended together the annual St. 

Peter's street festival in downtown Gloucester, Massachusetts. 

The group eventually arrived at the St. Peter's Club on Main Street 

("the Club"), and Ciolino briefly went inside with one companion 

to use the men's bathroom while the rest of the group waited 

outside. Ciolino testified that he had "maybe a beer and a half, 
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maybe two" over the course of the evening and that he was not drunk 

when he left the Club around midnight. 

A crowd had gathered outside the Club shortly after 

midnight, which was approximately when Ciolino left the Club. Law 

enforcement officers from different departments and K-9 dogs were 

present for crowd-control purposes. Gikas, a Sergeant from the 

Essex County Sheriff's Department, and his colleague, Sergeant 

John Pickles, were present on K-9 duty. Two other officers from 

the same department, Aaron Eastman and David Earle, were also 

present on plainclothes duty. Around the time Ciolino was leaving 

the Club, officers ordered the crowd to disperse. Some members of 

the crowd began moving along the sidewalk; others moved slowly or 

not at all. Sergeant Gikas and Sergeant Pickles were standing in 

the street, facing the crowd, which was gathered on the sidewalk. 

Gikas and his dog were about six feet away from the sidewalk; 

Pickles and his dog were in front of Gikas, closer to Ciolino and 

the sidewalk. Ciolino walked away from the Club's exit, in the 

direction of Sergeant Gikas and Sergeant Pickles. 

On the video, Ciolino is seen walking along the sidewalk, 

pausing in front of Pickles's dog in the street, and gesturing 

toward the dog, without ever touching the dog or leaving the 

sidewalk. Ciolino admits that he also said something along the 

lines of "Look, the dogs got . . . muzzle[s] in their mouths. They 
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can't do anything." It is clear on the video, and is undisputed,1

that Ciolino then turns his back to the street, away from Gikas, 

Pickles, and the dogs. The video shows Gikas's and Pickles's dogs 

barking continuously toward the crowd both before and after 

Ciolino's gesture. 

The video shows no visible reaction by Pickles after 

Ciolino's gesture toward Pickles's dog. Nor does anyone in the 

crowd appear to react, although the video captures only a portion 

of the crowd. The district court stated, and the video confirms, 

that Ciolino "did not use or threaten violence, nor was he inciting 

the crowd to act violently" in a manner that warranted a sudden 

and forceful arrest. Ciolino, 2016 WL 4148197, at *5. 

The video shows Gikas then walking up to Ciolino, 

grabbing Ciolino from behind by at least his shirt collar, and 

yanking Ciolino forcibly backward and downward, off the sidewalk 

and onto the pavement in the street.2 Ciolino is seen falling 

 1 Witnesses at trial, including Gikas, confirmed that 

Ciolino had turned away from the dogs and the officers in the 

street, and was facing the crowd on the sidewalk, before Gikas 

approached him and seized him. 

2 At oral argument, Gikas's counsel disputed the notion 

that Gikas "threw" Ciolino to the ground. That word was used at 

trial both by Ciolino and by two witnesses to Ciolino's arrest. 

The video makes it clear that Gikas seized Ciolino and used force 

in bringing him to the ground. The jury's verdict establishes 

that the force, however characterized, was excessive. Gikas does 

not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the 

verdict. 
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awkwardly to the ground, landing hard on his right side. The video 

ends with Eastman and Earle, the plainclothes officers, converging 

on the prone Ciolino and handcuffing him. Ciolino was later 

diagnosed with a torn rotator cuff as a result of the incident. 

Ciolino was taken to the police station after his arrest 

and charged with a Gloucester ordinance violation and disorderly 

conduct. The Gloucester District Court later dismissed the 

charges. 

B. District Court Proceedings 

Ciolino and his wife brought suit in federal court on 

December 31, 2013, pleading § 1983 and state law claims against 

Gikas, several other officials, and the City of Gloucester.3 On 

September 3, 2015, the district court granted in part the 

defendants' motion for summary judgment but allowed the § 1983 

excessive force claim and a state law malicious prosecution claim 

to proceed to trial against Gikas, Eastman, and Earle. 

The trial began on January 19, 2016. The verdict form 

included four questions framed and posed by the district court, 

over Ciolino's objection. The jury answered "yes" to Questions 

3(a), 3(b), and 3(c): 

 3 Officers Eastman, Earle, and Brian Crowley were also 

named as defendants, as was Frank Cousins, Jr., the Sheriff of 

Essex County. All claims against Crowley, Cousins, and the City 

of Gloucester dropped out of the case before trial. The jury found 

Eastman and Earle not liable.
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a) Did Mr. Ciolino fail to comply with any orders from law 

enforcement officers immediately prior to his arrest? 

b) Did the Defendants have probable cause to arrest Mr. 

Ciolino on the night in question? 

c) Was Mr. Ciolino taunting or inciting any of the [K-9] 

dogs immediately prior to his arrest? 

The jury chose not to answer Question 3(d): 

d) Was Mr. Ciolino inciting the surrounding crowd 

immediately prior to his arrest? 

The district court had instructed the jury to "leave [Question 

3(d)] blank" if they could not agree on a yes or no answer. 

On January 25, 2016, the jury found Eastman and Earle 

not liable and found Gikas liable as to the § 1983 excessive force 

claim. The jury awarded Ciolino $140,000 in damages. 

On August 4, 2016, in a written order, the district court 

denied Gikas's post-verdict motion for qualified immunity.4 

Viewing the record in the light most favorable to the verdict, the 

district court held that Ciolino had "posed no immediate threat to 

the safety of the crowd, the officers, or the [K-9] dogs," Ciolino, 

2016 WL 4148197, at *4; that Ciolino's criminal offense (if any) 

had been minor and had involved neither violence nor resistance to 

arrest, id. at *5; and that the situation outside the Club had not 

been so "volatile" or so "rapidly escalating" as to justify a 

sudden and aggressive police response, id. The court concluded 

 4 At the close of the plaintiff's case, the district court 

had reserved a ruling on the defendants' motion until after the 

jury's verdict. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 50. 
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"that, at the time of the incident on June 30, 2013, it was clearly 

established that forcibly throwing a suspect to the ground for 

purposes of making an arrest would constitute excessive force" in 

such circumstances. Id. The court cited three First Circuit 

cases, decided before the incident, to support that holding. See 

Raiche, 623 F.3d at 39; Morelli v. Webster, 552 F.3d 12, 24 (1st 

Cir. 2009); Alexis v. McDonald's Rests. of Mass., Inc., 67 F.3d 

341, 346, 353 (1st Cir. 1995). 

II. Special Jury Question 3(d)

Question 3(d) on the verdict form asked the jury whether 

Ciolino was "inciting the surrounding crowd immediately prior to 

his arrest." During its deliberations, the jury sent the district 

court a question concerning Question 3(d): "Please define 

'incited.' Are we being asked if Mr. Ciolino was attempting to 

incite the crowd or if he was successful in inciting the crowd?" 

Gikas's counsel argued that the word should be defined 

for the jury as including "attempt[ing] to incite," and that, 

regardless, the jury should be required to answer the question.

The district court chose not to offer a definition to the jury, 

reasoning that no definition had been offered during jury 

instructions and that, in any event, the question was merely 

advisory. The court responded to the jury's question as follows: 

Question 3(d) asks you to make certain factual 

findings as the finders of fact. And if you 

can make that factual finding consistent with 
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the rest of my instructions, you should make 

it. 

If you are unable to come to an agreement on 

that one question, please leave it blank. 

Gikas argues on appeal that the district court erred by 

declining to clarify the definition of "incited" and by allowing 

the jury not to answer Question 3(d). We review each of those two 

decisions for abuse of discretion. See Uphoff Figueroa v. 

Alejandro, 597 F.3d 423, 434 (1st Cir. 2010) (applying abuse of 

discretion review to "claimed errors in instructions' form or 

wording" and to "preserved objections to special verdict forms"); 

Sanchez-Lopez v. Fuentes-Pujols, 375 F.3d 121, 134 (1st Cir. 2004) 

("To determine whether the issues were fairly presented to the 

jury, we examine the court's instructions and the wording of the 

verdict form as a whole."). 

The district court permissibly exercised its discretion 

by declining to provide a definition of "incited," which is not a 

word "outside of [an ordinary] juror's understanding." United 

States v. Fulmer, 108 F.3d 1486, 1495 (1st Cir. 1997); see also 

United States v. Stefanik, 674 F.3d 71, 74 (1st Cir. 2012) (stating 

that the district court "was not compelled to give a definition 

[of the word 'intimidate'] even when the jury requested one"). 

The district court also acted within its discretion when 

it allowed the jury not to answer the advisory Question 3(d). 

District courts may submit "special interrogatories to the jury" 
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in order to elicit factfinding that is relevant to the court's 

legal conclusion on qualified immunity. Singh v. Blue Cross/Blue 

Shield of Mass., Inc., 308 F.3d 25, 34 n.9 (1st Cir. 2002) (quoting 

St. Hilaire v. City of Laconia, 71 F.3d 20, 24 n.1 (1st Cir. 

1995)). District courts are not required to pose any such 

questions. 

In our view -- and in the district court's view -- an 

answer to Question 3(d) was not necessary to the jury's liability 

findings. Nor was an answer necessary to the district court's 

qualified immunity ruling. Indeed, the district court confirmed 

that its immunity holding "would have been the same if the special 

questions had not been posed." Ciolino, 2016 WL 4148197, at *6 

n.3. 

III. Qualified Immunity

We review de novo "the district court's denial of a postverdict motion for judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50," and 

we "view[] the evidence in the light most favorable to the 

verdict." Kennedy v. Town of Billerica, 617 F.3d 520, 527 (1st 

Cir. 2010). In qualified immunity analysis, both elements 

(described below) of the question of whether the law was clearly 

established are legal determinations, entitled to de novo review. 

See Stamps v. Town of Framingham, 813 F.3d 27, 33, 39 (1st Cir. 

2016) (citing Elder v. Holloway, 510 U.S. 510, 516 (1994)); 

Decotiis v. Whittemore, 635 F.3d 22, 36–37 (1st Cir. 2011). 
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A. Qualified Immunity Framework 

Qualified immunity protects public officials from § 1983 

suits for damages if their actions "d[id] not violate clearly 

established statutory or constitutional rights of which a 

reasonable person would have known." White v. Pauly, 137 S. Ct. 

548, 551 (2017) (per curiam) (quoting Mullenix v. Luna, 136 S. Ct. 

305, 308 (2015) (per curiam)). 

The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized qualified 

immunity's importance -- particularly "the longstanding principle 

that 'clearly established law' should not be defined 'at a high 

level of generality.'" Id. at 552 (quoting Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 

563 U.S. 731, 742 (2011)); see also, e.g., City & County of San 

Francisco v. Sheehan, 135 S. Ct. 1765, 1776 (2015) ("Qualified 

immunity is no immunity at all if 'clearly established' law can 

simply be defined as the right to be free from unreasonable 

searches and seizures."). We must analyze whether the law is 

clearly established "in light of the specific context of the case, 

not as a broad general proposition." Hunt v. Massi, 773 F.3d 361, 

367 (1st Cir. 2014) (quoting Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 198 

(2004) (per curiam)). 

Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989), and Tennessee v. 

Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985), provide the "general tests" for Fourth 

Amendment excessive force claims. Brosseau, 543 U.S. at 199. They 

set forth three criteria for evaluating the reasonableness of force 
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used: (1) "the severity of the crime at issue"; (2) "whether the 

suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or 

others"; and (3) "whether [the suspect] is actively resisting 

arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight." Graham, 490 U.S. 

at 396 (citing Garner, 471 U.S. at 8–9). Although Graham and 

Garner "guide us in determining the law in many different kinds of 

circumstances," those precedents are "cast at a high level of 

generality" and do not necessarily establish the "clear law . . . 

that would apply" to any given set of circumstances, outside of 

the most "obvious case[s]." Brosseau, 543 U.S. at 199 (citation 

omitted). As we apply the Graham factors, we must look also to 

"clearly established law" that is "'particularized' to the facts 

of the case." White, 137 S. Ct. at 552 (quoting Anderson v. 

Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987)); accord Plumhoff v. Rickard, 

134 S. Ct. 2012, 2023 (2014). 

We undertake a two-step inquiry in qualified immunity 

cases, asking "(1) whether the facts alleged or shown by the 

plaintiff make out a violation of a constitutional right; and 

(2) if so, whether the right was 'clearly established' at the time 

of the defendant's alleged violation." Stamps, 813 F.3d at 34 

(quoting Mlodzinski v. Lewis, 648 F.3d 24, 32 (1st Cir. 2011)). 

In this case, the jury has already found that Gikas violated 

Ciolino's Fourth Amendment right to be free from excessive force. 

Gikas has not challenged the sufficiency of the evidence supporting 
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that verdict, either in his post-verdict motion in the district 

court or before us. 

As a result, we address the second prong: whether the 

right that Gikas violated was "clearly established" at the time 

Gikas acted. Id. (quoting Mlodzinski, 648 F.3d at 32). "The 

second prong, in turn, has two elements: 'We ask (a) whether the 

legal contours of the right in question were sufficiently clear 

that a reasonable officer would have understood that what he was 

doing violated the right, and (b) whether in the particular factual 

context of the case, a reasonable officer would have understood 

that his conduct violated the right.'" Id. (quoting Mlodzinski, 

648 F.3d at 32–33). 

The first element of prong two is easily satisfied. The 

legal contours of Ciolino's right were clear and a reasonable 

officer would have had "clear notice" of it. Mlodzinski, 648 F.3d 

at 33 (quoting Decotiis, 635 F.3d at 37); see also, e.g., Morelli, 

552 F.3d at 23–24 ("Our case law supplies a crystal clear 

articulation of the right . . . to be free from the use of excessive 

force by an arresting officer."). Gikas focuses his argument on 

the second element of prong two: whether a reasonable officer would 

have understood that Gikas's actions were unconstitutional under 

the particular circumstances he confronted. See Mlodzinski, 648 

F.3d at 33; see also Decotiis, 635 F.3d at 36–37 (explaining that 

the second element of prong two "requir[es] a legal determination" 
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but "is highly fact specific" (quoting Estrada v. Rhode Island, 

594 F.3d 56, 63 (1st Cir. 2010))). 

B. Analysis of Second Element of Second Qualified Immunity Prong 

We agree with the district court that a reasonable 

officer in Gikas's position "would have understood that what he 

[wa]s doing violate[d]" Ciolino's Fourth Amendment right. alKidd, 563 U.S. at 741 (quoting Anderson, 483 U.S. at 640). 

We review briefly three cases, each of which predates 

Gikas's actions in June 2013. In our view, these precedents embody 

"a robust 'consensus of cases of persuasive authority,'" id. at 

742 (quoting Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 617 (1999)), such that 

a reasonable officer would have recognized "the violative nature 

of [Gikas's] particular conduct," id. 

Raiche v. Pietroski is most closely on point. Two police 

officers, including defendant Pietroski, signaled plaintiff Raiche 

to stop by using their cruiser's overhead lights when they saw him 

driving a motorcycle without a helmet. 623 F.3d at 33–34. Raiche 

did not immediately stop. Id. When Raiche did pull over, 

Pietroski ran immediately from his cruiser toward Raiche and 

tackled him, taking him off the motorcycle. Id. at 34. A jury 

later found that Pietroski had used excessive force. Id. at 35. 

"[G]iven the jury's resolution of the facts," id. at 36, we 

affirmed the district court's post-verdict denial of qualified 

immunity. Id. at 35–36. 
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Raiche, like Ciolino, disobeyed a police order but 

showed no inclination to resist arrest or to attempt to flee from 

arrest. See id. at 37. Like Ciolino, he "present[ed] no 

indications of dangerousness." Id. at 39. Like Ciolino, he was 

not given a chance to submit peacefully to arrest before 

significant force was used to subdue him. See id. at 39 & n.3. 

And in Raiche, as here, the defendant officer had no need to make 

"split-second judgments" in response to "tense, uncertain, and 

rapidly evolving" circumstances. Id. at 39 (quoting Graham, 490 

U.S. at 396). Rather, an "objectively reasonable police officer" 

would have taken a more measured approach. Id. 

Morelli v. Webster and Alexis v. McDonald's Restaurants 

of Massachusetts, Inc. further illustrate the application of 

Graham's general excessive force principles in a situation 

analogous to the one before us. In Morelli, the plaintiff was 

detained in a hotel corridor with force sufficient to tear her 

rotator cuff, despite the fact that she had committed a minor 

crime, at most, and showed no "evidence of either dangerousness or 

attempted flight." 552 F.3d at 24. In Alexis, after the plaintiff 

refused an officer's orders to leave a restaurant, see 67 F.3d at 

345–46, the officer "suddenly and violently grabbed and pulled 

[the plaintiff] bodily from the booth and across the table," id. 

at 346. In each case, viewing the record in the plaintiff's favor 

at the summary judgment stage, we reversed the district court's 
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grant of qualified immunity, finding the defendant officer's 

actions not only unconstitutional but also "outside the universe 

of protected mistakes," Morelli, 552 F.3d at 24, that a reasonable 

officer might have made under the circumstances. See id. at 25; 

Alexis, 67 F.3d at 353. 

Seeking to persuade us that his judgment calls, even if 

mistaken, were those of a reasonable officer, Gikas argues that 

the scene outside the Club was so volatile that he was "forced to 

make [a] split-second judgment[]," Graham, 490 U.S. at 397, about 

how much force was warranted. Gikas testified that he arrested 

Ciolino in the way he did because Ciolino "was inciting the crowd," 

and so Gikas "needed to get [Ciolino] away from the crowd in order 

to gain control over it." 

The record before us does not support Gikas's argument 

that he had to make a split-second judgment and that the atmosphere 

outside the Club was so highly combustible that he had to arrest 

Ciolino as he did. The video, although it captures only 24 

seconds, refutes Gikas's argument. Notably, the video shows that 

Sergeant Pickles, the officer whose dog Ciolino taunts just before 

the arrest, barely reacts to Ciolino's behavior and certainly does 

not treat Ciolino as a threat. Nor do the other officers on the 

scene. And no officer on the scene testified that Ciolino was 

posing an immediate threat of violence and had to be removed. Even 

Gikas himself testified that he did not perceive Ciolino as an 
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active threat; rather, his goal in removing Ciolino forcibly from 

the sidewalk was to prevent Ciolino from having an "opportunity to 

[incite] the crowd," which "could instigate a larger problem." 

The cases cited by Gikas involve plainly distinguishable 

circumstances. In one set of cases, the officers claiming immunity 

faced much more volatile and dangerous scenes than the one Gikas 

confronted, and the persons against whom force was used posed a 

greater threat to the safety of the officers and others than 

Ciolino did. See, e.g., Asociación de Periodistas de P.R. v. 

Mueller, 680 F.3d 70, 74–75 (1st Cir. 2012) (granting immunity 

where video of incident showed a "rapid deterioration of the 

situation" and "physical confrontation[s]" as officers were 

attempting to disperse crowd); Fils v. City of Aventura, 647 F.3d 

1272, 1290–91 (11th Cir. 2011) (granting immunity to officer for 

slamming plaintiff to ground, where plaintiff's own testimony 

indicated that "the crowd outside the club became significantly 

more hostile to the police after [a co-plaintiff] was tased," and 

plaintiff had taken a step toward officer, whose back was turned, 

while screaming at him); Salazar v. City of New York, No. 15-cv1989 (KBF), 2016 WL 3748499, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. July 11, 2016) 

(granting immunity to officers who had acted in response to a "loud 

and physical . . . brawl" involving the plaintiff, adjacent to a 

crowd outside a bar in midtown Manhattan); Estate of Devine v. 

Fusaro, No. 3:14-cv-01019 (JAM), 2016 WL 183472, at *1-3 (D. Conn. 
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Jan. 14, 2016) (granting immunity to officers for actions aimed at 

ending unpredictable and dangerous standoff with armed and 

suicidal man), aff'd, No. 16-414-cv, 2017 WL 362685 (2d Cir. Jan. 

23, 2017) (unpublished summary order). 

A second set of Gikas's cases, which overlaps in part 

with the first set, is distinguishable for another reason: they 

involved arrestees who had physically resisted, or were actively 

resisting, arrest. See, e.g., Salazar, 2016 WL 3748499, at *2, *6 

(granting immunity for pepper-spraying plaintiff who had been 

"kicking and screaming" during her arrest); Brown v. City of New 

York, No. 13-cv-1018 (KBF), 2016 WL 1611502, at *1–2 (S.D.N.Y. 

Apr. 20, 2016) (granting immunity for pepper-spraying plaintiff 

who had refused to offer her hands for handcuffing);5 Therrien v. 

Town of Jay, 483 F. Supp. 2d 19, 26–27 (D. Me. 2007) (granting 

immunity for forceful takedown after a lengthy car chase, in which 

 5 Gikas also argues that Brown stands for the principle 

that "even when a jury or judge finds force excessive, where the 

issue of qualified immunity is a close call, it should fall in 

favor of the police officers." There is no such rule in the Second 

Circuit, and certainly not in the First Circuit. Brown merely 

reiterates that if reasonable minds could disagree as to the first 

prong of qualified immunity -- that is, whether there was a 

constitutional violation at all -- a defendant will ordinarily be 

entitled to immunity on the second prong. That language restates 

the familiar principle that qualified immunity gives "a reasonable 

officer . . . the benefit of a margin of error." Mlodzinski, 648 

F.3d at 33 (quoting Morelli, 552 F.3d at 24). 
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arrestee ignored numerous orders to stop, was clearly intoxicated, 

and generally acted in an "irrational and unpredictable fashion").6 

Finally, we reject Gikas's argument that he acted in a 

manner consistent with his training and police protocol when he 

took Ciolino to the ground with force. Cf. Stamps, 813 F.3d at 32 

n.4 (discussing the relevance of "police training and procedures" 

to a qualified immunity inquiry in an excessive force case). Gikas 

testified at trial that he had been taught to employ "open-hand" 

techniques to subdue arrestees who have refused to obey verbal 

commands and that he used such a technique on Ciolino, rather than 

a more extreme use of force, after perceiving that Ciolino had 

refused police instructions to "move along" and to leave the K-9 

dogs alone. 

If anything, Gikas's actions appear to be contrary to 

the training he says he received on the spectrum of police 

responses. A reasonable officer might well have laid hands on 

Ciolino, either to arrest him or to remove him, but would have 

used a less aggressive technique, such as seizing and securing 

 6 Murphy v. Palmer, brought to our attention at oral 

argument, could be placed into both sets of cases. No. 14-cv-6896 

(FLW) (DEA), 2017 WL 2364195 (D.N.J. May 31, 2017) (unpublished 

opinion). In Murphy, a forceful arrest was held to be reasonable 

because the "belligerent and noncompliant" plaintiff attempted to 

retreat when told he was under arrest, "it was unclear whether 

[he] posed an imminent threat to the safety of the [o]fficers," 

and "[t]he circumstances were tense and rapidly escalating." Id. 

at *13. 
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Ciolino's hands, rather than taking the actions Gikas did. The 

record contains no evidence that Gikas was trained to "jump[] 

immediately to the extreme end of the 'open-hand' force category," 

Raiche, 623 F.3d at 39, rather than to control Ciolino with a less 

forceful technique. Nor is there any evidence that Gikas was 

trained to regard a disobeyed order to "move along" as equivalent 

to a disobeyed order to submit to arrest. See id. at 37–38; 

Alexis, 67 F.3d at 345-46, 353. Gikas gave Ciolino no warning at 

all that he was under arrest before Gikas decided to use force. 

We conclude, as did the district court, that Gikas's 

actions not only violated Ciolino's Fourth Amendment right but 

also fell outside the "margin of error," Morelli, 552 F.3d at 24, 

that qualified immunity provides. 

IV. Conclusion 

The denial of qualified immunity and the judgment are 

affirmed.