Opinion ID: 67630
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Failure to Remove Yacco Promptly

Text: With respect to Trammell’s second claim against Dorough, we agree with 16 the District Court’s description of the record viewed in the light most favorable to Trammell and with its conclusion based on the record so viewed that a seizure with excessive force occurred. Given that version of the events, we find our prior decision in Priester helpful on both the issue of whether a violation occurred and the issue of whether official immunity is available to Dorough. In Priester, officers used a K-9 dog to track the scent of a robber leading away from the scene of the robbery. The plaintiff hid from the officers in a canal but voluntarily stood up and put his hands in the air when the officers shined a light into the canal. The officers told the plaintiff to lie down or else they would release the dog. The plaintiff complied, but the handler released the dog anyway. The plaintiff testified that, although he begged the officers to call the dog off, the defendants stood and watched “for an eternity” while the dog continued to attack and bite the plaintiff. Id. at 924. This Court held not only that the officer who deliberately sicced the dog on the victim engaged in a violation of clearly established constitutional law, but also that an accompanying officer acted objectively unreasonably in failing to intervene to stop the use of force. We further held that official immunity was not available to the officers: Nor do we think particularized case law is necessary to overcome 17 Defendant Cushing's claim of qualified immunity. That a police officer had a duty to intervene when he witnessed the use of excessive force and had the ability to intervene was clearly established in February 1994. See Byrd v. Clark, 783 F.2d 1002, 1007 (11th Cir.1986) (“If a police officer, whether supervisory or not, fails or refuses to intervene when a constitutional violation such as an unprovoked beating takes place in his presence, the officer is directly liable under Section 1983.”); see also Post, 7 F.3d at 1560 (“A police officer has the duty to intervene when another officer uses excessive force.”); Fundiller v. City of Cooper City, 777 F.2d 1436, 1441-42 (11th Cir.1985); Harris v. Chanclor, 537 F.2d 203, 206 (5th Cir.1976). When we defer to the jury's implicit fact finding, the excessive force in this case was obvious and was such that every reasonable officer would have known that it was clearly in violation of Priester's constitutional rights. Cushing observed the entire attack and had the time and ability to intervene, but he did nothing. No particularized case law was necessary for a reasonable police officer to know that, on the facts of this case and given that the duty to intervene was clearly established, he should have intervened. Id. Priester establishes that, under certain circumstances, failure to intervene in a dog attack is an obvious use of excessive force. As in Priester, Trammell insists that Officer Dorough permitted his dog to engage in an attack after it became apparent that he was not the suspect and posed no apparent danger to the officers. This fact alone is sufficient to establish that Dorough allegedly violated a clearly established constitutional norm, even if Dorough did not deliberately “sic” Yacco on Trammell. We further note that, viewing the record in the light most favorable to 18 Trammell, the attack lasted for a significant period of time. While Dorough testified that he immediately called Yacco off once he realized his mistake, the record evidences a number of things that transpired between the commencement of the attack and its conclusion which could lead a factfinder to conclude that the officers’ reactions were not instantaneous. Cooper testified, for example, that the attack continued long enough for him to realize that there were flashlights in his backyard and to go to the back porch to investigate the source of the lights. When he arrived at his back screen door, he could see that Trammell’s shirt had already been torn off of his back and shredded to his waist. He had time to observe the officers standing and staring at Trammell, to threaten to kill the dog, and to start to move across the yard toward Trammell before Yacco was removed by the officers. Despite the fact that Trammell has been unable to put a precise time frame on the attack, his testimony and that of Cooper is sufficient to raise the factual possibility that the attack continued for some significant length of time. If a jury concludes that the officers failed to stop the attack promptly after they became aware that Trammell was not the suspect, Priester compels the conclusion that Officer Dorough engaged in an obvious violation of Trammell’s rights by failing to stop Yacco’s attack. Accordingly, the District Court erred in awarding summary judgment to Dorough on this issue. We will reverse. 19