Court Opinion

ID: 9874098
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-26 21:56:34.176535+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:46:44.383192
License: Public Domain

CONCURRENCE
ALICE M. BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Although I concur fully in my colleagues’ reasoned opinion, I write separately to emphasize that, while the Memphis Police Department did not violate any clearly established rule of constitutional law, its decision to use a tactical unit and the way it used that unit are, in these circumstances which stem from a suspected animal cruelty misdemeanor offense, appalling. The fact is that the police department’s conduct, while not constitutionally impermissible, was certainly disproportionate. Had cooler and more rational heads prevailed, Moore’s life likely would have been spared and Memphis Animal Services would still have been able to investigate the animal cruelty complaints it had received. “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” Thomas Jefferson to the Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland (March 31, 1809), reprinted in 1 The Papers of Thomas Jefferson 98-99 (J. Jefferson Looney ed., 2004). The Memphis Police Department would do well to think about this admonition.