Aleman v. City of Charlotte

Clearly established in 2017 that deadly force against person who called 911 for help, armed with a pistol and in throes of paranoia, would contravene the Fourth Amendment where subject was holding firearm in his hand, ignoring commands to drop the weapon, but standing still in a position of surrender, not firing the weapon or aiming it at any person, and not otherwise making a furtive or threatening movement that would suggest he had an intent to use the weapon to harm the officer or anyone else; citing prior case, court concludes “an officer does not possess the unfettered authority to shoot a member of the public simply because that person is carrying a weapon … deadly force may only be used by a police officer when, based on a reasonable assessment, the officer or another person is threatened with the weapon”; “circumstances under which a police officer could reasonably feel threatened also include when a suspect who is armed, or mistakenly believed to be armed, makes some other threatening movement” and “deadly force has been deemed constitutionally permissible where ‘the objective basis for the threat was real, but the [suspect's weapon] was not’ … Crucially, however, deadly force has proven to violate the Fourth Amendment where the suspect's weapon ‘was real,’ but ‘the threat was not.’”; district court’s grant of summary judgment to officer reversed and case remanded for determination of facts.