and welcome back to the civil rights lawyer Channel about three months ago I posted a video showing you body cam footage of a police canine being released into a house in which my client was hiding we filed a lawsuit about three months ago well we got our first big ruling on that case and unqualified immunity just in the past few days here's a reminder of what the case is about and then I'll tell you the big news candy open the door now or we're gonna kick it in handy Last Chance open the door I'm kicking it in can you make yourself known now candy get yourself up and bringing a canine in you will be bit candy Last Chance canine is in the trailer I won't release him you will be bit please so yeah this is the case from up in Marshall County West Virginia where my client was inside of this house and there was an arrest warrant for it was for like a probation violation so there was no serious crime that they were after her for it was just sort of a process deal where they were authorized to take her into custody so she's inside this house they are authorized to go inside the house forcibly to get her and they can't find her instead of actually taking the time to find her this dog handler just releases his canine into the house to find Candy wood but the problem is is we all know and he knew what would happen once the dog found her and that is violence that the dog would violently attack her and I'll go ahead and put the little click thingy up there so you can watch the other video because I really don't think YouTube would monetize that footage again in fact I'm surprised they did in the first place but what you're not seeing here that you can watch in the other video and I encourage you to do so is this dog finding this woman under a pilot clothes and just latching onto her and ripping the flesh literally off her arm violently attacking her the police officer can't get the dog off of her and she's just screaming it's it's really terrible footage so here's the issue they say it's fine if we just say twice all right we're releasing the dog we're releasing the dog and then whatever happens happens and we say no you can only use violence serious violence like a weaponized pet if there is a serious immediate safety threat to somebody just like using a taser or other forms of physical violence that your government may use on you here is the big news that happened and that's that we have already beaten them on their first claim of qualified immunity that's right the sheriff's department and this police officer claimed qualified immunity in a motion to dismiss that they filed so we prepared a response and I also had a law student from Liberty University Jacob Lewis working with me and he did a lot of the work on this response and I have I'm going to introduce you to him just here in a second but we won we won on the qualified immunity defense all counts are proceeding forward at this point so we're now in the discovery phase so here is Jacob let me introduce him to you hopefully he's going to work on a lot more cases that you see on my channel all right this is Jacob Lewis he's a law student he's working with us right now uh tell us a little bit about yourself all right um so I'm rising 2-well at Liberty law you helped write the response to the Motions to dismiss in a wood case which we just uh won on congratulations on your first uh Victory against qualified immunity uh how do you feel it feels good uh it was kind of a nice little surprise after a bit of a vacation to come back and see all the motion to dismiss response that we won on it it feels good to actually be doing something with some of the material that I've learned so far while pursuing my degree and it also feels good to just get my hands on some real uh real law yeah I mean it feels good to actually win in a fight against your government and have the federal Judiciary say that you have now protected somebody's constitutional rights exactly no and I definitely enjoy just getting to dive into Mrs Woods case and just learn more about her and learn more about the law surrounding what happened to her watching the body cam footage from the wood case what most struck you about that footage the the most important part of that footage is not really what happens with the dog it's what happens leading up to it all of the time that he spends going through the house um and there's even from my perspective there's even a brief pause where he gets to that room where she is and he's looking at the the pile of clothes where she's hiding and it's almost like he makes the decision right then and there that it'll be more expedient for him to send the dog in to do his job than it would be for him to have to go in and find her awesome well thanks man uh looking forward to working on the next one all right and I forgot to mention that we also won on their motion to dismiss our account for a monel claim and as Chris Weiss just discussed a couple videos ago those are very different difficult claims and that's when you sue the actual municipality or the county basically the employer I.E the sheriff's department and claim that there is this pattern or practice or policy of uh civil rights violations and they're very very difficult cases but here I thought that there was one because it seems that they had a policy where they are saying all right we're releasing this dog as long as we warn you twice then we can release the dog on you and that just doesn't jive with federal constitutional law that says that police officers cannot use violent physical Force just to make it easier to find somebody who is is hiding in-house without some sort of substantial safety threat so they disagreed with this and they filed a motion to dismiss on those grounds with the federal court so this is great news that this federal court has agreed with us that we have stated a plausible claim here that police officers are violating the Fourth Amendment when they release a dog into a house with a non-violent person who's just hiding under some clothes inside and where they do that as a policy then you can sue that municipality so great news moving forward on all claims so let's just restate the law here so that we're all on the same page police officers and potential suspects being pursued by dogs in the future so where a canine is deployed on a citizen remember that individual is seized therefore the fourth amendment is triggered it is triggered so if that's a lawful seizure the the issue is whether or not the seizure is reasonable or whether or not it's unreasonable and that depends on the level of force used releasing a German shepherd on somebody that automatically is like kicking the force up to I don't know seven or eight something like that so the law can vary between federal circuit on when that's reasonable and when that's not reasonable and there unfortunately are not a whole lot of dog cases out there to compare and the problem with that claim qualified immunity they almost always get qualified immunity where you can't show a near identical fact scenario so there are a lot of dog cases out there but not a huge number of them but here's my opinion on what the state status of the law is where canines are deployed by police a warning should be given along with an opportunity to surrender if possible but deploying canines on suspects who have already been subdued surrounded or who are not actively resisting or evading arrest is almost surely going to be considered excessive force with or without a warning being given so deploying canines on suspects who pose no immediate threat at all is generally going to be unreasonable and therefore unconstitutional remember canines should only be deployed where there exists some serious immediate safety threat in a fast-moving situation where there's some actual reason to use your dog or there's some actual reason to do so so thanks for watching please subscribe if you like to follow along on these types of cases and you like to learn your constitutional rights check me out on Twitter at johnbrionesq also on Facebook at John H Brian attorney at law and also if you want to contribute to the fight to end qualified immunity please donate to the institute for justice using my custom donation link that you'll find in the description for this video remember remember because I have a custom link this is being tracked and they keep track of how much money my audience is donating to this fight for justice you are literally keeping civil rights lawyers employed suing the government it's a good thing because remember freedom is scary deal with it I'll see you next time foreign