The following excerpt is from Cunnungham v. Gates, 229 F.3d 1271 (9th Cir. 2000):
Plaintiffs allege that all officers participated in a "course of conduct" which included the use of "jamming" suspects into confined spaces in an effort to provoke the use of force. Whether the defendants are entitled to qualified immunity for their actions in formulating or implementing the "jamming" policy "turns on the objective legal reasonableness of the action . . . assessed in light of legal rules that were clearly established at the time it was taken." Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 639 (1987) (internal cites and quotation marks omitted). For reasons to be discussed, we find that a reasonable law enforcement officer might well have failed to recognize that authorizing or implementing the "jamming" technique would lead to a violation of the plaintiffs' constitutional rights.
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