Flores v. Perez

The Fourth Amendment does not stop measuring force at the moment of the takedown. It keeps measuring, second by second, for as long as the force continues. In Flores v. Perez, the Fifth Circuit let an excessive-force case go forward against three Austin officers, because what they did after the man was already on the ground was, on the summary-judgment record, more than the situation could justify.

The scene

It was around two in the morning on Sixth Street. An officer believed he saw Louis Flores take hold of the reins of a mounted police horse. The body camera does not clearly show it. Without identifying himself as police, the officer crossed the distance and grabbed Flores by the wrist. About four seconds later Flores pulled his arm away, and three officers took him to the ground.

On the ground the force did not stop. One officer drove a knee into his back and neck and twisted an arm beyond its natural range. Another pinned his legs and pressed a knee into his lower back. His face was held against the pavement. Flores came away with a traumatic brain injury, spinal fractures, neck injuries, a dislocated shoulder, a torn labrum and bicep, and a broken arm, and he needed spinal fusion surgery. Every criminal charge against him was later dropped, after prosecutors watched the video.

The rule

Excessive-force claims live under Graham v. Connor, which asks whether the force was reasonable from the perspective of an officer on the scene, weighing the severity of the offense, whether the person posed an immediate threat, and whether he was actively resisting or trying to flee. Qualified immunity adds a second question. Even if the force was excessive, had earlier cases made that clear enough to give the officers fair warning. At summary judgment the court takes the facts in the light most favorable to the person injured, and where a body camera does not blatantly contradict his account, his version is the one the law gets tested against.

What the court held

All three Graham factors pointed the same way. The suspected offenses were misdemeanors, which weigh against the use of force. Flores was unarmed and made no threatening movement, and the court repeated a settled rule of the circuit: pulling an arm out of an officer's grasp, without more, is not an immediate threat. And on this record he was at most passively resisting, given only about four seconds to comply with commands from someone who had not identified himself as police.

That placed the case squarely inside law the circuit had already written. Drawing on Trammell v. Fruge, Ramirez v. Martinez, and Hanks v. Rogers, the panel stated the line plainly. Once a non-threatening and at-most-passively-resisting suspect is on the ground, officers may not deliver knee strikes or twist his limbs beyond their natural range to subdue him. Because that rule was clear before this arrest, the officers were not entitled to immunity, and the denial was affirmed.

The concurrence

One judge agreed with the result but not all of the reasoning. Judge Clement would have held that the initial takedown, standing alone, did not violate clearly established law, given the crowded street, the late hour, and the police horses close by. She rested the outcome instead on the force that came after the takedown. The distinction matters, because it marks where the defense will fight the next case like this one. Not over whether a hard arrest can ever be reasonable, but over the moment control is achieved and the justification for further force runs out.

Why it matters

For anyone who litigates force, the value of the case is a clean statement of a principle that courts sometimes blur. Reasonableness is not decided once. A takedown that might have been defensible does not license everything that follows it. The question the record forces is always the same. At the instant each new increment of force was applied, what threat justified it. When the answer is a man face down on the pavement who had done nothing more than pull his arm away, the law in this circuit already has a name for that, and it is not immunity.

It is also the third recent case in a row in which the Fifth Circuit declined, at summary judgment, to let the officers' narrative override what the video did and did not show. That is worth noticing. The camera has become the witness that does not blink, and courts are more and more willing to let a jury, rather than the officer, decide what it means.

Flores v. Perez, No. 25-50311 (5th Cir. Aug. 14, 2026) (per curiam) (unpublished; persuasive only under 5th Cir. R. 47.5.4), affirming the denial of qualified immunity and applying Trammell v. Fruge, 868 F.3d 332 (5th Cir. 2017), Ramirez v. Martinez, 716 F.3d 369 (5th Cir. 2013), and Hanks v. Rogers, 853 F.3d 738 (5th Cir. 2017). Analyzed here for the lawyering, not the politics. This is general information, not legal advice.