Excessive Force.

Police may use force. They may not use unreasonable force. The whole case lives in the distance between those two sentences.

Excessive force claims are judged under the Fourth Amendment, which forbids unreasonable seizures. Courts ask whether the force was objectively reasonable from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, considering the severity of the offense, whether the person posed an immediate threat, and whether they were actively resisting or fleeing. It is not judged with hindsight, and it is not judged by the officer's intentions. It is judged by what a reasonable officer would have done facing the same facts.

That makes the evidence everything. Body camera and dashcam footage, bystander video, dispatch audio, medical records, and the department's use-of-force policy together show what really happened and how far it strayed from what was allowed. Much of that footage is kept only for a limited time, so a demand to preserve it needs to go out quickly.

Then comes qualified immunity, the defense that ends most of these cases. Beating it means finding the precedent that already held similar force unconstitutional and framing your facts to it. That is careful, precedent-driven work, and it is the difference between a case that survives and one that is dismissed before trial.