Wrongful Arrest.

An arrest is a seizure of your body by the state. When it happens without probable cause, the Constitution has been violated, and that violation is a claim.

The Fourth Amendment allows an arrest only on probable cause, meaning facts that would lead a reasonable officer to believe a crime was committed. An arrest built on less, on a hunch, a grudge, mistaken identity, or a fabricated account, is a wrongful arrest. Where an officer pushes a baseless case forward into charges, the related claim of malicious prosecution can come into play as well.

These cases turn on what the officer actually knew at the moment of the arrest. Reports, dispatch records, video, and witness accounts are used to reconstruct that, and to test the stated justification against the facts on the ground. As with any claim against an official, qualified immunity is in the way, and overcoming it takes the same precise, precedent-driven work.