Caniglia v. Strom ( 2020 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 19-1764
EDWARD A. CANIGLIA,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
ROBERT F. STROM, as the Finance Director of the City of
Cranston, ET AL.,
Defendants, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF RHODE ISLAND
[Hon. John J. McConnell, Jr., U.S. District Judge]
Before
Barron, Circuit Judge,
Souter, Associate Justice,
and Selya, Circuit Judge.
Thomas W. Lyons, with whom Rhiannon S. Huffman and Strauss,
Factor, Laing & Lyons were on brief, for appellant.
Marc DeSisto, with whom Patrick K. Cunningham, Caroline V.
Murphy, and DeSisto Law LLC were on brief, for appellees.
March 13, 2020

Hon. David H. Souter, Associate Justice (Ret.) of the
Supreme Court of the United States, sitting by designation.
SELYA, Circuit Judge. There are widely varied
circumstances, ranging from helping little children to cross busy
streets to navigating the sometimes stormy seas of neighborhood
disturbances, in which police officers demonstrate, over and over
again, the importance of the roles that they play in preserving
and protecting communities. Given this reality, it is unsurprising
that in Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433 (1973), the Supreme Court
determined, in the motor vehicle context, that police officers
performing community caretaking functions are entitled to a
special measure of constitutional protection. See id. at 446-48(holding that warrantless search of disabled vehicle's trunk to
preserve public safety did not violate Fourth Amendment). We hold
today — as a matter of first impression in this circuit — that
this measure of protection extends to police officers performing
community caretaking functions on private premises (including
homes). Based on this holding and on our other conclusions, we
affirm the district court's entry of summary judgment for the
defendants in this highly charged case.
I. BACKGROUND
We start with the cast of characters. At the times
material hereto, plaintiff-appellant Edward A. Caniglia resided
with his wife, Kim Caniglia, in Cranston, Rhode Island. The
defendants include the City of Cranston (the City), Colonel Michael
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J. Winquist (Cranston's police chief), and five Cranston police
officers.1
Having identified the central players, we rehearse the
relevant facts in the light most congenial to the summary judgment
loser (here, the plaintiff). See Avery v. Hughes, 661 F.3d 690,
691 (1st Cir. 2011). On August 20, 2015, marital discord erupted
at the Caniglia residence. During the disagreement, the plaintiff
retrieved a handgun from the bedroom — a handgun that (unbeknownst
to Kim in that moment) was unloaded. Kim initially maintained
that the plaintiff also brought out a magazine for the gun, but
she subsequently stated in a deposition that she only remembered
his retrieval of the handgun. Throwing the gun onto the dining
room table, the plaintiff said something like "shoot me now and
get it over with." Although the plaintiff suggests that this
outburst was merely a "dramatic gesture," Kim took it seriously:
worried about her husband's state of mind even after he had left
to "go for a ride," she returned the gun to its customary place
and hid the magazine. Kim also decided that she would stay at a
1 The plaintiff sued Colonel Winquist and the five officers —
Brandon Barth, Russell C. Henry, Jr., John Mastrati, Wayne Russell,
and Austin Smith — in both their individual and official
capacities. He also sued a sixth officer, Robert Quirk, but the
entry of judgment in Quirk's favor has not been appealed.
Additionally, the plaintiff sued the City by and through its
Finance Director, Robert F. Strom. See R.I. Gen. Laws § 45-15-5.
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hotel for the night if the plaintiff had not calmed down when he
returned. She began to pack a bag.
The plaintiff's return sparked a second spat. This time,
Kim departed to spend the night at a nearby hotel. When Kim spoke
to the plaintiff by telephone that evening, he sounded upset and
"[a] little" angry.
The next morning, Kim was unable to reach her husband by
telephone. Concerned that he might have committed suicide or
otherwise harmed himself, she called the Cranston Police
Department (CPD) on a non-emergency line and asked that an officer
accompany her to the residence. She said that her husband was
depressed and that she was "worried for him." She also said that
she was concerned "about what [she] would find" when she returned
home.
Soon thereafter, Officer Mastrati rendezvoused with Kim.
She recounted her arguments with the plaintiff the previous day,
his disturbing behavior and statements, and her subsequent
concealment of the magazine. At some point during this discussion,
Kim mentioned that the handgun her husband produced the previous
day had not been loaded. The record contains conflicting evidence
about whether Kim told the officers that the plaintiff brought out
the magazine in addition to the unloaded handgun. Although Kim
made clear that she was not concerned for her own safety, she
stressed that, based on her fear that her husband might have
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committed suicide, she was "afraid of what [she] would find when
[she] got home."
Officer Mastrati then called the plaintiff, who said
that he was willing to speak with the police in person. By this
time, Sergeant Barth and Officers Russell and Smith had arrived on
the scene. The four officers went to the residence and spoke with
the plaintiff on the back porch while Kim waited in her car. The
plaintiff corroborated Kim's account, stating that he brought out
the firearm and asked his wife to shoot him because he was "sick
of the arguments" and "couldn't take it anymore." When the
officers asked him about his mental health, he told them "that was
none of their business" but denied that he was suicidal. Officer
Mastrati subsequently reported that the plaintiff "appeared
normal" during this encounter, and Officer Russell described the
plaintiff's demeanor as calm and cooperative. This appraisal,
though, was not unanimous: Sergeant Barth thought the plaintiff
seemed somewhat "[a]gitated" and "angry," and Kim noted that he
became "very upset" with her for involving the police.
The ranking officer at the scene (Sergeant Barth)
determined, based on the totality of the circumstances, that the
plaintiff was imminently dangerous to himself and others. After
expressing some uncertainty, the plaintiff agreed to be
transported by ambulance to a nearby hospital for a psychiatric
evaluation. The plaintiff claims that he only agreed to be
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transported because the officers told him that his firearms would
not be confiscated if he assented to go to the hospital for an
evaluation. But the record contains no evidence from any of the
four officers who were present at the residence suggesting that
such a promise was made.
At some point that morning, someone (the record is
unclear as to whether the "someone" was Kim or the plaintiff)
informed the officers that there was a second handgun on the
premises. After the plaintiff departed by ambulance for the
hospital, unaccompanied by any police officer, Sergeant Barth
decided to seize these two firearms. A superior officer (Captain
Henry) approved that decision by telephone. Accompanied by Kim,
one or more of the officers entered the house and garage, seizing
the two firearms, magazines for both guns, and ammunition. Kim
directed the officers to each of the items seized. The parties
dispute both whether Kim indicated that she wanted the guns removed
and whether the officers secured her cooperation by telling her
that her husband had consented to confiscation of the firearms.
There is no dispute, though, that the officers understood that the
firearms belonged to the plaintiff and that he objected to their
seizure.
The plaintiff was evaluated at Kent Hospital but not
admitted as an inpatient. In October of 2015 — after several
unsuccessful attempts to retrieve the plaintiff's firearms from
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the CPD — the plaintiff's attorney formally requested their return.
The firearms were returned in December. The CPD never prevented
the plaintiff from obtaining other firearms at any time. Nor did
the events at issue involve any criminal offense or investigation.
Shortly before his firearms were returned, the plaintiff
repaired to the federal district court, pressing a salmagundi of
claims stemming from the defendants' alleged seizures of his person
and his firearms. These claims included, as relevant here, claims
brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging violations of the
Second and Fourth Amendments, as well as state-law claims alleging
violations of the Rhode Island Constitution; the Rhode Island
Mental Health Law (RIMHL), R.I. Gen. Laws §§ 40.1-5-1 to -43; and
the Rhode Island Firearms Act (RIFA), R.I. Gen. Laws §§ 11-47-1 to
-63.
Once discovery was completed, the parties cross-moved
for summary judgment. With one exception, the district court
granted summary judgment in the defendants' favor on the
plaintiff's federal and state-law claims. See Caniglia v. Strom,
396 F. Supp. 3d 227, 242 (D.R.I. 2019).2 This timely appeal
followed.
2The district court granted summary judgment in the
plaintiff's favor on one claim. See Caniglia, 396 F. Supp. 3d at
237-38. Specifically, the court ruled that the City violated the
plaintiff's due process rights in two ways: by seizing his
firearms without providing notice of any mechanism to secure their
return and by arbitrarily denying his initial requests for their
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II. ANALYSIS
Orders granting summary judgment engender de novo
review. See Avery, 661 F.3d at 693. In conducting this tamisage,
we scrutinize the record in the light most hospitable to the
nonmovant (here, the plaintiff) and affirm "only if the record
reveals 'that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact
and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.'" Id.(quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a)). We are not wedded to the district
court's reasoning but, rather, may affirm "on any ground made
manifest by the record." Mason v. Telefunken Semiconductors Am.,
LLC, 797 F.3d 33, 38 (1st Cir. 2015). Against this backdrop, we
examine the plaintiff's claims one by one.
A. The Fourth Amendment Claims.
The centerpiece of the plaintiff's asseverational array
is his contention that the defendant officers offended the Fourth
Amendment both by transporting him involuntarily to the hospital
for a psychiatric evaluation and by seizing two firearms after a
warrantless entry into his home. We begin with constitutional
bedrock: the Fourth Amendment guarantees "[t]he right of the
people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,
against unreasonable searches and seizures." U.S. Const. amend.
return. See id. at 238. Pursuant to a stipulation, the court
later awarded the plaintiff nominal damages. No appeal has been
taken from these rulings.
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IV. The officers assert that their conduct at the plaintiff's
residence constituted a reasonable exercise of their community
caretaking responsibilities and thus did not transgress the Fourth
Amendment. The district court agreed.3 See Caniglia, 396 F. Supp.
3d at 234-35. Before plunging into these turbulent waters, we
pause to frame the issues and to clarify certain threshold matters.
1. Framing the Issues. The plaintiff's Fourth Amendment
claims focus on two alleged seizures, one of his person and the
other of his firearms. The seizure of a person occurs when an
objectively reasonable individual, standing in that person's
shoes, would not have "felt free to cease interaction with the
officer[s] and depart." United States v. Espinoza, 490 F.3d 41,
48-49 (1st Cir. 2007); see United States v. Drayton, 536 U.S. 194,
200-01 (2002). In contrast, a seizure of personal property occurs
when there has been "some meaningful interference with an
3
The district court ruled in the alternative that qualified
immunity provided a shield against Fourth Amendment liability.
See Caniglia, 396 F. Supp. 3d at 235-36; see also McKenney v.
Mangino, 873 F.3d 75, 80 (1st Cir. 2017) ("Qualified immunity is
a doctrine that shelters government officials from civil damages
liability 'insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly
established statutory or constitutional rights of which a
reasonable person would have known.'" (quoting Harlow v.
Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982))). Qualified immunity,
though, offers no refuge either to the City or to the officers in
their official capacities. See Haley v. City of Boston, 657 F.3d
39, 51 (1st Cir. 2011); Nereida-Gonzalez v. Tirado-Delgado, 990
F.2d 701, 705 (1st Cir. 1993). Because we are able to resolve the
plaintiff's Fourth Amendment claims on the merits, we do not
address the district court's alternative ruling.
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individual's possessory interests in that property." United
States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113 (1984).
Although the plaintiff concedes that he ultimately
agreed to be transported to the hospital for a psychiatric
evaluation, he nonetheless complains that he was subjected to an
involuntary seizure. In support, he avers that the defendant
officers extracted his consent through impermissible chicanery,
falsely promising that they would not confiscate his firearms if
he agreed to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. The
defendants do not challenge this averment head-on but, rather,
assume for purposes of this appeal that a seizure of the
plaintiff's person occurred. Even though there is no evidence
that any police officers, emergency services personnel, or
hospital staff physically compelled the plaintiff to submit to a
psychiatric evaluation once he reached the hospital, we assume —
favorably to the plaintiff — that the involuntary seizure of his
person lasted through his eventual psychiatric evaluation.4
4
In indulging this assumption, we do not abandon the
longstanding principle that "deception is a well-established and
acceptable tool of law enforcement." Pagán-González v. Moreno,
919 F.3d 582, 591 (1st Cir. 2019). Although some species of
deception (such as false claims of a warrant or fabricated
exigencies) may vitiate consent, see id. at 594-95, we are aware
of no persuasive precedent establishing that an officer's
strategic deployment of an empty promise, standing alone,
constitutes coercion sufficient to vitiate consent in this
context.
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Two other threshold matters demand our attention. The
first requires some stage-setting. The record makes pellucid that
the officers' initial presence on the plaintiff's back porch was
lawful: the plaintiff's wife had summoned them to the premises
and the plaintiff himself had agreed to speak with the officers
outside the residence. See Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1, 7-8
(2013) (observing that police do not violate Fourth Amendment by
occupying curtilage when homeowner has "given his leave (even
implicitly) for them to do so"). But whether the officers' entry
into the home after the plaintiff's departure was consensual is a
more nuanced matter.
Although the parties agree that the plaintiff's wife led
the officers to both of the firearms, the plaintiff asserts that
the officers secured his wife's permission to enter the home and
seize the firearms by falsely representing that the plaintiff had
consented to their confiscation. Even though deception is not
categorically foreclosed as a tool of police work, see supra note
4, consent may sometimes be deemed involuntary if gained through
a police officer's apocryphal claim of authority, see Pagán-
González v. Moreno, 919 F.3d 582, 593, 596 (1st Cir. 2019); United
States v. Vázquez, 724 F.3d 15, 22 (1st Cir. 2013); United States
v. Miller, 589 F.2d 1117, 1132 (1st Cir. 1978). Given the factual
disputes surrounding the representations made to the plaintiff's
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wife, we think it prudent to assume that the officers' entry into
the home was not only warrantless but also nonconsensual.
The remaining threshold matter requires no assumption on
our part. The undisputed facts establish that a seizure of the
plaintiff's firearms occurred. It is uncontroverted that the
defendant officers understood that the two handguns belonged to
the plaintiff and that he objected to any confiscation of them.
And in this venue, the defendants press no argument that they
secured valid consent from the plaintiff's wife to seize the
firearms.
2. The Scope of the Community Caretaking Doctrine. The
defendants seek to wrap both of the contested seizures in the
community caretaking exception to the warrant requirement.
Notably, they do not invoke either the exigent circumstances or
emergency aid exceptions to the warrant requirement.5 Nor do the
5 As we have previously noted, there is substantial overlap
between the community caretaking, exigent circumstances, and
emergency aid exceptions. See MacDonald v. Town of Eastham, 745
F.3d 8, 13-14, 13 nn.2-3 (1st Cir. 2014). "[C]ourts do not always
draw fine lines" between these exceptions. Id. at 13; see
Sutterfield v. City of Milwaukee, 751 F.3d 542, 553, 561 (7th Cir.
2014) (resolving analogous case under emergency aid exception but
acknowledging that community caretaking doctrine "would
potentially be the best fit"). Because the defendants seek shelter
only behind the community caretaking exception, we have no occasion
to craft crisp distinctions between those three exceptions. We
doubt, however, that either the exigent circumstances exception or
the emergency aid exception would be a perfect fit for the full
tableau of this case. On the one hand, exigency "is defined by a
time-urgent need to act that makes resort to the warrant process
impractical" — an inquiry that is of limited utility outside the
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defendants contend that their seizures of the plaintiff and his
firearms were carried out pursuant to a state civil protection
statute. See, e.g., Alfano v. Lynch, 847 F.3d 71, 77 (1st Cir.
2017).
The community caretaking exception derives from Cady, a
case in which the Supreme Court upheld the warrantless search of
a disabled vehicle when the police reasonably believed that the
vehicle's trunk contained a gun and the vehicle was vulnerable to
vandals. See 413 U.S. at 446-48. The Cady Court explained that
police officers frequently engage in such "community caretaking
functions, totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or
acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal
statute." Id. at 441. Police activity in furtherance of such
functions (at least in the motor vehicle context) does not, the
Court held, offend the Fourth Amendment so long as it is executed
in a reasonable manner pursuant to either "state law or sound
police procedure." Id. at 446-48; see South Dakota v. Opperman,
428 U.S. 364, 374-75 (1976). In reaching this conclusion, the
Cady Court noted the "constitutional difference between searches
criminal investigatory process. Sutterfield, 751 F.3d at 559-60.
On the other hand, the emergency aid exception is typically
employed in scenarios in which an individual within a dwelling has
already been seriously injured or may be about to sustain such
injuries in a matter of moments. See, e.g., Michigan v. Fisher,
558 U.S. 45, 45-46, 48 (2009) (per curiam); Brigham City v. Stuart,
547 U.S. 398, 406 (2006); Hill v. Walsh, 884 F.3d 16, 23 (1st Cir.
2018).
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of and seizures from houses and similar structures and from
vehicles," a distinction stemming from the "ambulatory character"
of vehicles and police officers' "extensive, and often noncriminal
contact with automobiles." 413 U.S. at 442; see Opperman, 428
U.S. at 367-68.
Since Cady, the community caretaking doctrine has become
"a catchall for the wide range of responsibilities that police
officers must discharge aside from their criminal enforcement
activities." United States v. Rodriguez-Morales, 929 F.2d 780,
785 (1st Cir. 1991); see MacDonald v. Town of Eastham, 745 F.3d 8,
12 (1st Cir. 2014). In accordance with "this evolving principle,
we have recognized (in the motor vehicle context) a community
caretaking exception to the warrant requirement." MacDonald, 745
F.3d at 12. Elucidating this exception, we have held that the
Fourth Amendment's imperatives are satisfied when the police
perform "noninvestigatory duties, including community caretaker
tasks, so long as the procedure employed (and its implementation)
is reasonable." Rodriguez-Morales, 929 F.2d at 785. Police
officers enjoy wide latitude in deciding how best to execute their
community caretaking responsibilities and, in the typical case,
need only act "within the realm of reason" under the particular
circumstances. Id. at 786; see Lockhart-Bembery v. Sauro, 498
F.3d 69, 75 (1st Cir. 2007).
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Until now, we have applied the community caretaking
exception only in the motor vehicle context. See United States v.
Davis, 909 F.3d 9, 16-17 (1st Cir. 2018), cert. denied, 139 S. Ct.
1352 (2019); Boudreau v. Lussier, 901 F.3d 65, 72-73 (1st Cir.
2018); Jaynes v. Mitchell, 824 F.3d 187, 197 (1st Cir. 2016);
United States v. Gemma, 818 F.3d 23, 32 (1st Cir. 2016); Lockhart-
Bembery, 498 F.3d at 75-76; United States v. Coccia, 446 F.3d 233,
238-40 (1st Cir. 2006); Rodriguez-Morales, 929 F.2d at 784-87; cf.
Miller, 589 F.2d at 1125 (upholding boarding of abandoned boat
under combination of community caretaking and exigent
circumstances exceptions). But on one notable occasion, we have
recognized a community caretaking function extending beyond
vehicle searches and impoundment, holding that the temporary
seizure of a motorist for the purpose of alleviating dangerous
roadside conditions could be a reasonable exercise of the community
caretaking function. See Lockhart-Bembery, 498 F.3d at 71-72, 75-
76.
To be sure, the doctrine's reach outside the motor
vehicle context is ill-defined and admits of some differences among
the federal courts of appeals. See Matalon v. Hynnes, 806 F.3d
627, 634 (1st Cir. 2015); MacDonald, 745 F.3d at 13. A few circuits
have indicated that the community caretaking exception cannot
justify a warrantless entry into a home. See Sutterfield v. City
of Milwaukee, 751 F.3d 542, 554 (7th Cir. 2014); Ray v. Township
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of Warren, 626 F.3d 170, 177 (3d Cir. 2010); cf. United States v.
Pichany, 687 F.2d 204, 208-09 (7th Cir. 1982) (per curiam) (holding
community caretaking exception not applicable to warrantless entry
into business warehouse). Several other circuits, though, have
recognized that the doctrine allows warrantless entries onto
private premises (including homes) in particular circumstances.
See, e.g., Rodriguez v. City of San Jose, 930 F.3d 1123, 1137-41
(9th Cir. 2019), petition for cert. filed, No. 19-1057 (U.S. Feb.
25, 2020); United States v. Smith, 820 F.3d 356, 360-62 (8th Cir.
2016); United States v. Rohrig, 98 F.3d 1506, 1521-23 (6th Cir.
1996); United States v. York, 895 F.2d 1026, 1029-30 (5th Cir.
1990). So, too, a handful of circuits — including our own — have
held that police may sometimes seize individuals or property other
than motor vehicles in the course of fulfilling community
caretaking responsibilities. See, e.g., Rodriguez, 930 F.3d at
1138-41; Vargas v. City of Philadelphia, 783 F.3d 962, 971-72 (3d
Cir. 2015); United States v. Gilmore, 776 F.3d 765, 769, 772 (10th
Cir. 2015); Lockhart-Bembery, 498 F.3d at 75-76; Samuelson v. City
of New Ulm, 455 F.3d 871, 877-78 (8th Cir. 2006); United States v.
Rideau, 949 F.2d 718, 720 (5th Cir. 1991), vacated on other
grounds, 969 F.2d 1572 (5th Cir. 1992) (en banc).
Today, we join ranks with those courts that have extended
the community caretaking exception beyond the motor vehicle
context. In taking this step, we recognize what we have termed
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the "special role" that police officers play in our society.
Rodriguez-Morales, 929 F.2d at 784. After all, a police officer
— over and above his weighty responsibilities for enforcing the
criminal law — must act as a master of all emergencies, who is
"expected to aid those in distress, combat actual hazards, prevent
potential hazards from materializing, and provide an infinite
variety of services to preserve and protect community safety."
Id. at 784-85. At its core, the community caretaking doctrine is
designed to give police elbow room to take appropriate action when
unforeseen circumstances present some transient hazard that
requires immediate attention. See id. at 787. Understanding the
core purpose of the doctrine leads inexorably to the conclusion
that it should not be limited to the motor vehicle context.
Threats to individual and community safety are not confined to the
highways. Given the doctrine's core purpose, its gradual expansion
since Cady, and the practical realities of policing, we think it
plain that the community caretaking doctrine may, under the right
circumstances, have purchase outside the motor vehicle context.
We so hold.
This holding does not end our odyssey. It remains for
us to determine whether the community caretaking doctrine extends
to the types of police activity that the defendants ask us to place
under its umbrella. First, we must consider the involuntary
seizure of an individual whom officers have an objectively
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reasonable basis for believing is suicidal or otherwise poses an
imminent risk of harm to himself or others. Second, we must
consider the temporary seizure of firearms and associated
paraphernalia that police officers have an objectively reasonable
basis for thinking such an individual may use in the immediate
future to harm himself or others. Third, we must consider the
appropriateness of a warrantless entry into an individual's home
when that entry is tailored to the seizure of firearms in
furtherance of police officers' community caretaking
responsibilities.
For several reasons, we conclude that these police
activities are a natural fit for the community caretaking
exception. To begin, the interests animating these activities are
distinct from "the normal work of criminal investigation," placing
them squarely within what we have called "the heartland of the
community caretaking exception." Matalon, 806 F.3d at 634-35
(explaining that courts must "look at the function performed by a
police officer" when examining whether activity falls within
heartland (emphasis in original) (quoting Hunsberger v. Wood, 570
F.3d 546, 554 (4th Cir. 2009))). When police respond to
individuals who present an imminent threat to themselves or others,
they do so to "aid those in distress" and "preserve and protect
community safety." Rodriguez-Morales, 929 F.2d at 784-85. These
are paradigmatic examples of motivating forces for community
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caretaking activity. See Opperman, 428 U.S. at 374 (observing
that "sole justification" for search in Cady was "the caretaking
function of the local police to protect the community's safety").
We add, moreover, that any assessment of the
reasonableness of caretaking functions requires the construction
of a balance between the need for the caretaking activity and the
affected individual's interest in freedom from government
intrusions. See United States v. King, 990 F.2d 1552, 1560 (10th
Cir. 1993); Rodriguez-Morales, 929 F.2d at 786. This balancing
test must, of course, be performed anew in each individual case.
The community's strong interest in ensuring a swift response to
individuals who are mentally ill and imminently dangerous will
often weigh heavily in the balance. After all, the consequences
of a delayed response to such an individual "may be extremely
serious, sometimes including death or bodily injury." McCabe v.
Life-Line Ambulance Serv., Inc., 77 F.3d 540, 547 (1st Cir. 1996).
Although an individual has robust interests in preserving his
bodily autonomy, the sanctity of his home, and his right to keep
firearms within the home for self-protection, these interests will
sometimes have to yield to the public's powerful interest "in
ensuring that 'dangerous' mentally ill persons [do] not harm
themselves or others." Id.Last — but surely not least — encounters with individuals
whom police reasonably believe to be experiencing acute mental
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health crises frequently confront police with precisely the sort
of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't conundrum that the
community caretaking doctrine can help to alleviate. If police
officers are left twisting in the wind when they take decisive
action to assist such individuals and prevent the dreadful
consequences that might otherwise ensue, they would be fair game
for claims of overreach and unwarranted intrusion. Conversely, if
the lack of constitutional protection leads police officers simply
to turn a blind eye to such situations and tragedy strikes, the
officers would be fair game for interminable second-guessing. Cf.
Mora v. City of Gaithersburg, 519 F.3d 216, 228 (4th Cir. 2008)
(observing that if police had "not taken the [plaintiff's] weapons,
and had [the plaintiff] used those weapons to cause harm, the
officers would have been subject to endless second-guessing and
doubtless litigation").
The short of it is that the classes of police activities
challenged in this case fall comfortably within the ambit of the
community caretaking exception to the warrant requirement. But
that exception is not a free pass, allowing police officers to do
what they want when they want. Nor does it give police carte
blanche to undertake any action bearing some relation, no matter
how tenuous, to preserving individual or public safety. Put
bluntly, activities carried out under the community caretaking
banner must conform to certain limitations. And the need to patrol
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vigilantly the boundaries of these limitations is especially
pronounced in cases involving warrantless entries into the home.
See Matalon, 806 F.3d at 633 ("It is common ground that a man's
home is his castle and, as such, the home is shielded by the
highest level of Fourth Amendment protection."). We turn next to
these guardrails.
As a starting point, police officers must have "solid,
noninvestigatory reasons" for engaging in community caretaking
activities. Rodriguez-Morales, 929 F.2d at 787. They may not use
the doctrine as "a mere subterfuge for investigation." Id. Leave
to undertake caretaking activities must be based on "specific
articulable facts," King, 990 F.2d at 1560, sufficient to establish
that an officer's decision to act in a caretaking capacity was
"justified on objective grounds," Rodriguez-Morales, 929 F.2d at
787. Then, too, those actions must draw their essence either from
state law or from sound police procedure. See id. at 785.
Contrary to the plaintiff's importunings, "sound police
procedure" need not involve the application of either established
protocols or fixed criteria. We have defined sound police
procedure broadly and in practical terms; it encompasses police
officers' "reasonable choices" among available options. Id. at
787; see Coccia, 446 F.3d at 239 (explaining, in vehicle
impoundment context, that "it is inappropriate for the existence
of (and adherence to) standard procedures to be the sine qua non
- 21 -
of" reasonable community caretaking functions). There is,
moreover, "no requirement that officers must select the least
intrusive means of fulfilling community caretaking
responsibilities." Lockhart-Bembery, 498 F.3d at 76. Even so,
community caretaking tasks must be narrowly circumscribed, both in
scope and in duration, to match what is reasonably required to
perform community caretaking functions. See Opperman, 428 U.S. at
374-75; Smith, 820 F.3d at 362. The acid test in most cases will
be whether decisions made and methods employed in pursuance of the
community caretaking function are "within the realm of reason."
Lockhart-Bembery, 498 F.3d at 75 (quoting Rodriguez-Morales, 929
F.2d at 786).
Before endeavoring to apply these principles, we offer
two final caveats. First, the terms "imminent" and "immediate,"
as used throughout this opinion, are not imbued with any definite
temporal dimensions. Nor is our use of these terms meant to
suggest that the degree of immediacy typically required under the
exigent circumstances and emergency aid exceptions is always
required in the community caretaking context. See Sutterfield,
751 F.3d at 561 (noting that "[t]he community caretaking doctrine
has a more expansive temporal reach" than the emergency aid
exception). Because the summary judgment record shows that a
reasonable officer could have found that an immediate threat of
harm was posed by the plaintiff and his access to firearms, see
- 22 -
infra Parts II(A)(3)-(4), we need not decide whether the community
caretaking exception may ever countenance a police intrusion into
the home or a seizure (whether of a person or of property) in
response to some less immediate danger.
Second, the parties debate, albeit in a desultory
manner, whether the officers had probable cause to seize the
plaintiff. We have used such a metric in considering seizures of
the person pursuant to civil protection statutes, see, e.g.,
Alfano, 847 F.3d at 77, but generally have scrutinized community
caretaking activities for reasonableness, see, e.g., Lockhart-
Bembery, 498 F.3d at 75. Here, the police intrusions at issue —
specifically, the seizures of an individual for transport to the
hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and of firearms within a
dwelling — are of a greater magnitude than classic community
caretaking functions like vehicle impoundment. In such
circumstances, it may be that some standard more exacting than
reasonableness must be satisfied to justify police officers'
conduct. Once again, though, we need not definitively answer this
question: the record makes manifest that an objectively reasonable
officer would have acted both within the realm of reason and with
probable cause by responding as the officers did in this instance.6
6 Withal, we think it bears mention that similar police
activities carried out under the auspices of some analogous
exceptions to the warrant requirement are traditionally not
evaluated under a probable cause framework. See, e.g., Hill, 884
- 23 -
For ease in exposition, we nonetheless use variations of the term
"reasonable" throughout this opinion to describe the defendant
officers' conduct.
Having laid the foundation, we move from the general to
the specific. The key questions, of course, relate to whether the
defendants acted within the margins of the Fourth Amendment both
when they seized the plaintiff and when they seized his firearms.
3. The Seizure of the Plaintiff. As said, the plaintiff
alleges that he was unlawfully seized by the defendant officers
when they sent him to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.
The officers lean on the community caretaking exception as their
justification for this seizure.
Our review of the record makes manifest that no rational
factfinder could deem unreasonable the officers' conclusion that
the plaintiff presented an imminent risk of harming himself or
others. Viewed objectively, the facts available to the officers
at the time of the seizure place this conclusion well within the
realm of reason. The officers knew that the plaintiff had fetched
a firearm during an argument and implored his wife to "shoot [him]
now and get it over with." They also knew that his behavior had
so dismayed his wife that she spent the night at a hotel and
F.3d at 23 (holding that police need only show objectively
reasonable basis to believe "person inside the home is [in] need
of immediate aid" to justify warrantless entry under emergency aid
exception).
- 24 -
requested a wellness check on her husband the next morning because
she feared that he might have committed suicide. No rational
finder of fact could determine that an officer confronted with
this scenario would be acting unreasonably by refusing to shut his
eyes to the plaintiff's obvious risk of self-harm.
We conclude, as well, that the officers acted in
conformity with sound police procedure by seizing the plaintiff
and sending him to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. CPD
General Order 320.70, which was in effect in August of 2015,
authorized officers to send an individual who is "imminently
dangerous" to himself or others to a hospital by means of emergency
transportation for an involuntary psychiatric evaluation. The
plaintiff counters that General Order 320.80 (which requires
police to terminate civil "keeping the peace" activities if met
with resistance) is a trump card, rendering the officers' conduct
impermissible in light of the plaintiff's alleged resistance to
visiting the hospital. We disagree. General Order 320.70 plainly
governs factual scenarios where, as here, CPD officers encounter
individuals whom they reasonably perceive are imminently dangerous
and in need of an emergency psychiatric evaluation.
Even if the officers' actions were not tethered to an
established procedure, their decision to remit the plaintiff to
the hospital would still have fallen within the universe of
- 25 -
reasonable choices available to them at the time.7 Faced with the
unenviable choice between sending the plaintiff to the hospital
and leaving him (agitated, ostensibly suicidal, and with two
handguns at his fingertips), the officers reasonably chose to be
proactive and to take preventive action. Because community
caretaking functions need only be warranted under either state law
or sound police procedure (as we have broadly defined that term),
see Rodriguez-Morales, 929 F.2d at 785, 787, and the seizure here
was fully justified by the latter, the plaintiff's remonstrance
that no positive state law or existing CPD order had explicitly
extended the community caretaking exception to this factual
scenario is without force. To cinch the matter, the methods
employed by the officers to effectuate the seizure were within the
realm of reason. The undisputed facts reveal that the officers
facilitated the plaintiff's transport to the hospital by ambulance
7 Relying chiefly on the opinions of a retained expert, the
plaintiff faults the officers for not consulting a list of warning
signs that CPD officers are trained to recognize when they
encounter potentially suicidal individuals. He likewise faults
the officers for failing to pose a series of questions that CPD
officers are trained to ask such individuals. In this case,
though, the plaintiff arguably exhibited a significant number of
warning signs and, beyond denying that he was suicidal, steadfastly
refused to discuss his mental health. And in any event, the
outcome of our inquiry into whether the officers followed sound
police procedure does not hinge on their application of fixed
criteria. See Coccia, 446 F.3d at 239; Rodriguez-Morales, 929
F.2d at 787.
- 26 -
in a calm, professional manner and without any physical coercion
or restraints.
In an initial effort to blunt the force of this
reasoning, the plaintiff first suggests that his production of the
unloaded firearm and his exhortation to "shoot [him] now" were
mere "dramatic gesture[s]" that did not bespeak any suicidal
ideation. Even if the plaintiff intended only a hyperbolic
flourish, we cannot say that it was outside the realm of reason
for the officers to discern a serious risk of imminent self-harm,
given the surrounding factual context: a man had recklessly thrown
a firearm, made a desperate exclamation suggesting (at best) a
fraught frame of mind or (at worst) a propensity for self-harm,
and so unnerved his wife that she hid the magazine for the gun
from him, stayed overnight at a hotel, and worried whether her
husband might have committed suicide the next morning. Standard
police equipment does not include crystal balls. Here, we think
it apparent that the officers were amply warranted on objective
grounds in concluding that the flashing red lights signaled
imminent danger. See id. at 787.
Nor do we accept the plaintiff's argument that the
passage of approximately twelve hours between the plaintiff's
outburst and his encounter with the officers necessarily
diminished the imminence of the potential threat. See Ahern v.
O'Donnell, 109 F.3d 809, 818 (1st Cir. 1997) (per curiam)
- 27 -
(rejecting argument that officers "could not reasonably have
viewed [plaintiff] as dangerous because he did not engage in
dangerous behavior between" troubling telephone call and seizure
approximately thirty-seven hours later). It is, of course, true
that "emergencies do not last forever." Sutterfield, 751 F.3d at
562. On these facts, though, it seems to us — as it could have
appeared to objectively reasonable officers — that the mere passage
of a short period of time, without more, was not enough to allay
the valid fear that the plaintiff might do harm to himself or
others, particularly when the plaintiff's wife continued to
express urgent concerns about the plaintiff's well-being the
morning after his disturbing interaction with her. See id.
We find similarly unconvincing the plaintiff's argument
that no reasonable officer could have determined that the plaintiff
posed an imminent threat to himself or to others because he
appeared calm and denied suicidal intentions. We do not gainsay
that either an individual's demeanor or his self-assessment of his
mental health (or both, in combination) might under some
circumstances render unreasonable any conclusion that the
individual posed a danger to himself or others. But nothing in
the record before us suggests that the plaintiff's relatively calm
demeanor and conclusory assurances that he was not suicidal
significantly reduced the likelihood that he might engage in self-
harm. See id. at 563; Ahern, 109 F.3d at 818. After all, suicidal
- 28 -
individuals are not apt to be the best judges of their own mental
health. Common sense teaches that such individuals may
deliberately conceal or downplay their self-destructive impulses,
particularly when speaking with the police. See Rudolph v.
Babinec, 939 F.3d 742, 747 (6th Cir. 2019) (per curiam). So, too,
the plaintiff's reliance on the fact that he was neither admitted
to the hospital nor deemed suicidal by medical personnel is
mislaid.8 The lawfulness of the defendants' actions must be
measured by the facts in the officers' possession at the time of
the seizure, not by whether the conclusions that they drew from
those facts were later substantiated. See United States v.
8 We likewise discount the plaintiff's reliance on the opinion
of his retained expert, see supra note 7, who concluded that the
plaintiff's words and actions could not "possibly be construed as
indicating that he was at imminent risk of suicide." In
formulating this opinion, the expert cited only the plaintiff's
assessment of his own behavior, offered during an interview held
some three years after the events that gave rise to this
litigation. The plaintiff's subjective, post hoc rationalizations
are irrelevant to whether the officers made objectively reasonable
determinations based on the facts available to them. See Ahern,
109 F.3d at 817. Moreover, it is unclear whether the expert, when
rendering this opinion, viewed the evidence from the perspective
of an objectively reasonable officer rather than, as his report
seemed to indicate, from the vantage point of a trained
psychologist with "more than 47 years [of experience] as a
Suicidologist." That an expert psychologist might have reached a
different conclusion about the plaintiff's condition than a police
officer without such training does not render the officers'
determination objectively unreasonable. Cf. Sutterfield, 751 F.3d
at 562 (noting that "[o]nly a medical professional could make"
ultimate judgments about "risk that [plaintiff] might harm
herself"). Consequently, the expert's opinion does not create a
genuine issue of material fact.
- 29 -
Huffman, 461 F.3d 777, 785 (6th Cir. 2006); Ahern, 109 F.3d at
817-18; cf. United States v. Coombs, 857 F.3d 439, 446 (1st Cir.
2017) (admonishing that "[h]indsight is always 20/20"). In this
case, the facts available to the officers at the time of the
alleged seizure warranted their conclusion that the plaintiff
posed a serious and imminent risk of harming himself or others.
In an attempt to find a pearl in an apparently empty
oyster, the plaintiff contends that if the officers wished to send
him to the hospital to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, the RIMHL
required them first to secure a judicial order committing him to
the hospital, obtain a physician's application for emergency
certification, or file a written application for emergency
certification themselves. This contention is futile.
To begin, police officers cannot file petitions for
civil court certification. See R.I. Gen. Laws § 40.1-5-8(a) (2006)
(amended 2018). Here, moreover, the defendant officers could not,
given the factual circumstances at hand, have filed an application
for the plaintiff's emergency certification. In August of 2015,
the RIMHL — since amended — allowed police officers to apply for
the emergency certification of an individual "whose continued
unsupervised presence in the community would create an imminent
likelihood of serious harm by reason of mental disability" only if
"no physician [was] available" to conduct an initial examination.
Id. § 40.1-5-7(a)(1) (2006) (amended 2017). An objectively
- 30 -
reasonable officer would have understood (as the defendant
officers apparently did) that a physician competent to perform a
preliminary assessment of the plaintiff's mental health would be
readily available at the hospital. Consequently, the RIMHL did
not permit the defendant officers to file an application for
emergency certification themselves.
At the time of the plaintiff's seizure, the RIMHL neither
explicitly authorized nor expressly forbade police officers from
transporting individuals whom they reasonably perceived as
imminently suicidal to the hospital and causing them to undergo a
preliminary psychiatric evaluation by a physician who could make
an independent judgment about whether to file an application for
emergency certification. By contrast, General Order 320.70 gave
CPD officers the authority to transport such individuals to the
hospital and ensure that they were evaluated. Importantly, the
RIMHL did not purport to preclude such police activity in pursuance
of internal policies and procedures. The plaintiff offers no
reason as to why we should not read the RIMHL in harmony with
General Order 320.70. Cf. Rathbun v. Autozone, Inc., 361 F.3d 62,
68 (1st Cir. 2004) (explaining that under "in pari materia" canon
of construction, legal provisions that "relate to the same subject
matter should be considered together so that they will harmonize
with each other and be consistent with their general objective
scope" (quoting State v. Ahmadjian, 438 A.2d 1070, 1081 (R.I.
- 31 -
1981))). Such a harmonious reading conduces to the conclusion
that the defendant officers' seizure of the plaintiff did not
violate state law.
To say more about the seizure of the plaintiff's person
would be supererogatory. We conclude that no rational factfinder
could determine that the defendant officers strayed beyond the
realm of reason by deeming the plaintiff at risk of imminently
harming himself or others. Consequently, the officers' seizure of
the plaintiff was a reasonable exercise of their community
caretaking responsibilities. Thus, that seizure did not offend
the Fourth Amendment.
4. The Seizure of the Firearms. The next hill we must
climb relates to the defendant officers' warrantless entry into
the plaintiff's home and their seizure of his handguns. Seizures
of personal property generally require a warrant or some recognized
exception to the warrant requirement. See United States v.
Sanchez, 612 F.3d 1, 4 (1st Cir. 2010). The same benchmark
obtains, with particular force, for entries into the home. See
Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 589-90 (1980); MacDonald, 745
F.3d at 12. Once again, the defendant officers seek to cloak their
conduct in the raiment of the community caretaking function.
Notwithstanding our two-pronged assumption that the
plaintiff remained seized within the meaning of the Fourth
Amendment during his time at the hospital and that his psychiatric
- 32 -
evaluation was involuntary, our assessment of the seizure of his
firearms does not turn on what actually happened at the hospital.
Instead, this assessment centers on how an objectively reasonable
officer remaining at the residence after the plaintiff's departure
could have appraised the danger posed by the handguns in the
plaintiff's home. We conclude that the officers could reasonably
have believed, based on the facts known to them at the time, that
leaving the guns in the plaintiff's home, accessible to him, posed
a serious threat of immediate harm. To begin, the plaintiff freely
admitted to throwing one of the firearms onto a table and making
a statement that a reasonable officer could have construed as a
harbinger of self-harm. What is more, this episode so concerned
the plaintiff's wife that she felt compelled to hide the magazine
containing the bullets for that gun and then to leave the dwelling
to stay overnight at a hotel. To cap the matter, the officers
knew that the plaintiff might soon return to a contentious domestic
environment, that he was "sick of the arguments" with his wife,
and that he was upset that she had involved the police. These
facts could have led an objectively reasonable officer to grow
concerned that, despite Kim's assurances that she did not fear for
her own safety, she too might be at near-term risk.
The plaintiff counters that he already had been removed
from the scene at the time of the seizure. That is true as far as
it goes, but it does not take the plaintiff very far. From the
- 33 -
perspective of an objectively reasonable officer, the plaintiff's
departure had not necessarily dispelled the threat of harm.9 There
is no evidence that the officers had any inkling when the plaintiff
would return or what his mental state might be upon his return.
And since the officers did not accompany the plaintiff to the
hospital, they had no way of knowing precisely what information
would be imparted to healthcare providers about the plaintiff's
circumstances. Similarly, they had no way of knowing whether
emergency services personnel would monitor the plaintiff to ensure
that he was evaluated, let alone whether an emergency certification
would ensue. And even though the plaintiff had assented to go to
the hospital for an evaluation, his initial reticence and refusal
to answer certain questions about his mental health could have
given an objectively reasonable officer pause about whether he
would in fact submit to an evaluation. Such doubts would have
been typical for CPD officers faced with this sort of scenario:
Captain Henry (the officer who approved the seizure of the
9 The plaintiff calls our attention to the defendants'
apparent concession (during oral argument on the summary judgment
motions in the district court) that neither the exigent
circumstances exception nor the emergency aid exception could have
justified the seizure of the plaintiff's firearms after he had
been removed from the scene. Because the defendants have not
invoked either exception as a justification for the seizure, it
would serve no useful purpose for us to speculate about the
relevance of any such concession. In all events, the defendants
have consistently asserted, both here and in the court below, that
the threat of peril did not evaporate once the plaintiff was
removed from the scene.
- 34 -
plaintiff's firearms) testified that although CPD officers can
forcibly transport individuals in need of emergency psychiatric
evaluations to the hospital, officers cannot "force [such
individuals] to participate in anything" and would not try to do
so.
On this record, an objectively reasonable officer
remaining at the residence after the plaintiff's departure could
have perceived a real possibility that the plaintiff might refuse
an evaluation and shortly return home in the same troubled mental
state.10 Such uncertainty, we think, could have led a reasonable
officer to continue to regard the danger of leaving firearms in
the plaintiff's home as immediate and, accordingly, to err on the
side of caution. See Rodriguez, 930 F.3d at 1140 (observing that
"reasonable officer would have been deeply concerned by the
prospect" that individual who threatened shooting "might have had
10
At the time of the plaintiff's seizure, an application for
emergency certification could be filed for an individual who
refused to consent to an examination if the applicant's
observations of the individual demonstrated that "emergency
certification [was] necessary." R.I. Gen. Laws § 40.1-5-7(a)(1)
(2006) (amended 2017). Nothing in the RIMHL indicated, however,
that an individual who refused to consent to an evaluation could
be physically restrained between the moment of their refusal and
the execution of an application for emergency certification (which
could take place up to five days after the applicant last observed
the individual, see id. § 40.1-5-7(b)). Accordingly, if the
plaintiff had refused to submit to an evaluation and a physician
had nonetheless determined that an application for certification
should be filed, it remained a distinct possibility that the
plaintiff could simply have left the hospital and returned home
while such an application was being prepared.
- 35 -
access to a firearm in the near future," even though individual
had been taken to hospital); Mora, 519 F.3d at 228 (rejecting
argument that "emergency vanished" after appellant left for
hospital, partially due to lack of certainty about when appellant
would return and what his state of mind would be at that time).
One rejoinder to this conclusion (albeit a rejoinder not
advanced by the plaintiff) might be that the defendant officers
should have accompanied the plaintiff to the hospital to see how
events unfolded before taking action with respect to his firearms.
Although that is a reasonable course of action that could have
been pursued, we do not require police officers to choose the least
intrusive means of fulfilling their community caretaking
responsibilities. See Lockhart-Bembery, 498 F.3d at 76. Nor is
it at all clear that accompanying the plaintiff to the hospital
and monitoring his interactions with medical staff would have been
less intrusive than a circumscribed entry into the plaintiff's
home. Because the officers' decision to seize the plaintiff's
handguns for temporary safekeeping was within the realm of reason,
it does not matter that "alternative reasonable options were also
available." Id.; see Rodriguez-Morales, 929 F.2d at 786 (observing
that "critical question" in vehicle impoundment case was not
whether officers "could have effected an impoundment more
solicitously, but whether the decision to impound and the method
- 36 -
chosen for implementing that decision were, under all the
circumstances, within the realm of reason").
We are likewise persuaded that the defendants' actions
in entering the plaintiff's home and seizing his firearms were
consistent with sound police procedure. The police play a vital
role as guardians of the public weal. They must, therefore, be
granted some measure of discretion when taking plausible steps to
protect public safety, particularly when human life may be at stake
and the margin for error is slight. See Rodriguez-Morales, 929
F.2d at 786-87 (explaining that the "search for equipoise" in
community caretaking cases "almost always involves the exercise of
discretion" (quoting Lopez Lopez v. Aran, 844 F.2d 898, 905 (1st
Cir. 1988))). As the Seventh Circuit cogently reasoned in an
analogous case, "[o]ne need only imagine the public outcry . . .
had the police left the gun[s]" in place and the plaintiff
"returned home and then used the gun[s]" to inflict harm.
Sutterfield, 751 F.3d at 570. Here, the officers' decision to
confiscate the firearms was a reasonable choice from among the
available alternatives. See Rodriguez, 930 F.3d at 1139-40
(holding that police had "substantial public safety interest" in
preventing access to guns when mentally ill individual had
threatened violence); United States v. Harris, 747 F.3d 1013, 1018-
19 (8th Cir. 2014) (concluding that officers were allowed to seize
firearm when failure to do so could have resulted in "[a]ny number
- 37 -
of dangerous, or even deadly, outcomes"); Mora, 519 F.3d at 227(deeming "public safety rationale" a "sound basis" for seizing
firearms of individual who had threatened suicide and shooting).
To close the circle, the record establishes that the
methods employed by the police to effectuate the seizure of the
firearms were reasonable. The officers did not ransack the
plaintiff's home, nor did they engage in a frenzied top-to-bottom
search for potentially dangerous objects. Instead — relying on
Kim's directions — they tailored their movements to locate only
the two handguns bearing a close factual nexus to the foreseeable
harm (one of which the plaintiff had admitted throwing the previous
day and the other of which had been specifically called to the
officers' attention).
We add a coda. In upholding the defendants' actions
under the community caretaking doctrine, we in no way trivialize
the constitutional significance of warrantless entries into a
person's residence, disruption of the right of law-abiding
citizens to keep firearms in their homes, or involuntary seizures
of handguns. By the same token, though, we also remain mindful
that police officers have a difficult job — a job that frequently
must be carried out amidst the push and pull of competing
centrifugal and centripetal forces. Police officers must
sometimes make on-the-spot judgments in harrowing and swiftly
evolving circumstances. Such considerations argue persuasively in
- 38 -
favor of affording the police some reasonable leeway in the
performance of their community caretaking responsibilities.
In the circumstances of this case, we think that no
rational factfinder could deem unreasonable either the officers'
belief that the plaintiff posed an imminent risk of harm to himself
or others or their belief that reasonable prudence dictated seizing
the handguns and placing them beyond the plaintiff's reach.
Consequently, the defendants' actions fell under the protective
carapace of the community caretaking exception and did not abridge
the Fourth Amendment.
B. The Remaining Claims.
Having tackled the plaintiff's most substantial
assignments of error, we proceed to his other claims. We first
examine the plaintiff's claims that the defendant officers, in
their individual capacities, violated the Second Amendment by
seizing his firearms. Next, we assess the plaintiff's municipal
liability claims. At that juncture, the lens of our inquiry
narrows to evaluate the plaintiff's claims that the defendants
abridged the Rhode Island Constitution. We conclude with an
appraisal of the two state statutory claims advanced by the
plaintiff.
1. The Second Amendment Claims. The plaintiff insists
that the defendant officers violated the Second Amendment by
seizing the two handguns from his home. He concedes, however,
- 39 -
that the officers never attempted to restrict his ability to
purchase or possess other firearms. The district court rejected
this claim, ruling that "the Second Amendment is not implicated
when the police reasonably seize a gun under their well-established
duties as community caretakers" and that "the Second Amendment
does not protect an individual's right to possess a particular
gun." Caniglia, 396 F. Supp. 3d at 237.
The Second Amendment provides that "[a] well regulated
Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right
of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." U.S.
Const. amend. II. The Supreme Court has determined that the Second
Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms
even outside the context of service in a militia. See District of
Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 592 (2008); see also McDonald v.
City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 791 (2010) (applying Second
Amendment to states through Fourteenth Amendment). Although the
Heller Court did not venture to delineate the complete dimensions
of the Second Amendment right, it made clear that the Second
Amendment does not guarantee an unlimited right to "keep and carry
any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever
purpose." 554 U.S. at 626.
Our precedent teaches that the core of the Second
Amendment right is confined to self-defense in the home by law-
abiding citizens. See Worman v. Healey, 922 F.3d 26, 36 (1st Cir.
- 40 -
2019), petition for cert. filed, No. 19-404 (U.S. Sept. 25, 2019);
Gould v. Morgan, 907 F.3d 659, 671 (1st Cir. 2018), petition for
cert. filed, No. 18-1272 (U.S. Apr. 4, 2019). We have not yet had
occasion to address whether the seizure of specific firearms from
the home in pursuance of a legitimate police function infringes on
this core right when, as in this case, a gunowner has not been
barred from keeping or acquiring other firearms.
There are few guideposts bearing on the resolution of
this issue. The appellate courts that have grappled with the issue
have either skirted it, see Sutterfield, 751 F.3d at 571-72, or
have held that the deprivation of specific firearms does not
abridge the Second Amendment, see Rodgers v. Knight, 781 F.3d 932,
941-42 (8th Cir. 2015). When all is said and done, we need not
conduct an archeological dig into this uncertain terrain.
Regardless of whether the seizure of particular firearms can ever
infringe the Second Amendment right — a matter on which we take no
view — it was by no means clearly established in August of 2015
that police officers seizing particular firearms in pursuance of
their community caretaking functions would, by doing so, trespass
on the Second Amendment. Here, the plaintiff has wholly failed to
identify either binding precedent or a chorus of persuasive
authority "sufficient to send a clear signal" to reasonable
officers, Alfano, 847 F.3d at 75, that seizures of individual
- 41 -
firearms pursuant to the community caretaking exception fell
outside constitutional bounds.
The doctrine of qualified immunity is by now familiar.
We previously set forth the parameters of that doctrine. See supra
note 3. In general terms, the doctrine is designed to shield
government officials from suit when no "red flags [were] flying"
at the time of the challenged action — red flags sufficient to
alert reasonable officials that their conduct was unlawful.
MacDonald, 745 F.3d at 15. Because this is such a case, the
defendant officers in their individual capacities are entitled to
qualified immunity with respect to the plaintiff's Second
Amendment claims. We therefore hold that the district court did
not err in granting them summary judgment on those claims.
2. The Municipal Liability Claims. This brings us to
the plaintiff's section 1983 claims against the City and the
defendants in their official capacities. See Nereida-Gonzalez v.
Tirado-Delgado, 990 F.2d 701, 705 (1st Cir. 1993) ("An official
capacity suit is, in reality, a suit against the governmental
entity, not against the governmental actor."). The plaintiff
submits that the City maintains "an ongoing practice of seizing
people and requiring them to have psychological evaluations and
seizing their firearms without court orders or exigent
circumstances." See Monell v. Dep't of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658,
690-91 (1978) (holding that local governments may be sued under
- 42 -
section 1983 pursuant to practices that are "so permanent and well
settled as to constitute a 'custom or usage' with the force of
law" (quoting Adickes v. S.H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 167-68
(1970))). In this instance, the plaintiff asserts that the
challenged practice resulted in a violation of his Fourth Amendment
rights.
The Monell Court made clear that municipalities cannot
"be held liable [under section 1983] unless action pursuant to
official municipal policy of some nature caused a constitutional
tort." Id. at 691 (emphasis supplied); see Lund v. Henderson, 807
F.3d 6, 10 n.2 (1st Cir. 2015); Kennedy v. Town of Billerica, 617
F.3d 520, 531-32 (1st Cir. 2010). We already have held that the
officers' conduct fell within the encincture of the community
caretaking function and, thus, did not offend the Fourth Amendment.
Given this determination, it necessarily follows that the
plaintiff cannot prevail against the City on a theory of municipal
liability grounded on a Fourth Amendment species of constitutional
tort.
This does not end the matter. It is not entirely clear
whether the plaintiff's claims against the City, as configured on
appeal, encompass a Second Amendment component. Relying on the
plaintiff's allegations in the complaint, the district court
framed the plaintiff's Second Amendment claims as alleging, in
relevant parts, that the City "deprived him of his lawfully
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obtained and possessed weapons for no reason" through a "set of
customs, practices, and policies." Caniglia, 396 F. Supp. 3d at
236.
On appeal, though, the plaintiff does not appear to
assert that the City is liable for an underlying Second Amendment
violation. While he summarily adverts to the City's "unwritten
practice of seizing firearms for safekeeping" in portions of his
brief concerned with the alleged Fourth Amendment violations, he
never connects these cursory allusions to municipal liability with
his claim of an underlying Second Amendment violation. Indeed,
the portion of his reply brief dealing with the City's liability
under section 1983 only mentions the City's purported violations
of the Fourth Amendment and the Rhode Island Constitution. More
problematic still, even though the record contains evidence that
might perhaps have been effectively marshaled to illustrate a
custom of seizing firearms for safekeeping under conditions like
those at hand (including a General Order and testimony from the
police chief and various officers), the plaintiff's efforts to
assemble and analyze that evidence are unacceptably meager. The
net result is that, even if we assume that the plaintiff intended
to argue on appeal that the City caused an infringement of his
Second Amendment right by way of a custom or policy, that claim
has been fatally underdeveloped.
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We need not tarry. In this circuit, it is settled beyond
peradventure that a reviewing court is not obliged to do a lawyer's
work for him by putting meat on the bones of a skeletal argument.
See United States v. Zannino, 895 F.2d 1, 17 (1st Cir. 1990).
"[I]ssues adverted to in a perfunctory manner, unaccompanied by
some effort at developed argumentation, are deemed waived." Id.Accordingly, we deem abandoned any claim that the plaintiff
suffered a Second Amendment violation because of a policy or
practice attributable to the City.
3. The State Constitutional Claims. We come now to the
plaintiff's claims that the seizure of both his person and his
handguns transgressed article 1, section 6 of the Rhode Island
Constitution and his imbricated claim that the handgun seizure
also violated article 1, section 22. We address these claims
sequentially.
(a). Article 1, section 6 of the Rhode Island
Constitution guarantees "[t]he right of the people to be secure in
their persons, papers and possessions, against unreasonable
searches and seizures." The plaintiff contends that the officers'
conduct violated this provision, which he asserts "provides
stronger protections against searches and seizures than the Fourth
Amendment." For several reasons, this argument lacks force.
With certain limited exceptions, not relevant here, the
Rhode Island Supreme Court construes article 1, section 6 as
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coextensive with the Fourth Amendment. See, e.g., State v. Morris,
92 A.3d 920, 930 (R.I. 2014); Duquette v. Godbout, 471 A.2d 1359,
1361 (R.I. 1984). This lockstep approach holds true both in cases
involving entries into dwellings under emergency circumstances,
see, e.g., Duquette, 471 A.2d at 1361-62, and in cases concerning
the seizure of individuals, see, e.g., State v. Foster, 842 A.2d
1047, 1049-50, 1050 n.3 (R.I. 2004) (per curiam). With respect to
the types of police activity at issue here, we have no reason to
suspect that the Rhode Island Supreme Court would afford more
robust protection under article 1, section 6 than is available
under the Fourth Amendment. See State v. Andujar, 899 A.2d 1209,
1223-24, 1224 n.12 (R.I. 2006) (cautioning that decision to depart
from minimum Fourth Amendment protection "should be made
guardedly" (quoting State v. Werner, 615 A.2d 1010, 1014 (R.I.
1992))).
Moreover, although the state supreme court has not
explicitly extended the community caretaking doctrine either to
warrantless seizures of individuals and property or to warrantless
entries into dwellings, it has articulated an expansive view of
the doctrine. For example, the court has described the doctrine
as one concerning "the many varied daily tasks" police are called
upon to perform, including "acting as a domestic-relations
counselor," serving as a makeshift midwife, and informing a
"citizen of the loss of a loved one." State v. Cook, 440 A.2d
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137, 139 (R.I. 1982); see State v. Roussell, 770 A.2d 858, 860-61
(R.I. 2001) (per curiam).
To complete the picture, we think it noteworthy that the
Rhode Island Supreme Court has adopted an "emergency doctrine"
that bears some resemblance to the community caretaking function.
See, e.g., Duquette, 471 A.2d at 1362 (deeming forcible entry into
apartment justified under Fourth Amendment and article 1, section
6 because police had reason to believe minor was in peril inside).
An expansion of the exigent circumstances exception, the emergency
doctrine permits warrantless police activity on private premises
(including entries into dwellings) when officers "have a
reasonable belief that [their] assistance is required to avert a
crisis" and the motivation underlying the activity is "to preserve
life and property rather than to search for evidence to be used in
a criminal investigation." Id.; see State v. Goulet, 21 A.3d 302,
313-14 (R.I. 2011); State v. Portes, 840 A.2d 1131, 1136-37 (R.I.
2004).
Given the Rhode Island Supreme Court's expansive
conception of the community caretaking function, its adoption of
the "emergency doctrine," and its demonstrated propensity to
construe article 1, section 6 as coterminous with the Fourth
Amendment, we discern no basis for believing that the state supreme
court would find that the officers' conduct violated the state
constitution. Since the plaintiff has failed to offer any
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convincing rationale as to why the defendants' seizures of his
person and his firearms would violate article 1, section 6 when
those seizures do not violate the Fourth Amendment, summary
judgment for the defendants was appropriate on this aspect of the
plaintiff's state constitutional claims.
(b). The plaintiff also contends that the seizure of his
firearms violated article 1, section 22 of the Rhode Island
Constitution. This provision memorializes the principle that
"[t]he right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be
infringed." In the plaintiff's view, article 1, section 22
guarantees him an absolute right to keep arms in his home; and he
asserts that the defendants infringed this right by taking his
firearms without a warrant, court order, or exigent circumstances.
The district court rejected this claim, see Caniglia, 396 F. Supp.
3d at 236-37, and so do we.
The plaintiff's argument that article 1, section 22
guarantees an absolute right to keep guns in the home appears to
be wishful thinking. The argument hangs by a single thread: a
line in a footnote in Mosby v. Devine, 851 A.2d 1031, 1043 n.7
(R.I. 2004). There, the Rhode Island Supreme Court reviewed the
RIFA's licensing framework for the carriage of pistols and
revolvers, see R.I. Gen. Laws § 11-47-18; Mosby, 851 A.2d at 1047.
In a footnote refuting the dissent's "assertions about the law of
self-defense in Rhode Island," the court stated, without citation
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to any authority, that "one has an absolute right to keep firearms
in one's home or place of business." Mosby, 851 A.2d at 1043 n.7.
This singular statement cannot support the weight of the
plaintiff's argument that his right to keep firearms in the home
is unfettered.
To begin, the statement was not essential to the court's
review of the licensing scheme before it, which principally
implicated the right to carry certain types of guns outside homes
and businesses (not the right to keep guns within the home). See
id. at 1043 n.6 (deeming retention of guns in home "a situation
far removed from the issues facing us today"). "[O]bservations
relevant, but not essential, to the determination of the legal
questions" before a court are paradigmatic examples of non-binding
dicta. Dedham Water Co. v. Cumberland Farms Dairy, Inc., 972 F.2d
453, 459 (1st Cir. 1992).
Although courts often give weight to dictum that appears
"considered as opposed to casual," id., we cannot say that the
sentence on which the plaintiff relies qualifies as considered
dictum. For one thing, when viewed in the fullness of the
surrounding text, the sentence sends mixed signals about the scope
of the right to keep arms in the home under article 1, section 22.
After all, in the text that immediately precedes the footnote in
which the sentence at issue appears, the Mosby court left no doubt
that it would not attempt to either "define the extent" of the
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rights to keep and bear arms or "establish the limits" of article
1, section 22. 851 A.2d at 1043. And for another thing, the
sentence is little more than a waif in the wilderness,
unaccompanied by citation of authority or any further elucidation.
We need not dwell on this claim. Beyond his plaint that
article 1, section 22 guarantees an "absolute" right to keep guns
in his home, the plaintiff has not adequately developed any other
relevant argument. As a result, any such argument — including any
contention that the Heller framework applies as a matter of state
constitutional law under article 1, section 22 — has been waived.
See Zannino, 895 F.2d at 17.
4. The State Statutory Claims. Our final chore is to
consider the plaintiff's two state statutory claims, which seek
damages for alleged violations of the RIMHL and the RIFA,
respectively. The linchpin of both claims is yet another state
statute: R.I. Gen. Laws § 9-1-2. This statute permits individuals
to pursue claims for damages resulting from injuries caused by the
commission of a crime (even if uncharged). See Kelly v.
Marcantonio, 187 F.3d 192, 202 & n.8 (1st Cir. 1999).
(a). The plaintiff attempts to use section 9-1-2 as a
respirator to breathe life into his RIMHL claim. To make the
connection, he asserts that the defendants committed a criminal
violation of the RIMHL by conspiring to have him admitted to the
hospital. See R.I. Gen. Laws § 40.1-5-38 (criminalizing
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conspiracy to "improperly cause to be admitted or certified to any
facility" any person not covered by RIMHL). He further asserts
that by sending him to the hospital without first securing a
physician's application for emergency certification or a judicial
order committing him to the hospital, the defendants were, in
effect, conspiring to have him improperly admitted.
This claim consists of more cry than wool. As we already
have concluded, see supra Part II(A)(3), the RIMHL — both when
viewed in isolation and when read in conjunction with CPD General
Order 320.70 — did not forbid the police from transporting an
individual to the hospital for an outpatient psychiatric
examination by a physician. In addition, the record is devoid of
any probative evidence that the defendants conspired to have the
plaintiff admitted to the hospital. Even when construed in the
light most favorable to the plaintiff, see Avery, 661 F.3d at 691,
the record discloses no more than that the defendants sought to
have him transported to the hospital and evaluated by medical
professionals. There is simply no evidence, either direct or
circumstantial, sufficient to support a finding that the
defendants schemed to have him hospitalized.
(b). The plaintiff's RIFA claim fares no better. The
RIFA "regulate[s] the possession and use of an array of weapons."
Mosby, 851 A.2d at 1045. The plaintiff alleges that the RIFA makes
certain violations of its terms punishable by imprisonment, see
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R.I. Gen. Laws § 11-47-26, and further alleges that the defendants
committed such a crime by seizing his firearms "without just
cause." In support, the plaintiff relies on a wholly inapposite
admonition in a section of the RIFA concerning the safe storage of
firearms, which instructs that the section should not be construed
"to provide authority to any state or local agency to infringe
upon the privacy of any family, home or business except by lawful
warrant." Id. § 11-47-60.1(a). Finally, the plaintiff alleges
that he does not fall into any of the categories of persons
prohibited from possessing firearms. See, e.g., id. § 11-47-6
(mental incompetents and drug addicts); id. § 11-47-7 (illegal
aliens).
These allegations do not carry the day. As we already
have held, see supra Part II(A)(4), the seizure of the plaintiff's
firearms fell within the ambit of the community caretaking
exception to the warrant requirement. The plaintiff has not
identified any provision of the RIFA that criminalizes the
temporary seizure of firearms pursuant to this exception. And
because this case does not involve a categorical ban on the
plaintiff's possession of firearms, his plaint that he cannot be
totally foreclosed from possessing firearms lacks relevance.
In sum, no reasonable factfinder could conclude, on this
record, that the defendants committed criminal violations under
either the RIMHL or the RIFA. Thus, the court below did not err
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in entering summary judgment for the defendants on the plaintiff's
state statutory claims.
III. CONCLUSION
We need go no further. Police officers play an important
role as community caretakers. As this case illustrates, they
sometimes are confronted with peculiar circumstances —
circumstances that present them with difficult choices. Here, the
actions of the defendant officers, though not letter perfect, did
not exceed the proper province of their community caretaking
responsibilities. The able district court recognized as much and,
for the reasons elucidated above, its judgment is
Affirmed.
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