The Shield Summary Newsletter — April, 2026
In Zorn v. Linton, the Court reversed the Second Circuit and restored qualified immunity for a Vermont State Police sergeant who used a wristlock to remove a passively resisting protester. In the same session, the Court declined to hear Villarreal v. Alaniz, leaving in place a Fifth Circuit ruling that allowed officers to escape liability for arresting a journalist who had done nothing more than ask a police officer a question — prompting a sharp dissent from Justice Sotomayor who called the arrest "a blatant First Amendment violation." Both decisions are featured in this month's case law section, and both carry lessons that go well beyond the facts of either case.
This issue also focuses on the rapidly evolving legal landscape around less lethal munitions — the subject of our April 30 Shield Thursdays webinar. Federal courts have spent the past year issuing injunctions, staying injunctions, and debating the constitutional limits of crowd control weapons, from rubber bullets to pepper balls to 40mm kinetic impact projectiles. The litigation is intensive, the injuries are real, and the agencies without documented deployment policies, training records, and documented warnings face the greatest exposure. A. David Berman will walk through the legal and tactical framework in detail on April 30 — registration is $49 at shieldpst.org.
Also this month: NYPD's $117 million misconduct tab for 2025, the Antioch texting scandal that implicated 45 officers and produced a sweeping reform settlement, a DOJ CRIPA investigation opening against Colorado's prison system, and a significant shift in the federal approach to police reform consent decrees. Each of these developments carries direct implications for how agencies manage liability, train personnel, and respond to federal oversight. The Shield Summary is here to make sure you see them coming.
Two SCOTUS Decisions, One Day — What They Mean for Your Agency
On March 23, 2026, the Supreme Court handed down two decisions with direct consequences for law enforcement agencies. Read together, they reinforce that qualified immunity remains powerful — but is not unlimited, and will not shield officers from liability where the constitutional violation is obvious.
During the January 2015 inauguration of Vermont's governor, protesters staged a sit-in at the state capitol. When the building closed, officers directed the remaining demonstrators to leave or face arrest for trespassing. Shela Linton refused to stand. Sergeant Jacob Zorn warned her repeatedly that force would be used if she did not comply, then took her arm, placed it behind her back, applied wrist pressure, and lifted her to her feet. Linton sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging the wristlock constituted excessive force. The Second Circuit reversed the district court's grant of qualified immunity, relying on its 2004 decision in Amnesty America v. West Hartford, which had found that gratuitous pain compliance techniques on passively resisting protesters could constitute excessive force. The Supreme Court reversed the Second Circuit.
The Court held, per curiam, that Amnesty America did not clearly establish that Zorn's specific conduct was unconstitutional. The earlier case involved a broader range of force against a different factual constellation and did not hold that a wristlock used after repeated warnings on a passively resisting individual violated the Fourth Amendment. The Court reaffirmed that to overcome qualified immunity, a plaintiff must identify prior precedent with a "high degree of specificity" placing the constitutional question "beyond debate" — broad constitutional rules alone are insufficient. Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, dissented, arguing that existing doctrine had already established that pain compliance techniques against nonviolent, noncompliant protesters can constitute excessive force.
Practical Impact: Zorn reaffirms that qualified immunity continues to require fact-specific precedent — not broad propositions — to be overcome. For agencies managing protest or civil disobedience scenarios, this decision supports the use of documented, proportional pain compliance techniques against passively resisting subjects when accompanied by clear warnings. However, the dissent signals ongoing judicial disagreement about where this line falls, and agencies should ensure that passive resistance response protocols are documented in policy, reinforced in training, and applied consistently — not selectively or situationally.
Citizen journalist Priscilla Villarreal — known as "La Gordiloca" — covered law enforcement activity in Laredo, Texas through a Facebook page with more than 100,000 followers. In 2017, she texted a Laredo police officer to confirm details about a traffic fatality and a Border Patrol employee's suicide, then published the information. Six months later, Laredo police arrested her under an obscure Texas statute that criminalizes soliciting nonpublic information from a public servant "with intent to obtain a benefit." A Texas court found the statute unconstitutionally vague and dismissed the charges. Villarreal then sued the officers under § 1983 for First Amendment retaliation and unlawful arrest.
The case traveled through the courts for years. A divided Fifth Circuit en banc panel ultimately held that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity because no prior case had established — with the required specificity — that arresting a journalist for asking a police officer a question was obviously unconstitutional. The Supreme Court denied Villarreal's petition for certiorari on March 23, 2026, leaving the Fifth Circuit's ruling in place. Justice Sotomayor dissented from the denial, calling the arrest "a blatant First Amendment violation" and criticizing the Court for allowing qualified immunity to foreclose an obvious constitutional remedy.
Practical Impact: This case carries a dual lesson. First, the denial of cert preserves the Fifth Circuit's qualified immunity ruling — meaning officers in that circuit who rely in good faith on a facially valid statute may have a viable immunity defense even where underlying conduct later proves unconstitutional. Second, and more importantly for agencies: the underlying facts represent an obvious candidate for the "clearly established" exception if courts re-examine the issue with more specific precedent in place. Any arrest motivated by a desire to suppress or retaliate against a journalist's or critic's reporting activity — regardless of what statute is cited — carries severe constitutional and reputational risk. Command staff must ensure that arrest decisions involving journalists, citizen reporters, or persistent public critics are reviewed before they are made.
Less Lethal Munitions Under Judicial Scrutiny
Federal courts spent the final months of 2025 and the opening weeks of 2026 issuing, staying, and appealing injunctions over federal agents' use of less lethal munitions at protests — producing a rapidly evolving body of case law directly relevant to any agency that deploys crowd control weapons.
Since the summer of 2025, federal immigration enforcement actions in Portland, Oregon generated sustained large-scale protests at the city's ICE facility. Federal agents — including ICE, CBP, and Border Patrol tactical units — deployed rubber bullets, pepper balls, flash-bang grenades, and tear gas against demonstrators, journalists, and bystanders. In February 2026, U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon (D. Or.) issued a preliminary injunction in Dickinson v. Trump barring federal officers from using chemical and projectile munitions against protesters absent an imminent threat of physical harm. A parallel injunction was issued by Judge Amy Baggio in favor of Reach Community Development v. DHS, protecting residents of a nearby affordable housing complex from chemical munition exposure. The two cases were consolidated for appellate review.
On March 25, 2026, the Ninth Circuit issued a 2-1 administrative stay of both district court orders — temporarily restoring federal agents' authority to deploy these weapons while the court deliberates. The stay was granted by Judges Kenneth K. Lee and Eric C. Tung over a dissent from Judge Ana de Alba. Oral argument on the consolidated cases was scheduled for April 7, 2026. The underlying merits — whether the First and Fourth Amendments limit the use of less lethal munitions against peaceful protesters and journalists — remain pending before the Ninth Circuit. Note: the separate case of L.A. Press Club v. Noem, arising from federal agent deployments during Los Angeles protests in summer 2025, presents related issues and is also pending in the Ninth Circuit.
Practical Impact: This litigation is still unresolved on the merits — but it has produced a developing body of standards that agencies should treat as operational guidance regardless of the final outcome. Courts examining less lethal deployments are consistently asking four questions: (1) Did the agency issue adequate warnings before deploying? (2) Was the subject posing a threat, or was the crowd dispersing? (3) Were munitions deployed toward prohibited body areas — head, face, neck, or groin? (4) Does the agency's written policy reflect the constitutional standards its officers are expected to apply? Agencies that cannot answer all four questions with contemporaneous documentation face the greatest exposure.
A federal district judge found the Los Angeles Police Department in contempt of a prior court order limiting the use of 40mm less lethal munitions during protests and issued an expanded ban on their use for crowd control. The court's findings documented multiple incidents in which LAPD officers fired 40mm foam rounds at individuals who did not pose an immediate threat, failed to give warnings prior to deployment, and struck protesters in constitutionally prohibited areas including the head and groin. The order followed protests earlier in 2025 that generated documented injuries and video evidence of munition deployment inconsistent with both department policy and the prior court order.
Practical Impact: Contempt of a federal court order carries immediate and severe consequences: it strips the agency of discretion and hands decision-making authority to the court. The LAPD's experience illustrates that once a court enters an order limiting use-of-force tools, every subsequent deployment is scrutinized against that order — and a single documented violation can result in categorical prohibition. For agencies not currently under court order, this case serves as a template for what sustained non-compliance with policy looks like and the consequences that follow. Warning procedures, targeting restrictions, and supervisory authorization requirements for less lethal munitions must be reflected in written policy, trained consistently, and documented on every deployment.
Less Lethal Munitions Training Alert: The litigation summarized above reflects a consistent judicial focus on three agency failures: absence of documented warnings prior to deployment, targeting of prohibited body areas, and deployment against individuals who are dispersing or not posing an active threat. None of these failures requires a court to expand constitutional doctrine — they are violations of standards agencies have already adopted in their own policies. If your agency's less lethal munitions training does not specifically address warning protocols, prohibited target zones, threat assessment at the individual level, and BWC documentation of each deployment, that gap needs to close before the next incident.
Shield PST's Less Lethal Munitions webinar on April 30 — presented by A. David Berman — addresses the legal and tactical framework governing deployment decisions across multiple munition types. Register now at shieldpst.org · $49 per attendee.
What Agencies Are Paying — and Why
New data and recent settlements from across the country underscore a consistent theme: the most expensive misconduct liability is not the isolated incident — it is the unaddressed pattern that leadership saw and failed to correct.
A Legal Aid Society analysis released March 2, 2026 found that New York City paid more than $117 million to settle NYPD misconduct lawsuits in 2025 — the fourth straight year exceeding $100 million and bringing the city's total since 2019 to nearly $800 million. The city settled 1,044 NYPD misconduct cases in 2025, the most since 2019. Among the largest individual payouts: $5.2 million to Taron Parkinson, who spent seven years incarcerated after officers planted a gun in his car; $11.1 million to David Warren, wrongfully convicted in a 1986 robbery based on fabricated detective work; and $3.9 million to Steven Lopez, a sixth man pressured to plead guilty in connection with the Central Park Five case. Approximately $42 million of the 2025 payouts were for wrongful convictions and $28 million involved incidents occurring more than two decades ago.
Agency Lesson: Nearly a quarter of New York City's 2025 payout involved incidents that are more than twenty years old — meaning the financial consequences of today's misconduct will not appear in agency budgets for a generation. Early warning systems, supervisory accountability, and robust documentation practices are investments that generate returns measured in decades, not fiscal years.
In December 2025, the City of Antioch, California finalized a $4.6 million settlement with 23 plaintiffs and a sweeping reform agreement resolving a civil rights lawsuit tied to one of the most damaging law enforcement texting scandals in recent memory. In 2022, a federal investigation uncovered racist and obscenity-laden text messages shared among 45 Antioch police officers — a group that comprised a significant portion of the department's sworn staff. Officers used racial slurs to refer to suspects, joked about setting a police dog on subjects who had surrendered, and discussed shooting restrained individuals with a 40mm less lethal launcher. Three former officers were federally indicted. The settlement mandates a comprehensive overhaul of department policies and procedures, civilian oversight mechanisms, and sustained transparency measures under court monitoring.
Agency Lesson: The Antioch scandal illustrates that group misconduct documented in private channels — texts, messaging apps, group chats — is as legally and institutionally damaging as misconduct documented on body-worn camera. Agencies must establish clear digital communication policies, enforce them consistently, and treat pattern misconduct in officer communications as a supervisory and internal affairs priority — not a personnel curiosity. When 45 officers share a communication culture, the failure belongs to leadership as much as to the individuals.
Buffalo's law department sought City Council approval in March 2026 for $1.68 million in police misconduct settlements, the largest of which — $700,000 — stems from a 2019 Memorial Day encounter. Officers John Davidson (now president of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association) and his partner stopped Bruce McNeil, pulled him from his car, handcuffed him, searched the vehicle, found no contraband, and let him go. A subsequent investigation revealed that the officers had falsely reported finding drugs. McNeil was arrested on fabricated charges. A state court later found the statute used to prosecute him unconstitutionally applied, and the criminal charges were dismissed.
Agency Lesson: When the officer accused of evidence fabrication goes on to lead the agency's union, it signals a cultural and accountability failure that extends well beyond the individual incident. Agencies should treat post-incident oversight — including how officers involved in misconduct findings are treated within the rank structure — as a direct component of Monell liability exposure.
Federal Oversight, Shifting DOJ Priorities & the Consent Decree Landscape
Three significant developments in the first quarter of 2026 are reshaping the federal oversight landscape for correctional administrators — and require different strategic responses depending on whether your agency is under an existing consent decree, under active investigation, or operating without current federal scrutiny.
In December 2025, the Department of Justice opened a civil investigation into 21 facilities operated by the Colorado Department of Corrections and 12 facilities operated by the Colorado Department of Human Services Division of Youth Services, pursuant to CRIPA, 42 U.S.C. § 1997, and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. The DOC investigation addresses allegations of inadequate medical care and unsafe and unsanitary conditions of confinement. The DYS investigation focuses on allegations of excessive force against youth, failure to provide adequate nutrition, and alleged violations of detainees' right to free exercise of religion. Colorado now joins a significant list of state correctional systems under active federal investigation.
The DOJ's December 2024 complaint against Louisiana — alleging a pattern and practice of detaining people after they have completed their sentences in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause — remains active. The investigation, which began in 2020 and produced a findings report in 2023, documented thousands of people held past their lawful release dates each year, driven in part by a paper-based records transfer system that routinely introduced weeks-long delays between sentencing courts, parish jails, and the Department of Corrections. The lawsuit seeks systemic injunctive relief. This case has direct implications for every sheriff's office and county jail that manages release date calculations under complex sentence computations.
Action Item — Release Date Accuracy: Overdetention — holding someone beyond their lawful release date — is a Fourteenth Amendment due process violation that generates both individual damages claims and systemic DOJ exposure. Agencies that rely on manual calculation systems, multi-agency paper transfers, or infrequent record audits are at risk. Correctional administrators should conduct a documented audit of release date calculation procedures and identify every point at which human error or communication delay could result in overdetention. Shield PST's Advanced Internal Affairs symposium (November/December 2026, Henderson, NV) will include a session on documentation audits and systemic compliance reviews. Details at shieldpst.org.
Under Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, the Trump DOJ has moved to dismiss pattern-and-practice consent decree efforts against the Louisville, Kentucky and Minneapolis police departments — both of which arose from DOJ investigations following high-profile use-of-force incidents. Dhillon characterized consent decrees as transferring local policing control to "unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats." For agencies currently operating under consent decrees, this shift creates legal uncertainty: while the administration can withdraw from pending negotiations, existing court-entered consent decrees require judicial approval to terminate and cannot be unilaterally abandoned. Agencies in active consent decree compliance should consult with agency counsel about the status of their specific decrees and the implications of any federal motion to terminate.
Note for Correctional Administrators: ADA compliance obligations in correctional settings do not change with shifting DOJ enforcement priorities. Title II of the ADA applies to county jails regardless of whether the DOJ is actively investigating your facility. Shield PST's ADA in the Jails symposium — coming this fall — provides the legal framework and compliance tools correctional administrators need to meet those obligations independent of the federal enforcement climate. Dates and location to be announced. Register at shieldpst.org.
What the Law Requires Before, During & After Deployment
Less lethal munitions occupy a legally contested space — powerful enough to permanently injure or kill, yet classified as tools designed to reduce the need for deadly force. The litigation of the past year has produced a set of emerging judicial standards that agencies can no longer afford to treat as unsettled.
The use of less lethal munitions against individuals constitutes a Fourth Amendment seizure subject to the objective reasonableness standard of Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989). Courts assess the force's reasonableness against the severity of the offense, whether the subject poses an immediate threat, and whether the subject is actively resisting. The Supreme Court's 2025 ruling in Barnes v. Felix — which rejected artificial time-limiting in force analysis — is directly applicable to less lethal deployments: courts will evaluate the full sequence of events leading up to the deployment, including whether warnings were given, whether the crowd was peaceful or dispersing, and whether any individual subject was actually posing a threat at the moment of deployment.
The injunctions and contempt findings of the past year — in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland — reflect a consistent set of judicial expectations emerging as enforceable standards. Courts have found agencies in violation where officers: (1) deployed less lethal rounds without issuing audible warnings before firing; (2) targeted individuals who were peacefully assembling, documenting officers, or attempting to leave; (3) aimed at constitutionally prohibited body areas — particularly the head, face, neck, and groin — where no deadly force justification existed; and (4) deployed area-effect munitions (gas, pepper spray) without supervisory authorization. These are not new constitutional rules — they are the application of longstanding reasonableness doctrine to a fact pattern courts are now seeing regularly.
The American Academy of Ophthalmology has documented that rubber bullets and kinetic impact projectiles cause severe eye trauma and permanent blindness at significant rates. The National Institute of Justice has similarly published research on injury risks from blunt-force projectiles deployed at close range or against unintended targets. The phrase "less lethal" describes intent, not outcome — and courts are making this distinction explicit. Agencies that brief elected officials or command staff using marketing language about munitions' safety profile, without acknowledging the documented injury literature, create an internal record that works against them in litigation.
The single most common element in successful less lethal litigation is the gap between what an agency's written policy requires and what its officers actually did. Documenting that gap is plaintiff's counsel's first task in discovery — and it is not difficult when body-worn camera footage exists. Agencies should conduct a written review of their less lethal munitions policies against the following standards: Does the policy require a warning before deployment, and specify what form that warning must take? Does it prohibit targeting head, face, neck, and groin absent deadly force justification? Does it require individual threat assessment for each deployment rather than area-effect authorization? Does it require supervisory authorization and BWC documentation of each deployment incident? If the answer to any of these is no — or if the policy exists but training does not reflect it — that gap must close before the next incident.
Join Us April 30 — Less Lethal Munitions Webinar: Shield PST's April Shield Thursdays webinar will provide a comprehensive legal and tactical framework for less lethal munitions deployment — covering the constitutional standards, warning protocols, targeting restrictions, documentation requirements, and the current litigation landscape. Presented by A. David Berman, one of the nation's leading authorities on less lethal weapons law and training.
Wednesday, April 30, 2026 · 9:00 AM PDT / 12:00 PM EDT · $49 per attendee · shieldpst.org
9:00 AM PDT / 12:00 PM EDT
Nationwide
shieldpst.org
What You Will Learn:
- • The constitutional framework governing less lethal munitions deployment under Graham v. Connor and Barnes v. Felix
- • Warning requirements: what courts require before deployment and how to document compliance
- • Prohibited targeting zones: head, face, neck, and groin — and when exceptions may apply
- • Individual vs. area-effect deployment decisions — and the supervisory authorization requirement
- • Current litigation: the 9th Circuit less lethal injunctions, the LAPD contempt order, and what agencies nationwide should learn from them
- • Policy gap analysis: how to audit your agency's less lethal munitions policy against current judicial standards
- • Body-worn camera documentation requirements for less lethal deployments
2026 Shield PST Training Calendar
| Date | Event | Location | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| April30, 2026 |
Less Lethal Munitions
A. David Berman · 9:00 AM PDT / 12:00 PM EDT · $49
|
Online | Webinar |
| May28, 2026 |
Qualified Immunity
Neil Okazaki, Esq. · $49
|
Online | Webinar |
| July13–15, 2026 |
Cutting-Edge Use of Force Symposium
$695 · shieldpst.org
|
Green Bay, WI | Symposium |
| September2026 |
ADA in the Jails
$695 · shieldpst.org
|
TBD | Symposium |
| Nov/Dec2026 |
Advanced Internal Affairs
$695 · Henderson, NV
|
Henderson, NV | Symposium |
Webinars: $49 per attendee · Symposiums: $695 per attendee · Register at shieldpst.org
