Judge says woman cops held on hot pavement can sue for excessive force

A woman suing the city of Phoenix and its police department after she suffered severe burns while being held down on hot pavement during an arrest may continue to pursue an excessive force claim, a federal judge ruled this week. However, the judge dismissed her claim of unlawful seizure and false arrest, writing that the arresting officers had sufficient probable cause to detain her.

Last May, Clarissa Sabedra sued the department over the arrest, which resulted in admission to a Valleywise Health burn unit, where she underwent a debridement to remove damaged tissue. She initially faced resisting arrest and disorderly conduct charges, but both were ultimately dismissed.

Sabedra, who is now 29, was arrested on June 1, 2024, by Phoenix police officers responding to reports of a domestic dispute. According to video and court documents, Sabedra went limp when officers Kyle Snider and Nicholas Gastelum tried to get her out of a chair on the shaded porch where she was sitting so they could handcuff her. They then moved her limp body out of the shady porch onto a patch of pavement in the sun, where the officers held her down, with Snider straddling her, for about two minutes while they cuffed her.

The officers responded to the call around 1 p.m., just a couple of hours before the temperature typically peaks. According to the lawsuit, temperatures reached 107 degrees that day, meaning pavement surface temperatures could reach 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Sabedra was wearing shorts while the officers held her down for those two minutes, and several bystanders yelled at the officers that she was suffering burns.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Dominic W. Lanza ruled that the officers were not protected by qualified immunity against Sabedra’s excessive force claim, a legal standard that requires a plaintiff to prove that an officer knowingly violated the law or their rights. In a motion to dismiss, the city argued that the officers used the correct amount of force given the situation because Sabedra was resisting arrest and therefore a threat to public safety. 

Lanza disagreed, noting that Sabedra didn’t “make any aggressive statements to the Defendant Officers, she did not attempt to flee or harm the Defendant Officers, and she did not attempt to reach for any sort of weapon.” She was non-compliant, the judge acknowledged. But she was not actively resisting arrest in a way that required what he called a “non-trivial amount of force.”

“Officers used non-trivial force in pressing her against the hot pavement for two minutes, even as she was screaming in pain and bystanders were raising concerns about the burns,” Lanza wrote. “Given the non-severe nature of the alleged crime, the absence of any threat to the Defendant Officers or the public, and Plaintiff’s passive resistance, Plaintiff has done enough to state a valid claim for excessive force.”

In a footnote, Lanza noted that Sabedra had been charged with “resisting arrest by passive resistance,” not active resistance, undermining the city’s claim that she posed a danger to the officers.

One claim dismissed

Sabedra also sued the city under a Monell claim, which holds municipalities responsible for constitutional violations by their employees. She claimed Phoenix police lacked sufficient training about the dangers of holding people on hot pavement — Lanza’s ruling notes the city has since adopted such a policy — and pointed to two previous instances in which Phoenix officers caused burns in a similar fashion. One such instance resulted in a death.

In August 2019, then-17-year-old Roniah Trotter suffered second-degree burns when officers held her down on hot pavement while arresting her. About a year later, in August 2020, Phoenix police officers pinned Ramon Timothy Lopez down on hot pavement before hogtying him and putting him facedown in the back of a patrol car. Lopez was found unresponsive a few minutes later and pronounced dead at the hospital.

But those two incidents were not enough of a pattern to press a Monell claim against the city, Lanza wrote. Two incidents since 2019 aren’t sufficient to place Phoenix “on notice that the lack of the policies ‘would likely result in a constitutional violation,’” he wrote quoting a legal precedent. Nor did Sabedra show that the city should be held liable for not training the officers properly.

“Failure-to-train liability turns not just on the deficiency of the training program, but on the municipality’s deliberate indifference to that deficiency,” he wrote. 

However, Lanza granted leave for Sabedra’s attorneys to amend her complaint as to the excessive force charge in order to more successfully incorporate Monell. They have 14 days from his ruling to submit an amended complaint.

Sabedra’s unlawful seizure and false arrest claim appears to be dead, however. Lanza dismissed that count, disagreeing with Sabedra’s contention that she had been arrested without probable cause. Lanza wrote that officers can make warrantless arrests if, in the moment, they believe there is probable cause. The judge noted that the officers were responding to a 911 call that reported that “two Hispanic females were engaged in a verbal altercation and actively swinging on each other.” When officers arrived, Sabedra admitted to being one of the women involved in the argument.