City of Long Beach, New York, et al. v. Ricky Joshua Benny

The questions presented for review are:

1. Whether the Second Circuit departed from this Court’s precedents, none of which it cited or discussed, when it concluded that two police officers responding to a bar fight at 3:00 A.M. and confronted by an increasingly hostile individual who refused to comply with approximately 19 of their directives and final warnings to back away from the scene of an arrest, and who also resisted the physical efforts of civilian bystanders to restrain and pull him away from the officers, were not entitled to qualified immunity because it was unclear from the video footage whether the individual had the opportunity to comply with the officers’ 20th directive prior to an officer’s initial attempt to effectuate his arrest?

2. Whether the Second Circuit disregarded this Court’s repeated instruction regarding clearly established law when it denied qualified immunity in reliance upon precedents that do not squarely govern the facts at issue?

3. Whether, given the Second Circuit’s failure to adhere to this Court’s precedents, the Second Circuit’s own inconsistent body of caselaw, and conflicting holdings from Circuit Court of Appeals across the country, the time has come for this Court to hold that a police officer is entitled to qualified immunity unless a plaintiff