Beaver

concurring:

I concur in the Memorandum, but write separately to clarify that the officers’s use of the Taser in this case simply did not amount to excessive force. Beaver was fleeing from a residential burglary. After he was brought to the ground, he refused *706 to show his hands and be handcuffed. The officers had the right to use reasonable force to effect Beaver’s arrest.

The Taser applications caused no injury to him. Indeed, Beaver, who was highly intoxicated on drugs, does not even recall the incident. The several uses of the Taser here (the last two are the only ones challenged here) finally caused Beaver to release his arms so that he could be handcuffed. And safely handcuffed he was, without injury to him or the officers. This seems preferable to other methods that could have been tried to get Beaver to release his arms, such as fighting with him. When several officers struggle with a suspect to make an arrest, the suspect almost always comes out worse for wear, not to mention the risk of injury to the officers.

The officers did not act unconstitutionally in using the Taser as they did in these circumstances. The force used was reasonable; it was employed to effect an…

*705 MEMORANDUM **

The district court found that City of Federal Way police officers Douglas Laird and Heather Castro were entitled to qualified immunity for tasing appellant Ricky Beaver five times during his arrest on August 27, 2004. The court found there was no clearly established law on August 27, 2004, that tasing an arrestee who was suspected of a serious crime, had attempted to flee from officers, and continued to be non-compliant was unconstitutional. We affirm.

An officer is entitled to qualified immunity when his or her conduct is not a violation of an arrestee’s clearly established rights. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 , 102 S.Ct. 2727 , 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). Those rights must be so clearly established at the time of an alleged violation that it would be “clear to a reasonable officer that his [or her] conduct was unlawful.” Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194 , 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151 , 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001). This standard can be established in two ways: (1) by showing that there is clearly established law putting officers on notice that their conduct is unlawful, Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741 , 122 S.Ct. 2508 , 153 L.Ed.2d 666 (2002); or (2) by showing that…