In determining whether the state officer has crossed the constitutional line that would make the physical abuse actionable under Section 1983, we must inquire into the amount of force used in relationship to the need presented, the extent of the injury inflicted and the motives of the state officer. If the state officer's action caused severe injuries, was grossly disproportionate to the need for action under the circumstances and was inspired by malice rather than merely careless or unwise excess of zeal so that it amounted to an abuse of official power that shocks the conscience, it should be redressed under Section 1983. Hall v. Tawney, 621 F.2d at 613; Johnson v. Glick, 481 F.2d [1028] at 1033 [ (2nd Cir.1973) ].
If a city may be liable only where the injury is inflicted in the execution of city policy, the complainant must identify the policy, connect the policy to the city itself and show that the particular injury was incurred because of the execution of the policy.
We conclude that if there is a cause of action under section 1983 for failure to properly train a police officer whose negligent or grossly negligent performance of duty has injured a citizen, that such failure to train must constitute gross negligence amounting to conscious indifference, and that a municipality is not liable under section 1983 ... in the absence of evidence at least of a pattern of similar incidents in which citizens were injured or endangered by intentional or negligent police misconduct and/or that serious incompetence or misbehavior was general or widespread throughout the police force.
The new language stresses the need for some prefiling inquiry into both the fact and the law.... The standard is one of reasonableness under the circumstances.... This standard is more stringent than the original good-faith formula and is thus expected that a greater range of circumstances will trigger its violation.
[E]ven assuming that such a “policy” would suffice, it is open to question whether a policymaker's “gross negligence” in establishing police training practices could establish a “policy” that constitutes a “moving force” behind subsequent unconstitutional conduct, or whether a more conscious decision on the part of the policymaker would be required.
On or about July 25, 1982, at approximately 2:25 a.m. on Mississippi Highway 7, approximately 11.4 miles north of Holly Springs, Mississippi ... Jamieson was a guest passenger in a vehicle operated by ... Gammons. [The] police officers pulled their vehicles in behind the vehicle driven by ... Gammons ... [who] started driving at a high rate of speed trying to get away from the ... [officers]. [The officers] knew that ... Gammons was a mental patient2 and had behaved in this manner before.... [The officers] pursued ... Gammons at a high rate of speed causing ... Gammons to drive at a higher rate of speed, thus endangering the lives of the other passengers in the Gammons vehicle.
A court ... should take care to consider whether the police are acting in a swiftly developing situation, and in such cases the court should not indulge in unrealistic second-guessing.... A creative judge engaged in post hoc evaluation of *1217 police conduct can almost always imagine some alternative means by which the objectives of the police might have been accomplished.
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