Active resistance requires more than profanity, verbal hostility, or refusal to cooperate with police. In Steger v. Willis, the 6th Circuit held that an officer was not entitled to qualified immunity when force was allegedly triggered by a suspect’s profanity rather than physical resistance or an immediate threat. The decision reinforces that law enforcement use of force must be based on objective circumstances, not disrespect or frustration.
Steger v. Willis, 2026 WL 2097781 (6th Cir. 2026).
Melvin Steger was not exactly working hard to make friends.
Officers from the Covington (Kentucky) Police Department contacted Steger after his neighbor reported he had taken her insulin pump. Steger was standing on his front porch behind an iron gate when Officer Steven Willis asked him about the pump. Steger denied taking it. During the conversation, he became increasingly agitated, refused to provide identification, refused to take his right hand out of his pocket, told the officers to get a warrant, and began recording them with his phone.
Then Steger told the officers to get off his property, dropping some F-bombs. Officer Willis responded, “Hey, don’t cuss, man.” Steger’s response was considerably less diplomatic: “F$!k you!” Officer Willis pushed open the iron gate, striking Steger and knocking him backward. The officer stepped onto the porch, grabbed Steger, drove him to the ground, and (according to Steger) punched him twice before handcuffing him.
Steger was ultimately charged with several offenses and convicted of theft. He later sued, claiming excessive force. The district court denied Officer Willis qualified immunity, and the 6th Circuit affirmed.
“Refusing to cooperate is not necessarily the same as resisting arrest.”
The court applied the familiar Graham v. Connor factors. Steger’s suspected disorderly conduct on his porch was not a serious offense. Since he was separated from Officer Willis by an iron gate and had made no effort to leave the porch, Steger did not pose an immediate threat. Most importantly, he was not physically resisting an arrest. In fact, Officer Willis had not even told Steger he was under arrest before using force.
The court concluded that the video permitted a jury to conclude the event triggering Officer Willis’s use of force was simply Steger’s use of profanity. The 6th Circuit has long held that a person who poses no safety threat and is not actively resisting has a clearly established right to be free from gratuitous physical force. Officer Willis argued that earlier cases involved different types of force, including pepper spray, and therefore did not clearly establish that his particular actions were unlawful.
The court rejected that argument. This was not a case requiring a court to determine whether a particular degree of force was clearly prohibited. On Steger’s version of events, the question was whether any physical force was justified at all. The court held it wasn’t.
There is an important street-practice lesson here. Officers routinely encounter people who are rude, argumentative, profane, disrespectful, and thoroughly unpleasant. None of those characteristics are synonymous with active resistance. Also, refusing to cooperate is not necessarily the same as resisting arrest.
Active resistance ordinarily involves some physical conduct directed toward defeating an officer’s attempt to obtain control — pulling away, struggling, assuming a fighting posture, concealing the hands, pushing against an officer, attempting to flee, or similar conduct. Verbal hostility may be relevant to the totality of the circumstances, particularly when accompanied by threatening behavior, but words alone do not automatically create a justification for physical force. Sticks and stones and all that jazz.
The distinction is particularly important because officers sometimes use the word “resisting” much too broadly. A person may refuse a request, question an officer’s authority, decline to answer questions, complain loudly, insult the officer, or simply refuse to do something the officer wants done.
Those actions may be frustrating. Depending on the circumstances, some may even constitute an offense. But they do not necessarily constitute physical resistance.
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None of this means officers must tolerate actual threats or wait until a belligerent person attacks before responding to objectively threatening behavior. The Graham analysis still requires consideration of the entire encounter, including the person’s movements, proximity, access to weapons, threatening conduct, and other facts reasonably apparent to the officer. But Steger provides a useful reminder about where the line begins.
Police officers are authorized to use reasonable force to accomplish legitimate law enforcement objectives. Force is not a tool for correcting bad manners, settling an argument, or responding to disrespect. Sometimes the most professional response to “f$!k you” is simply to remember that contempt of cop does not constitute “sticks and stones.”
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