Police Brutality & Civil Rights
Criminal Statutes — Officer Conduct
6 statutes with plain-language summaries, case relevance, source links, and related Michigan practice areas.
Criminal Statutes — Officer Conduct
6 statutes"A person who assaults or assaults and batters an individual is guilty of a misdemeanor. As used in this section, 'assault' means an attempt to commit a battery, or an unlawful act that places another in reasonable apprehension of receiving an immediate battery."Read Full Statute
Michigan's criminal assault and battery statute makes it a misdemeanor to assault or physically batter another person. When police officers are criminally charged under this statute for conduct against civilians, those criminal proceedings create a contemporaneous official record of the misconduct.
If an officer is criminally charged for conduct against you, the criminal charge — and especially a conviction — can be powerful evidence in your parallel civil rights lawsuit.
We monitor criminal proceedings against officers involved in our civil cases and coordinate timing to benefit from criminal findings, convictions, and adverse admissions.
"A person who assaults an individual without a weapon and inflicts serious or aggravated injury upon that individual without intending to commit murder or to inflict great bodily harm less than murder is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for not more than 1 year or a fine... [Aggravated assault]."Read Full Statute
Aggravated assault — causing serious or aggravated bodily injury — is a felony-level criminal offense in Michigan. When an officer faces criminal aggravated assault charges, the more serious criminal standard reflects a higher level of unlawful conduct directly relevant to civil liability.
An officer charged with aggravated assault has crossed a criminal line that simultaneously establishes the extreme nature of the force used in your civil rights case.
We use aggravated assault criminal findings to overcome qualified immunity arguments in § 1983 cases by demonstrating the force was clearly excessive under any objective standard.
"A person who assaults, batters, wounds, resists, obstructs, opposes, or endangers a person who the individual knows or has reason to know is performing his or her duties is guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than 2 years or a fine of not more than $2,000.00, or both."Read Full Statute
Michigan law defines exactly what constitutes criminal resistance of a police officer. Many actions that officers label 'resistance' do not meet the legal definition under § 750.81d — and even lawful resistance does not justify disproportionate force in response.
"He was resisting" is the most common justification for excessive force. We analyze whether the alleged resistance actually met the legal threshold under § 750.81d and whether the force used was proportionate to any resistance that did occur.
We use the specific statutory definition of resistance to challenge officers' narratives and demonstrate that our client's conduct — even if it technically qualified as resistance — did not justify the level of force applied.
"A person who assaults another person with a gun, revolver, pistol, knife, iron bar, club, brass knuckles, or other dangerous weapon, but without intending to commit murder or to inflict great bodily harm less than murder, is guilty of felonious assault."Read Full Statute
These statutes cover a range of serious assault offenses including assault with a dangerous weapon (felonious assault), assault with intent to commit serious crimes, and related firearm and weapon conduct. When officers engage in this conduct against civilians, they may face both criminal prosecution and parallel civil liability.
Officers who deploy batons, tasers, or firearms in violation of their training and departmental policy may be criminally chargeable under these statutes, with their criminal conduct simultaneously supporting civil rights claims.
We document all weapons deployed and the manner of their use in civil rights cases, using the criminal standards in these sections to demonstrate that the officer's conduct crossed both legal and policy lines.
"Any person who knowingly and willfully obstructs, resists, or opposes any officer of the law or other person duly authorized... in the discharge of any duty or the service or execution of any process, is guilty of a misdemeanor."Read Full Statute
Criminal charges of 'resisting and obstructing' are frequently used by officers following a use-of-force incident to criminalize the victim's reaction and build a post-hoc justification narrative. Many of these charges are dropped or result in acquittals.
If you were charged with resisting and the charges were dismissed or you were acquitted, that outcome directly undermines the officer's justification for force in your civil case.
We obtain complete criminal case files for any charges our civil rights clients faced following a use-of-force incident, using favorable criminal outcomes — dismissals, acquittals — to bolster the civil rights claim.
"A person shall not intentionally point a firearm, whether loaded or unloaded, at or toward another person. A person who violates this section is guilty of a misdemeanor."Read Full Statute
It is a criminal offense in Michigan to intentionally point a firearm at another person without lawful justification. When officers point weapons at non-threatening civilians during routine encounters, this criminal standard is relevant to assessing the constitutional reasonableness of their conduct.
Officers often point firearms at civilians in situations where no threat justified a drawn weapon. This conduct can constitute both a criminal act and an unreasonable Fourth Amendment seizure.
We document all instances of weapons pointing in our civil rights investigations and use the § 750.227d criminal standard to establish the unreasonableness of officer conduct when firearms were drawn without justification.