Supreme Court issued an opinion on how cases of police's excessive force are to be handled. I think it might be relevant to Patrick's case. In particular they rejected the "circumstances existing at the precise time" theory that MPD relied on, and instructed that every previous interaction is to be included when considering the "totality of the circumstances” with no time limit.
This doesn't seem directly relevant, although I'd be very surprised if Tomlinson's lawyer doesn't at least try to use it. I think the context here involves the officer's own unreasonable behavior creating the specific dangerous situation he then used to justify the shooting.
I'm surprised such an obviously dumb rule survived long enough to have to be thrown out by a unanimous Supreme Court opinion (and Roberts even apparently picked Kagan to write it). A Justice from the Ninth Circuit smacks down a Fifth Circuit opinion. Pure pwnage.
I'll note this case involves a brief interaction (apparently the only one) between the defendant and the victim, in which the defendant was personally involved in every aspect of the interaction.
Tomlinson's case involves interactions with multiple officers and the department itself, and the city of Milwaukee itself. I doubt this would really apply to some presumed gestalt institutional memory and ascribe the knowledge of every prior interaction to every state actor.
It would seem to apply to officers who had had multiple personal interactions with Tomlinson. They would be presumed to remember things they had personally experienced, such as having witnessed Tomlinson feebly attempting to punch a cop. However, if all they had was a general note that a specific address or individual had been swatted in the past, they can't really be presumed to know everything that happened.
Therefore, I am assuming Tomlinson's counsel will probably cite this case as supplemental authority to any claims involving officers who had multiple personal interactions with Tomlinson.
I also don't believe that adopting a "totality of the circumstances" approach changes much of anything, particularly under Fatboy's novel theory that the police somehow should have ignored a call or otherwise not been diligent in at least making sure there was no shenanigans at his location simply because of his assertion that he lived at a "known swaTTing" location.
I can see the defendants bringing this up, too, even if this is specifically a deadly force case and related to a rule that is arguably narrowly directed solely at deadly force cases. I think the "totality of the circumstances" type test, which I think again arguably applies to much 1983 reasonableness doctrine, actually helps the defendants.
Things like swinging on cops, making death threats against domestic partners and even unborn children, and shrieking and screaming like a lunatic, would justify treating even a "swat victim" as a potential threat, at least to officers who personally knew of such things.
(Also I think the totality test already does apply to this particular set of facts but that's open to argument.)