- Parrott, 10 CA5 485, 216 CR3 208 (17):
Two police officers were driving on Pine Street in Eureka, California one night. As they approached an intersection they observed a small purple hatchback without illuminated rear or brake lights, rolling backwards toward the intersection. Not knowing if there was a driver in the vehicle, the officers positioned their patrol car behind the hatchback to keep it from rolling further down the street. Seconds later the vehicle came to a stop, Parrott exited from the driver’s side of the vehicle and proceeded to push it to a nearby curb.
One Officer, Harkness, asked if he could assist Parrott, offering a tow truck or a ride. Parrott replied that he didn’t really need any assistance. Parrott was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, with a visibly heavy item bulging from the front pocket. As the interaction progressed, the officer noticed Parrott appeared nervous and continued to touch the bulging item in the front pocket of his sweatshirt.
Officer Harkness asked Parrott to step off the road and onto the sidewalk. When on the sidewalk, Harkness asked for name and date of birth. The officers then reported Parrott’s name to dispatch. Parrott appeared nervous. At one point, Harkness asked Parrott to refrain from reaching into the front pocket of his sweatshirt, fearing it might contain a weapon.
Dispatch informed the officers that Parrott’s license was suspended. Harkness tried to cuff him, but Parrott resisted. He was subdued and patted down. He had a gun in the sweatshirt.
Parrott was charged with possession of a firearm by a felon and driving without a valid driver’s license. He moved to suppress the evidence. The trial court denied the motion.
The Court of Appeal, per Ruvolo, P.J., affirmed.
The court addressed two issues:
(1) At what point in the encounter was appellant detained?
In determining whether a reasonable person would have believed he or she was free to leave or end the encounter, a court must take into account the totality of the circumstances from the perspective of a reasonable person in the defendant’s position.
***
Appellant contends he was detained when officers asked him to keep his hands out of his pockets and to step onto the sidewalk. We disagree.
When Officer Harkness initially contacted appellant, he did so to inquire about appellant’s disabled vehicle and to offer assistance. A reasonable person in appellant’s position would have realized that, by offering him a tow truck or a ride to someone who could repair the car, Officer Harkness was attempting to help appellant get out of his predicament. There are no facts in the record indicating the initial interaction was anything more than a consensual encounter, or that the officer was investigating criminal behavior.
As the interaction progressed, Officer Harkness asked appellant to refrain from placing his hands in his pockets and to provide his name and date of birth. Appellant argues that, considering the totality of the circumstances, these requests constituted a show of authority that indicated to appellant “an investigation was being focused on him.” …
[A]sking an individual to keep his hands out of his pockets is not akin to conveying to an individual that they are suspected of being involved in unlawful activity. Rather, asking appellant to keep his hands out of his pockets is a normal, expected response to an officer’s concern for his or her own personal safety during the encounter. Furthermore, prior to being asked to move onto the sidewalk, there was no application of force, no brandishing of weapons and no blocking of exits. Finally, even after the parties moved onto the sidewalk appellant asked the officers if he could smoke a cigarette, and one of the officers responded by stating “there was no reason that he couldn’t smoke a cigarette.”
(2) Did the officers have the proper level of suspicion to justify a detention and patdown search?
The patdown did not begin until it was confirmed that appellant did not have a valid driver’s license, and only after he physically resisted two attempts by the officers to handcuff him. Given these circumstances and the struggle that ensued, the officers justifiably feared that appellant was armed, and thus the patdown search was a lawful search under the Fourth Amendment.
Police May Enter Home Without Warrant to Aid Potential Victim
Pou, 11 CA5 143, ___ CR3 ___ (17) #B269349:
In Fisher, 558 US 45 (09) and Troyer, 51 C4 599 (11), the U.S. Supreme Court held that officers may enter a residence without a warrant if they reasonably believe there is a potential victim inside.
In this case, officers received a call about a woman screaming, along with “distressed moaning.” They arrived and heard loud male and female voices arguing. Through the window one officer saw two males gesturing angrily. The officers knocked and kept on knocking until defendant opened up. They went in and searched to make sure everyone was okay … or perhaps in a closet, wherein they found cocaine … enough for sale.
Def’s 1538.5 motion was denied, and the Court of Appeal, per Kin, J., affirmed.
Here, the officers were told by the radio dispatch operator that someone had reported hearing a screaming woman and distressed moaning at the location. Upon arrival, consistent with the radio dispatch call information, the officers could hear from the outside loud voices—both male and female—engaged in an argument inside the house. One officer additionally saw through the window that two males in the house were gesturing as if arguing. Under these circumstances, it was objectively reasonable for an officer to believe that immediate entry was necessary to render emergency assistance to a screaming female victim inside or to prevent a perpetrator from inflicting additional immediate harm to that victim or others inside the house.
Further, the court found that the scope of the search was reasonably tied to the apparent emergency with which the officers were presented. It was a “very large house” and the officers were entitled to conduct an emergency search of “all places in the house where a body (victim or suspect) might have been hiding or lying in wait, including the closet in which the drugs were found.”