• Leath, 217 CA4 344, 158 CR3 449 (13):
Police officers spoke to three victims of a robbery. They said they had been walking home when a dark SUV came towards them. The person on the passenger side of the SUV got out first, approached, pointed a gun, and said, “Give me your stuff.” Female handed over her purse. Her friends ran towards her to see what was going on, and the suspects “pocket checked” them at gunpoint. The suspects then said, “Four-Eighth Street. Start running.” Four-Eighth is a street gang unit of the Rollin’ 40’s.
The victims described the perps as approximately 20 years of age. One suspect was wearing a blue Cardinals jacket. The victims said the SUV was either burgundy or dark in color. They were not able to otherwise describe the SUV.
The officers spotted the SUV nearby, with the passenger door open. Off. detained Def, who was walking away. Asked if it was his SUV, and he said, “Yes.” Off. then asked for ID, and the Def. gave it to him. They ran his name and discovered outstanding warrants, and arrested him.
His motion to suppress was denied, and the Court of Appeal, per Suzukawa, J., affirmed.
In the present case, the trial court concluded that defendant voluntarily complied with the officers’ request for identification. This conclusion is supported by substantial evidence. The officers did not accuse defendant of any illegal activity when they first addressed him—they merely told him his car door was open and asked if the car belonged to him. They then asked for—but did not demand—identification. There is no evidence that the officers used or threatened defendant with any physical force. Nor is there any evidence that, had defendant asked the officers to return his identification card to him, they would not have complied. Thus, the record supports the trial court’s conclusion that a reasonable person in defendant’s situation would have felt free to leave.
Handcuffing Defendant at Gunpoint Was Not De Facto Arrest
• Turner, 219 CA4 151, 161 CR3 567 (13):
After a high school football game, head coach Rafael Ward, and several other coaches, were accompanying their families to their cars for their protection because of a threat by defendant Ronald Henderson Turner, a parent of one of the players. Defendant called one of the coaches a racial slur and then said, “I’ll see you after the game.” Coach Ward told Lawrence Fenton, an off-duty probation officer providing security at the game, about the threat and that defendant had said he was going to carry out his threat after the game. A short time later, Ward told Officer Fenton that he (Ward) had learned from his aunt (who had heard it from an acquaintance of defendant) that defendant “had a gun on him.” Officer Fenton called Salinas police for backup. His partner who was with him, Steve Hinze (also an off-duty probation officer), located defendant and (with the police) detained him at or next to the parking lot outside the stadium. Defendant was handcuffed at gunpoint while officers determined whether he was armed. After admitting to a police officer that he had a gun, the police located a loaded revolver concealed on his person, and he was arrested.
After the denial of defendant’s 1538.5 motion, he pleaded no contest to possession of a firearm in a school zone. The court suspended defendant’s sentence and placed him on felony probation under various terms and conditions, including the condition that he serve 250 days in county jail.
Defendant’s motion to suppress involved dual, alternative contentions. First, defendant argued that the officers’ action of handcuffing him at gunpoint was not a detention for which they would have needed a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity; rather, it constituted a de facto arrest, and the officers had no probable cause that defendant had committed a crime. Second, that even if he was not arrested, his detention was unlawful because the detaining officers did not have specific articulable facts upon which they could have reasonably suspected that he was involved in illegal activity.
A. There Was No De Facto Arrest
A detention at gunpoint is a factor that obviously increases its intrusiveness; in some instances, this factor may result in the encounter being deemed an arrest that must be supported by probable cause, while in other instances, it may be found an appropriate element of the detention. (People v. Glaser (1995) 11 Cal.4th 354, 366.) Similarly, handcuffing a suspect does not necessarily convert a detention into a de facto arrest. (Celis, supra, 33 Cal.4th at p. 675; see also In re Antonio B. (2008) 166 Cal.App.4th 435, 441.)
Here, there were “articulable facts upon which the officers reasonably concluded that defendant was armed.”
B. The Detention Was Reasonable
We acknowledge that the intrusion to defendant in being publicly detained and handcuffed at gunpoint may have been greater than the traffic stop at issue in Wells, supra, 38 Cal.4th 1078. But the intrusiveness of the stop is only one of the factors to consider in determining whether the detention was reasonable, as seen, for example, in Dolly, where the defendant was ordered out of his car located on a city street in the middle of the afternoon and instructed to lie down in the street with his hands at his side. (Dolly, supra, 40 Cal.4th at p. 462.)
The court distinguished the information provided in Florida v. J.L. 529 U.S. 266 (00):
Unlike in J.L., this is not a case in which the original tipster’s identity is unknown and he or she therefore cannot be held accountable to the police. The informant here was Ward, who told Officer Fenton (in Officer Hinze’s presence) that his aunt “knew someone who knew [defendant] and said he had a gun on him.” Thus, although the ultimate source that defendant was armed was not disclosed, Ward, unlike the anonymous tipster in J.L., was a known individual communicating the tip. He—like a known informant providing a tip to the police—had a “reputation [that could] be assessed and who [could] be held responsible if [his] allegations turn out to be fabricated.” (Id. at p. 270; see also id. at p. 276 (conc. opn. of Stevens, J.) [where “informant places his anonymity at risk,” court may consider this factor in assessing tip’s reliability].) Thus, we are not faced here with the inherent unreliability “of an unknown, unaccountable informant” as found in J.L. (id. at p. 271). Further, the tip concerned a named individual, defendant, whereas the suspect in J.L. was described as a young Black male wearing a plaid shirt. (Id. at p. 268.)