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FRISK OF DEFENDANT WAS NOT JUSTIFIED BY REASONABLE SUSPICION, SEIZED WEAPON SHOULD HAVE BEEN SUPPRESSED (FOURTH DEPT).

The Fourth Department, reversing County Court, determined the arresting officer did not have cause to frisk the defendant, which revealed a weapon. The motion to suppress the weapon should have been granted. The officer had responded to a call about a shooting at a bar which described the suspect as a male Hispanic. The officer found a bullet fragment and some blood in a parking lot and he approached a group of people who were about 10 to 25 feet away. One person in the group appeared to the officer to be a male Hispanic. Someone in the group said they didn’t hear or see anything. The officer then frisked the defendant, who is black, not Hispanic:

… [T]he police had an objective, credible reason to approach the group of five people in the parking lot and to request information in light of the report of a shooting at or near that location at some unidentified earlier time. Thus, we conclude that the police encounter was lawful at its inception… . The People correctly concede, however, that the officer’s encounter with defendant constituted a level three forcible detention under the four-tiered De Bour framework …, and thus required “a reasonable suspicion that [defendant] was involved in a felony or misdemeanor” … .

We conclude that, “[b]ecause of the lack of correspondence between defendant’s appearance and the description of the suspected [shooter that was] transmitted to the officer[] . . . , the officer[] had no basis for concluding that the reported crime had been committed by defendant” … . “Nor can the [frisk of defendant] and seizure of the gun be justified as having been in the interests of the officer[‘s] safety, since there was no testimony that the officer[] believed defendant to be carrying a weapon” … ,and the People presented no other evidence establishing that the officer had reason to fear for his safety … . People v Roberts, 2018 NY Slip Op 00725, Fourth Dept 2-2-18

 

CRIMINAL LAW (FRISK OF DEFENDANT WAS NOT JUSTIFIED BY REASONABLE SUSPICION, SEIZED WEAPON SHOULD HAVE BEEN SUPPRESSED (FOURTH DEPT))/EVIDENCE (CRIMINAL LAW, SUPPRESSION, FRISK OF DEFENDANT WAS NOT JUSTIFIED BY REASONABLE SUSPICION, SEIZED WEAPON SHOULD HAVE BEEN SUPPRESSED (FOURTH DEPT))/SEARCH AND SEIZURE  (FRISK OF DEFENDANT WAS NOT JUSTIFIED BY REASONABLE SUSPICION, SEIZED WEAPON SHOULD HAVE BEEN SUPPRESSED (FOURTH DEPT))/STREET STOPS (FRISK OF DEFENDANT WAS NOT JUSTIFIED BY REASONABLE SUSPICION, SEIZED WEAPON SHOULD HAVE BEEN SUPPRESSED (FOURTH DEPT))/SUPPRESS, MOTION TO (CRIMINAL LAW, FRISK OF DEFENDANT WAS NOT JUSTIFIED BY REASONABLE SUSPICION, SEIZED WEAPON SHOULD HAVE BEEN SUPPRESSED (FOURTH DEPT))

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