THE POLICE CAR FOLLOWED DEFENDANT, FIVE FEET BEHIND HIM, AS HE WALKED THROUGH A NARROW PASSAGEWAY; THE POLICE WERE NOT IN PURSUIT AND THE HANDGUN DISCARDED BY THE DEFENDANT WAS PROPERLY SEIZED (FOURTH DEPT).
The Fourth Department determined the police, who followed defendant in a police car as he walked through a narrow passageway (a cut-through) between two streets, were not in pursuit of defendant. Therefore the weapon discarded by the defendant was properly seized:
The evidence at the suppression hearing established that a police officer responding to the sound of gunshots observed a person walking towards him a few blocks away from the location of the incident. The officer lost sight of the person before he was able to speak with him to determine whether the person had heard the gunshots, but he relayed over the police radio a generic physical description of the person he had encountered and that person’s location. Shortly thereafter, a second police officer encountered defendant not far from the radioed position. The second officer engaged defendant in a brief conversation from her patrol vehicle, after which defendant entered a nearby cut-through—i.e., a pedestrian pathway that connected two streets. When defendant first entered the cut-through, the second officer did not consider him a suspect in the shooting and he was not engaged in any unlawful activity. Nonetheless, the second officer, still in her patrol vehicle and now accompanied by another officer in a separate patrol vehicle, followed defendant along the pathway, maintaining a distance of about five feet from defendant. The cut-through was so narrow at one point that the officers would not have been able to open the doors of their patrol vehicles. When defendant reached the end of the cut-through, he removed a handgun from his pocket and ran. As he ran, defendant discarded the handgun and was thereafter arrested. * * *
The police did not activate their vehicles’ overhead lights or sirens, exit their vehicles, or significantly limit defendant’s freedom of movement along the pedestrian path … . Indeed, defendant remained free to keep walking down the path, even if at one point on the path he could not have turned around and traveled in the opposite direction. People v Allen, 2020 NY Slip Op 06594, Fourth Dept 11-13-20