Third District Court of Appeal

State of Florida

Opinion filed December 12, 2018.

Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.

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No. 3D17-2452

Lower Tribunal No. 16-17787

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The State of Florida,

Appellant,

vs.

Darryl Brown,

Appellee.

An Appeal from the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, Oscar RodriguezFonts, Judge.

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, and Jonathan Tanoos, Assistant Attorney 

General, for appellant.

Carlos J. Martinez, Public Defender, and Susan S. Lerner, Assistant Public 

Defender, for appellee.

Before LAGOA, LOGUE and SCALES, JJ. 

PER CURIAM.

Affirmed.
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The State of Florida v. Darryl Brown

Case No. 3D17-2452

LOGUE, J. (concurring).

I concur for the reasons stated in the trial court’s well-reasoned order which 

I would adopt as this court’s own:

BACKGROUND

Brown was charged in this case with possession of a 

firearm by a convicted felon. He seeks to suppress the firearm, 

which was seized from the glove compartment of his vehicle 

following a traffic stop. On August 27, 2016, Officer Desiree 

Zayas conducted a traffic stop of a vehicle driven by Brown 

after observing the vehicle commit a traffic violation. Officer 

Anthony Jimenez responded to the scene shortly thereafter as 

a backup unit. During the encounter, Officer Zayas asked 

Brown on two separate occasions whether the vehicle 

contained any weapons. Both times, Brown responded that it 

did not. A search of the vehicle’s glove compartment by 

Officer Jimenez, however, revealed the firearm which is the 

subject of the Defendant’s motion. The question presented for 

this Court to examine is whether Officer Jimenez’s search of 

the vehicle following the traffic stop was justified.

ANALYSIS

The standards for assessing the constitutionality of a 

protective search of the passenger compartment of a vehicle 

for weapons in the absence of probable cause to arrest were 

outlined by the United States Supreme Court in Michigan v. 

Long, 463 U.S. 1032 (1983). In Long, the Supreme Court 

extended a Terry protective search for weapons to the 

passenger compartment of a vehicle during a lawful 

investigatory stop, holding that a police officer who is 

performing a traffic stop may conduct a limited search of the

vehicle for weapons if the officer “possesses a reasonable 
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belief based on ‘specific and articulable facts which, taken 

together with the rational inferences from those facts, 

reasonably warrant’ the officers in believing that the suspect 

is dangerous and the suspect may gain immediate control of 

weapons’. Id. at 1049-50 (citing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21 

(1968)). In State v. Dilyerd, 467 So. 2d 301, 304 (Fla. 1985), 

the Florida Supreme Court applied the standard enunciated in 

Long and characterized two questions as “determinative” in 

its analysis of an officer’s protective search of a vehicle: “(1) 

was the stop itself justified and, (2) did the deputy possess a 

reasonable belief based on specific and articulable facts, 

along with rational inferences, which justified his belief that 

the occupants of the car were dangerous and might gain 

control of weapons within the car.” Brown does not dispute 

that the stop itself was justified. He does, however, challenge 

whether Officer Jimenez possessed a. “reasonable belief 

based on specific and articulable facts, along with rational 

inferences, which justified his belief that [Brown] was 

dangerous and might gain control of weapons within the car.” 

At the suppression hearing, Officer Zayas testified that 

she initially approached Brown’s vehicle with her weapon 

drawn because she felt that Brown was trying to-hide 

something. She further testified that she was concerned 

Brown was hiding something and concerned with his 

movements. The officer, however, did not articulate any 

specific movement that led to her belief that Brown was 

dangerous and might gain control of a weapon. She testified 

that, despite retrieving his driver’s license and registration 

from the sun visor, Brown turned his body towards the center 

of the vehicle. However, the body camera footage revealed 

that Brown only did so after receiving permission from 

Officer Jimenez in order to retrieve his insurance paperwork 

from the center console. Furthermore, while Officer Zayas 

may have suspected that Brown was hiding something, there 

was no testimony indicating that she in fact witnessed Brown 

hide (or attempt to hide) something in the vehicle.

Officer Jimenez, who arrived on scene shortly after 

Officer Zayas, testified that he was concerned for officer 

safety based on what he had been told by Officer Zayas. He 

further testified that, when he first arrived, one of the officers 
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(presumably Officer Zayas or Rodriguez) told him that 

Brown was reaching for something. Officer Jimenez, himself, 

did not observe Brown reach for anything in the vehicle. He 

testified that Brown was cooperative and never removed his 

hands from the steering wheel throughout his interaction with 

the Defendant, but he became concerned when Brown looked 

at the glove compartment. However, Officer Jimenez 

acknowledged that it was possible that Brown was looking at 

him since the officer was standing in the same direction as the 

glove compartment, relative to Brown.

The specific facts articulated by the officers fail to 

demonstrate that their fear of immediate danger was 

objectively reasonable so as to justify a protective search of 

the vehicle.

The officer’s suspicions that Brown was hiding 

something, alone, are insufficient to justify a weapons search. 

There must be specific, articulable facts that demonstrate that 

the officer’s belief that the occupant of the vehicle is 

dangerous is reasonable. Brown's brief look at the glove 

compartment, without more, does not support a finding that it 

was reasonable to believe he was dangerous or might gain 

control of a weapon in the car. The Court recognizes that it 

must look to the totality of the circumstances. However, a 

review of the body camera footage demonstrates that Brown 

was cooperative throughout the encounter. Officer Jimenez 

testified to this fact as well. Brown kept his hands on the 

steering wheel as directed by Officer Zayas except for when 

he needed to search for his license, registration, and insurance 

paperwork. Brown did not make any suspicious movements 

that were discernable in the body camera footage. Nor did 

either officer testify that they witnessed a particular 

movement. While Officer Zayas testified that she felt Brown 

was hiding something, a feeling or a “hunch” is not enough to 

justify a protective search. Therefore, the Court finds that the

officers did not have a reasonable and articulable suspicion of 

danger justifying the search of Brown's car as protective, as 

Long requires.