NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION

File Name: 19a0485n.06

No. 18-2309

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

AMARION AQUAI-LATROY MCELRATH,

Defendant-Appellee.

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ON APPEAL FROM THE 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT 

COURT FOR THE WESTERN 

DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN

OPINION

BEFORE: BOGGS, BATCHELDER, and STRANCH, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM. During a night-time raid on a house suspected of drug and gun activity, 

the Kalamazoo police department stopped and searched Amarion McElrath. After his indictment 

on drug and gun charges, McElrath moved to suppress the evidence taken from him on the night 

of the raid. He claimed that the officers lacked a lawful basis to stop and handcuff him, so any 

evidence later seized was the fruit of an unlawful search. The district court agreed and suppressed 

the evidence. But taking all of the relevant circumstances into account, we find that the officers 

had reasonable suspicion to stop McElrath, and his detention and handcuffing were reasonably 

necessary to ensure the officers’ safety. We therefore REVERSE the district court’s suppression 

order. 
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I. BACKGROUND

A. Factual Background

In February 2018, the Kalamazoo police department obtained a warrant to search 

637 Florence Street, a single-family home in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Officers had received many 

complaints about this property in the weeks prior to the raid, including several calls of shots fired 

at the residence or near it. The most recent 911 call had reported shots fired at the house only two 

days before the raid. An informant had also identified McElrath as a crack cocaine dealer operating 

out of the home. An hour before the raid, officers had observed McElrath sell drugs to an informant 

on the sidewalk in front of the property. During the pre-raid briefing, officers were told that 

McElrath was possibly armed and dangerous, that informants had seen guns inside the home, and 

that some occupants of the house were carrying weapons. 

On the night of the raid, officers approached 637 Florence from multiple directions. Most 

relevant here, Officers Boutell and Schemenauer came from the west and drove to the front of the 

house, while Officer Cake came from the southeast to secure the area behind the property. As

Officers Boutell and Schemenauer approached in their vehicle, they saw two men standing by a 

car in a driveway next to the home. The driveway was located between 637 Florence and 

635 Florence, the house next door. As it turns out, this driveway is inside the property lines of 

635 Florence; but the officers testified, and McElrath does not dispute, that both the car and the 

two men were closer to 637 Florence, the site of the raid, when the police vehicle approached. 

When the officers’ vehicle came to a stop in front of 637 Florence, two things happened: 

the men by the car walked east, away from 637 Florence toward 635 Florence, and the parked car 

pulled forward, rammed the police vehicle, and sped away west along the sidewalk. At almost 

exactly the same time, Officers Boutell and Schemenauer exited the vehicle, raised their guns, and 

shouted at the men walking away to stop and get on the ground on their stomachs. By this time, 
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the two men had continued walking east and were near the front entrance to 635 Florence. The 

first of the two men, later identified as Smith,1immediately obeyed the officers’ commands to lie 

down. The second man, later identified as McElrath, was slower to respond and continued for 

several more steps—“almost right on the border of not obeying police commands”—before 

stopping and lying down. 

Officer Boutell attended to Smith as he lay in the snow. Meanwhile, Officer Cake 

approached from behind the house and found McElrath prone on the ground near Officer Boutell 

and Smith. Officer Cake handcuffed McElrath and asked him his name. McElrath gave his full 

name, but it did not yet click with Officer Cake that McElrath was the individual mentioned in the 

pre-raid briefing. Officer Cake asked McElrath if he had something illegal on him, and McElrath 

responded, “yeah.” Officer Cake then asked McElrath if he had a gun, and McElrath said he did 

not. McElrath smelled of marijuana, and upon questioning he admitted to Officer Cake that he 

had just smoked marijuana before the stop. Officer Cake repeatedly asked McElrath for 

permission to search him, but McElrath said he would not grant permission unless he was under 

arrest. 

Both men walked back to the police vehicles in front of 637 Florence. Officer Cake told 

McElrath that the police had a warrant to search people associated with 637 Florence, and at that 

point McElrath gave Officer Cake permission to search him. After patting him down, Officer Cake 

found an empty gun magazine in McElrath’s pocket and some tin foil that officers associated with 

drug packaging material. Shortly thereafter, another officer reminded Officer Cake that McElrath 

was the person discussed in the pre-raid briefing. McElrath was arrested and brought back to the 

 

1 Smith’s first name does not appear in the record. 
No. 18-2309, United States v. McElrath

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police station, where an additional search revealed that he was carrying several grams of crack 

cocaine. 

B. Proceedings Below

The Government indicted McElrath on multiple drug and firearm charges.2In the district 

court, McElrath argued that the evidence seized from him on the night of the raid was the fruit of 

an unlawful search under the Fourth Amendment. He claimed that the search warrant for 637 

Florence did not give police the authority to search him and that officers otherwise lacked 

reasonable suspicion to stop, detain, and handcuff him. 

The district court agreed. The court first concluded that the search warrant did not apply 

to McElrath because he was inside the property lines of 635 Florence when the officers 

approached, and therefore he was not in the immediate vicinity of 637 Florence at the time of the 

stop. Next, the court decided that the officers did not have reasonable suspicion to stop McElrath 

because (1) the fact that the neighborhood was a high-crime area was not alone sufficient to justify 

the stop, (2) police were not sure if he and Smith had stopped to speak to the car in the driveway 

or were simply walking towards and around it, and (3) McElrath did not run away, complied with 

Boutell’s orders, and was entirely cordial to and cooperative with Cake. Finally, the court found 

that the officers’ decision to handcuff McElrath was unreasonable because there was no indication 

that he posed a risk or safety hazard to the officers. The court thus held that the search following 

McElrath’s stop was “tainted” and suppressed the evidence seized from him during the raid. 

 

2 The firearm charge stemmed from a gun discovered after another officer saw McElrath throw something 

into the snow immediately before he was detained. The officer later found a gun in the snow nearby that

did not have snow on it and was not cold to the touch. The officers who stopped McElrath did not know or 

suspect that he had thrown the gun into the snow at the time of the stop. Because this gun was not seized 

from McElrath during the search, the district court did not suppress it. 
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The Government now appeals the district court’s suppression order. Although in the 

district court it raised a number of alternative theories to support McElrath’s search, on appeal it 

makes only one claim: that officers had reasonable suspicion to stop, detain, and handcuff 

McElrath, and that his later admission to having illegal contraband—coupled with the officers’ 

recognition that he was the subject of a previous controlled drug buy—justified the arrest and 

search that followed. For his part, McElrath does not dispute that officers had probable cause to 

search him after he admitted that he had something illegal on him. He argues only that officers 

lacked reasonable suspicion to stop and detain him in the first place. 

II. ANALYSIS

A. Standard of Review

On appeal of a suppression order, “this court reviews the district court’s factual findings 

for clear error and its legal conclusions de novo.” United States v. McCraney, 674 F.3d 614, 616 

(6th Cir. 2012). While “the ultimate reasonable suspicion inquiry is de novo,” we give “due 

weight” to the inferences drawn by the district court because it is “at an institutional advantage, 

having observed the testimony of the witnesses and understanding local conditions, in making this 

determination.” United States v. Foster, 376 F.3d 577, 583 (6th Cir. 2004) (citation and internal 

quotation marks omitted). 

B. The Reasonableness of the Stop

An officer may briefly stop a person for investigatory purposes if, “under the totality of the 

circumstances,” he has a “reasonable suspicion” to do so. Brown v. Lewis, 779 F.3d 401, 412 (6th 

Cir. 2015) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). A reasonable suspicion is one “based 

on specific and articulable facts” that support “a particularized and objective basis for suspecting 

the particular person . . . of criminal activity.” Id. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). 
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Because this is an objective test, “the officers’ actual subjective motivations in effectuating the 

stop are irrelevant to the validity of the stop.” United States v. Shank, 543 F.3d 309, 313 (6th Cir. 

2008). At bottom, our “determination of reasonable suspicion must be based on commonsense 

judgments and inferences about human behavior.” Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 125 (2000).

The reasonableness of the stop here turns on a threshold question: did the officers have a 

“particularized and objective basis” for suspecting that McElrath3 was involved in drug activity 

and/or gun violence when they stopped him? To answer this question, several facts are most 

relevant. First, the officers who stopped McElrath were aware of many recent complaints about 

drug activity and shots fired at 637 Florence, including a report of shots fired on the property only 

two days before the raid. Second, these officers also knew that, just an hour before the raid, police 

had observed McElrath sell drugs to an informant on the sidewalk in front of the home. Third, as 

they approached the property, the officers saw two men standing by a car in the driveway directly 

next to 637 Florence—only a few steps from where McElrath had sold drugs to an informant the 

hour before. Fourth, as the officers’ vehicle came to a stop outside the home, these two men 

walked away from the property, and the car next to them pulled forward, hit the officers’ vehicle, 

and sped away along the sidewalk in the opposite direction. 

While none of these events may have been sufficient in isolation, they must be considered 

in combination. The totality of the circumstances here—the numerous complaints about drug 

activity at the house, the reports of shots fired on the property two days before, McElrath’s location 

steps away from the site of an hour-old controlled drug buy, his decision to walk away as officers 

approached, and the nearby car’s reckless flight as McElrath left the scene—were enough to give 

 

3 We refer to McElrath by name to avoid confusion, but the officers did not know that the man they stopped 

at the time was McElrath until after his stop and detention. 
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officers a reasonable basis to suspect that he was involved in criminal activity. See, e.g., United 

States v. Lyons, 687 F.3d 754, 763 (6th Cir. 2012) (“In considering the totality of the 

circumstances, we must determine whether the individual factors, taken as a whole, give rise to 

reasonable suspicion, even if each individual factor is entirely consistent with innocent behavior 

when examined separately.” (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)); United States v. 

Perez, 440 F.3d 363, 371 (6th Cir. 2006) (“While reasonable suspicion must be based on more 

than ‘ill-defined hunches,’ officers may ‘draw on their own experience and specialized training to 

make inferences from and deductions about the cumulative information available to them that 

might well elude an untrained person.’” (quoting United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 273 

(2002))). 

McElrath tries to counter the evidence in a few ways, none of which is persuasive. He first 

claims that the most important fact in this case is that the officers decided to detain him on the 

strength of the search warrant, not because of any reasonable suspicion. The district court reached 

a different conclusion, finding as a matter of fact that Boutell did not stop McElrath in order to 

preserve the premises of the search or evidence found during the lawful search, or to protect 

anyone, but did so only because he thought McElrath was possibly involved in a crime. McElrath 

has not argued that the district court’s factual finding was clearly erroneous, and we find no basis 

for doing so. Regardless, because the subjective motivations of officers are irrelevant in this 

context, see Shank, 543 F.3d at 313, this disagreement is also irrelevant. 

Next, McElrath emphasizes that an individual’s presence in a so-called “high crime” area 

is not enough to provide reasonable suspicion. It is true that presence in a high-crime 

neighborhood—or even general proximity to the site of suspected criminal activity—is not alone 

sufficient to justify a stop. See, e.g., id. at 316 n.3 (cautioning “that high-crime area designations 
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not be permitted to serve as a proxy for race or ethnicity” (citation and internal quotation marks 

omitted)); King v. United States, 917 F.3d 409, 424 (6th Cir. 2019) (deciding officers lacked 

reasonable suspicion to stop suspect who “was several blocks away from the relevant 

intersection”). But that is not what happened here. McElrath was not simply walking in a highcrime neighborhood when officers saw him, nor was he merely in the general proximity of 637 

Florence. Instead, he was steps away from both the target house and the location of the recent 

controlled drug buy. McElrath’s close proximity to this circumscribed area—where specific 

criminal activity had occurred only an hour before—reasonably contributed to the officers’ 

suspicion. See, e.g., United States v. Caruthers, 458 F.3d 459, 468 (6th Cir. 2006), abrogated on 

other grounds by Cradler v. United States, 891 F.3d 659 (6th Cir. 2018) (finding facts supported 

reasonable suspicion where “the ‘high-crime’ area [wa]s circumscribed to a specific intersection 

rather than an entire neighborhood” and “the crimes that frequently occur[ed] in the area [we]re 

specific and related to the reason for which [the defendant] was stopped”). 

McElrath likewise maintains that walking away from the police does not by itself create 

reasonable suspicion. That is also true. In United States v. Beauchamp, we held that “hurriedly 

walking away from an officer without making eye contact . . . does not rise to the level of 

independent suspicion” necessary to support a Terry stop. 659 F.3d 560, 570 (6th Cir. 2011). But 

while the court found that such behavior does not “rise to the level of independent suspicion,” it 

also recognized that walking away from police may “contribute to reasonable suspicion” if 

combined with “specific facts [showing] that the defendant’s behavior was otherwise suspicious.” 

Id. (emphasis added). The other “specific facts” in this case—McElrath’s direct proximity to the 

target house, his location very near a recent drug buy, and his suspected association with the car 
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that dangerously fled as soon as police arrived—were enough to make McElrath’s behavior 

“otherwise suspicious.” Id. 

McElrath also makes much of the fact that the driveway between 637 Florence and 

635 Florence is inside the property lines of 635 Florence. But the reasonable-suspicion inquiry 

recognizes only “the information available to law enforcement officials at the time.” United States 

v. Lyons, 687 F.3d 754, 763 (6th Cir. 2012). The property line between 637 Florence and 

635 Florence was not known to the officers when they stopped McElrath. If the observable

characteristics of the driveway had made clear that it belonged to 635 Florence, that would be 

relevant to our analysis. But the photos in the record confirm that the driveway is roughly 

equidistant from both houses, and nothing about the driveway’s appearance otherwise indicates 

that it belongs to one house or the other. In fact, Officers Boutell and Schemenauer both testified 

that the parked car and McElrath were closer to 637 Florence than to 635 Florence when they 

approached the scene—so close that Officer Schemenauer thought McElrath appeared to be in the 

front yard of 637 Florence. These facts, in combination with the others discussed above, were 

enough to support a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. 

Finally, McElrath claims that the car in the driveway fled down the sidewalk only after the 

officers ordered him to stop. The bodycam footage in the record does not clearly show whether 

the car began moving before, after, or concurrent with the officers’ commands. The district court’s 

findings of fact suggest that the car began moving before those commands, and given the 

uncertainty in the record, we cannot say this finding was clearly erroneous. At any rate, the 

reasonable-suspicion inquiry does not begin until a person is “seized” within the meaning of the 

Fourth Amendment. A suspect is not seized until he “submit[s] to [the officers’] show of 

authority,” even if the officers have their guns drawn before the suspect submits. Robinson v. 
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Howes, 663 F.3d 819, 828 (6th Cir. 2011). Here, the parties have not disputed—and the bodycam 

footage appears to confirm—that McElrath stopped walking and lay on the ground only after the 

car had already begun speeding away. The car’s flight therefore reasonably contributed to the 

officers’ suspicion at the time of the stop. 

C. The Manner of the Intrusion

The final question is whether “the degree of intrusion into [McElrath’s] personal security 

was reasonably related in scope to the situation at hand.” Smoak v. Hall, 460 F.3d 768, 779 (6th 

Cir. 2006). If “the length and manner” of the stop, including the officers’ show of force, were not 

“reasonably related to the basis for the initial intrusion,” then the stop ripened into an arrest for 

which the officers needed probable cause. Houston v. Clark County Sheriff Deputy John Does 1–

5, 174 F.3d 809, 814 (6th Cir. 1999). McElrath does not claim here that the length of his detention 

was unreasonable; he argues only that the manner of his detention was unreasonably intrusive. 

Where, as here, officers use a militarized police presence4in the course of a stop, we pay 

close attention to the question of whether the suspect’s detention was reasonably related to the 

original basis for the stop. At the same time, “the use of guns, handcuffs, and detention . . . do[es]

not automatically transform a Terry stop into an arrest”; rather, the officers’ “displays of force 

must be warranted by the circumstances.” Brown, 779 F.3d at 415. Such “intrusive measures are 

warranted” if, for example, “specific facts lead to an inference” that the suspect poses a risk “of 

violence to the officers.” Id. These “specific facts” can include information supporting “a 

reasonable belief that the suspect is armed and dangerous.” Bennett v. City of Eastpointe, 410 F.3d 

810, 835 (6th Cir. 2005).

 

4 The raid included 19 heavily armed and armored officers, a tactical minivan, and a militarized SWAT 

vehicle. 
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At the time of the raid, the officers knew that McElrath was likely on the property, that he 

was possibly armed and dangerous, that police had received many recent complaints about drug 

activity and shots fired on the premises (including shots fired only two days before), that 

informants had seen guns inside the home, and that some occupants of the house were carrying 

weapons. And when officers approached the house, they immediately encountered a car that hit 

their vehicle and dangerously fled the scene. Knowing all of these facts, the officers made a 

reasonable decision to protect themselves by raising their guns and handcuffing suspects who 

appeared to be associated with the property. See, e.g., Brown, 779 F.3d at 415 (“The details of the 

suspected crime may also provide the specific facts justifying an inference of dangerousness.”). 

III. CONCLUSION

The officers had reasonable suspicion to stop McElrath, and his detention and handcuffing 

were reasonably necessary to ensure the officers’ safety. Because the stop and detention were 

reasonable, the evidence later taken from McElrath was admissible. We therefore REVERSE the 

district court’s suppression order.