United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued March 10, 2021 Decided June 15, 2021

No. 20-3034

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

CHAUNCEY ALLAN JONES,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:19-cr-00121-1)

Michael E. Lawlor argued the cause for appellant. With 

him on the briefs was Nicholas G. Madiou. 

Mark Hobel, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause for 

appellee. With him on the brief were Elizabeth Trosman and 

Suzanne Grealy Curt, Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

Before: PILLARD and KATSAS, Circuit Judges, and 

SILBERMAN, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge PILLARD. 
2

PILLARD, Circuit Judge: Responding to late-night reports 

of gunfire, police officers stopped Chauncey Jones in a 

residential neighborhood in Washington, D.C. and seized a gun 

from his waistband. Jones, who had a previous felony 

conviction, was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm 

in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Before trial, he moved 

to suppress the gun, arguing that the officers who seized it had 

lacked reasonable suspicion that he was involved in criminal 

activity. The district court denied Jones’s motion, and the case 

proceeded by the parties’ agreement to a bench trial on a 

stipulated factual record, preserving Jones’ right to appeal the 

denial of his motion to suppress. The court found Jones guilty, 

and Jones now appeals the suppression ruling. We affirm the 

district court’s denial and hold that the officers who seized the 

gun had reasonable suspicion that Jones was involved in 

criminal activity.

BACKGROUND

On the night of April 6, 2019, the Metropolitan Police 

Department (MPD) alerted police officers Jasmine Turner and 

Brianna Ennis that its ShotSpotter system had identified the 

sound of gunshots in the 3500 block of 13th Street Southeast in 

Washington, D.C. Appellant’s Appendix (App.) 38-39. 

ShotSpotter is “a surveillance network of GPS-enabled 

acoustic sensors” that “use[s] sophisticated microphones to 

record gunshots in a specific area.” United States v. Rickmon, 

952 F.3d 876, 878 (7th Cir. 2020). The officers arrived on the 

block a minute and a half after receiving the alert from MPD. 

J.A. 52-53. They saw Jones walking quickly and observed that 

there was no one else outside on the block. App. 51, 66. While 

the officers checked for victims, a dispatcher reported over 

their radio that citizens on neighboring blocks were calling 911 

to report gunshots heard at either end of the 3500 block. App. 

66. The officers believed these were the same shots reported 
3

by ShotSpotter, because they had heard no additional shots 

since arriving on the block. App. 65-66.

Finding no victims, Turner and Ennis decided to stop 

Jones. App. 51, 56. They followed him around the corner onto 

Trenton Place, where Officer Damien Williams joined them. 

App. 41-42, 56, 62. Turner got out of the patrol car and pursued 

Jones on foot. App. 43. Jones continued to walk away as she 

called out to him: “Hello, how ya doin’? Hello. Excuse me! 

Hello. You don’t hear me talking to you?” GX 1 at 03:55-

04:051

; see App. 43-44. Jones was wearing a hooded jacket. 

See GX 1 at 03:55-04:05; App. 67. After ten seconds, Jones 

stopped and turned back toward the officers, removing the 

headphones he was wearing under the jacket’s hood. GX 1 at 

04:06. Ennis also approached. App. 63. Turner testified that 

Jones “kept moving, like moving a lot,” App. 44, and his “hand 

kept moving, gravitating towards his waistband area,” App. 46-

47. Turner grabbed Jones’s hand and told him to stop moving. 

App. 46-47. Williams and two other officers then converged 

on Jones. App. 63-64. Observing an item jostle in Jones’s 

waistband, Williams tackled Jones and, after a struggle,

recovered the item, a pistol. App. 77-80.

A grand jury indicted Jones for unlawful possession of a 

firearm. App. 12. Before trial, Jones moved to suppress the 

pistol, arguing that the police officers’ stop had violated the 

Fourth Amendment because they lacked a reasonable and 

articulable suspicion that Jones was engaged in criminal 

activity. App. 14-17. After a hearing, the district court denied 

Jones’s motion. App. 121-24. The court held that the 

ShotSpotter alert gave the officers reasonable suspicion that a 

crime had occurred on the 3500 block of 13th Street Southeast,

1 “GX 1” was the government’s first exhibit in the suppression 

proceedings and comprises body camera footage of the stop.
4

and that the lateness of the hour combined with the facts that 

Jones was the only person on the block when they arrived soon 

after the reports, that he was walking quickly away from the 

scene, and that he initially did not respond to Turner, gave them 

reasonable suspicion that Jones was involved. App. 122-23. 

Jones agreed to a stipulated trial, and the court found him 

guilty, App. 144-45, and sentenced him to 24 months in prison 

followed by three years of supervised release, App. 152, 154. 

He now timely appeals the denial of his motion to suppress, 

arguing that the officers lacked reasonable suspicion to stop 

him.

We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We review 

de novo the district court’s ultimate determination that the 

officer who stopped Jones had reasonable suspicion, United 

States v. Delaney, 955 F.3d 1077, 1081 (D.C. Cir. 2020), but 

we review “findings of historical fact only for clear error and 

. . . give due weight to inferences drawn from those facts by 

[district court] judges,” id. at 1082 (internal quotation marks 

omitted).

ANALYSIS

This appeal presents a single issue: whether the officer 

had reasonable suspicion to stop Jones. Under Terry v. Ohio, 

392 U.S. 1, 27, 30 (1968), officers may stop a citizen if they 

are “able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken 

together with rational inferences from those facts, support a 

reasonable and articulable suspicion that the person seized is 

engaged in criminal activity.” Delaney, 955 F.3d at 1081 

(internal quotation marks omitted). A Terry stop, which 

constitutes a Fourth Amendment seizure, “occurs when 

physical force is used to restrain movement or when a person 

submits to an officer’s show of authority.” Id. (internal 

quotation marks and citations omitted). It is the government’s 
5

burden to show that officers had evidence to support a 

reasonable and articulable suspicion at the time of a stop. Id.

at 1082. The Supreme Court has explained that such evidence 

must include more than mere “presence in an area of expected 

criminal activity.” Illinois v. Wardlaw, 528 U.S. 119, 124

(2000).

Here, the existence and timing of the Terry stop are not at 

issue: The parties agree that the stop occurred when Jones 

stopped walking and removed his headphones at Officer 

Turner’s direction. App. 122-23; Oral Arg. at 7:44-7:51, 

22:55-23:00. Jones also concedes that the officers had 

reasonable suspicion that a gun was fired on the 3500 block of 

13th Street Southeast shortly before their arrival. Appellant Br. 

20; Oral Arg. at 2:55-3:25. He disputes only whether they had 

grounds to suspect that he had been involved. Thus, the 

question before us is whether the facts known to the officers at 

the time they stopped Jones supported a reasonable and 

articulable suspicion that Jones was involved in the shooting.

We conclude that the record facts support the findings of 

the district court. The totality of the information known to 

Turner when she stopped Jones sufficed to raise a reasonable 

suspicion. The ShotSpotter alert and dispatcher report from 

MPD indicated that shots were fired in the 3500 block of 13th 

Street Southeast. App. 38-39, 91, 121. Turner and Ennis

arrived at the location of the reported gunshots within a minute 

and a half of the MPD call.

2 Turner testified that they saw that 

Jones was the only person on that block. App. 51, 66. Jones

was walking quickly away from the location of the shooting.

App. 44. He did not initially respond to Turner’s repeated 

2 The record does not indicate, and the parties do not discuss, how 

much time elapsed between the ShotSpotter alert and MPD’s call to 

the officers.
6

efforts to get his attention. App. 43-44; GX1 at 03:55-04:06. 

When Jones did pause and look back towards Officer Turner, 

reaching up in a gesture suggesting he was removing earbuds, 

Officer Turner could have drawn an alternative, non-suspicious 

inference from Jones’s failing to respond and continuing to 

walk away from her: He could have been listening to loud 

music and initially failed to hear her calling out. But the district 

court found that when Turner commanded Jones to stop she 

could not see that Jones was wearing headphones, and the court 

determined that it was reasonable for her to treat Jones’s nonresponsiveness as grounds for suspicion. App. 107-08, 121-22; 

see also United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 277 (2002) (“A 

determination that reasonable suspicion exists . . . need not rule 

out the possibility of innocent conduct.”). The district court 

viewed the bodycam footage and credited Turner and Ennis’

testimony, App. 121-22, and nothing in the record suggests that 

that the court’s findings were clearly erroneous. See GX 1 at 

02:24-03:58. 

The combination of the facts found by the district court

raised reasonable suspicion. We held in United States v. 

Brown, 334 F.3d 1161, 1165-68 (D.C. Cir. 2003), that a 

defendant’s presence in the precisely identified area where a 

crime has recently occurred and officers’ observation of his 

suspicious behavior there raise reasonable suspicion. In 

Brown, officers had reasonable suspicion where witnesses 

pinpointed shots to a parking lot where the defendant sat in one 

of two occupied cars and the occupants of the defendant’s car 

made furtive movements. Id. at 1165, 1167-68. We so held 

even though the officers did not arrive for 13⁄4 - 33⁄4 hours after 

the witnesses called. Id. at 1165 & n.1. Here, the officers 

arrived much more quickly, and there was no one besides Jones 

outdoors on the block. Jones was walking swiftly away from 

the site of the shots and failed to respond to Turner’s requests 
7

that he stop, all of which Officer Turner could reasonably 

perceive as evasive.

The precisely identified area where gunshots were heard, 

the officers’ observations when they got out of their car and 

investigated the block on foot, and Jones’s apparently evasive 

conduct distinguish this case from United States v. Delaney, 

955 F.3d at 1085-87, in which we vacated a district court’s

holding that there was reasonable suspicion in otherwise 

similar circumstances. In Delaney, officers patrolling an area 

for gunshots on New Year’s Eve “heard seven to eight gunshots 

coming from multiple directions, a few of which sounded 

particularly close by.” Id. at 1079 (internal quotation marks 

omitted). After driving around for about a minute, they came 

across the defendant sitting in a parked car. Id. at 1079-80. 

The defendant and his companion began kissing, which the 

officers found “odd.” Id. at 1080. The officers approached and 

ultimately recovered a gun from the car. Id. 

We held that the officers lacked reasonable suspicion, 

although the question was “close,” id. at 1079, because they 

had heard gunshots from multiple directions and failed to

survey the larger relevant area, simply seeing “Delaney before 

they saw anyone else.” Id. at 1086. And Delaney’s “odd” 

conduct—a New Year’s Eve kiss while officers approached—

was not in itself furtive or evasive. Id. at 1087. By contrast, 

the gunshots reported here were pinpointed to a single block,

and the officers saw that Jones was the only person on that 

block. Again, Officer Turner could reasonably conclude that

Jones behaved evasively when he walked quickly away from 

the scene and failed to respond to Turner when she repeatedly 

called out to him.

Jones raises several objections to the district court’s 

holding. First, he argues that his presence on the block was not 
8

a basis for reasonable suspicion because others could have been 

outside when the shots were fired and escaped into a building 

or driven away in a car before the officers arrived. Appellant 

Br. 17. But officers need not rule out all innocent possibilities 

before making a stop. See Arvizu, 534 U.S. at 277. Here, 

Officers Turner and Ennis arrived on the block within a minute 

and a half of MPD’s call reporting the ShotSpotter alert, and a

dispatcher reported further calls from neighbors as they 

arrived, so the officers could reasonably infer that the shots had 

been fired very recently. The officers also observed Jones 

behaving evasively. When presence where a crime is reported 

to have occurred is coupled with evasive behavior, we have 

found reasonable suspicion even when more time has elapsed. 

See Brown, 334 F.3d at 1165-66 & n.1.

Second, Jones asserts that ShotSpotter identifies only a 

“radius of unspecified size,” so the officers could not know that 

he was on the precise block where shots were fired. Appellant

Br. 19 (quoting United States v. Carter, 2020 WL 3893023, at 

*6 (D.D.C. 2020)). But the district court accepted the 

government’s factual claim that ShotSpotter identified the 

3500 block of 13th Street Southeast as the site of the gunshots. 

App. 116, 121. Jones offers no reason why that finding was 

clearly erroneous, and we cannot disturb the district court’s 

factual finding on the basis of his bare contrary assertion.

Third, Jones contends that he was not walking quickly

when the officers saw him, Appellant Br. 19, again contrary to 

the officers’ testimony and district court’s finding, App. 121. 

We have reviewed the body camera footage and concluded that 

the district court’s finding was not clearly erroneous. See GX 

1 at 03:50-04:10. In any case, even if Jones’ pace was not

suspicious, his initial failure to respond to Turner was evasive 

conduct that, together with the other facts, supports the district 

court’s holding.
9

Finally, Jones suggests in passing that the officers had no 

reason to think the gunshots were fired by someone outdoors

rather than indoors, so his presence outdoors on the block could 

not be grounds for reasonable suspicion. Appellant Br. 5. But

as the government explains, the fact that residents of 

neighboring blocks could hear the shots made it more likely 

that they were fired outside. Appellee Br. 21-22. The district 

court agreed, App. 122, and we give due weight to its

determination that the officers’ inference was reasonable,

Delaney, 955 F.3d at 1082. The officers’ evidence sufficed to 

provide reasonable suspicion even if it left some residual 

possibility that the shots were fired indoors. See Arvizu, 534 

U.S. at 277.

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the district court’s 

denial of Jones’s motion to suppress.

So ordered.