If the police have no cause to approach or question you, a citizen on a public street has the right to ignore them and go about one s business, whether it s reading a book, continuing walking or even running. Running without explanation, in conjunction with other factors such as being in a high crime area, raises a reasonable suspicion of crime underfoot, justifying an investigatory stop. No. 2 is correct. Off to the slammer for Sam. This was the case of Illinois v. Wardlow, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in January 2000.
Police have more stringent requirements for having probable cause to actually make an arrest.
But an officer may briefly stop and question an individual merely if he or she has a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, which should be based on common sense and inferences about human behavior, as well as other circumstances such as the neighborhood. This ruling bolsters police power and their ability to make stops based on apparent suspicious activity. The court s decision was close, just a 5-4 margin. The four dissenting justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer described instances in which a person may appear to run inexplicably, but may have entirely innocent reasons such as running to catch a bus, stopping a passing friend or avoiding becoming a victim themselves. More importantly, they believed that the decision fails to account for the experiences of many citizens of this country, particularly those who are minorities On the contrary, because many factors providing innocent motivations for unprovoked flight are concentrated in high crime areas, the character of the neighborhood arguably makes an inference of guilt less appropriate, rather than more so.