Case Name: STATE of Florida, Appellant, v. Jessie James JONES, Gregory Stubbs, Joseph Chester and Damon Richardson, Appellees
Court: Florida District Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1982-08-04
Citations: 417 So. 2d 788
Docket Number: No. 81-661
Parties: STATE of Florida, Appellant, v. Jessie James JONES, Gregory Stubbs, Joseph Chester and Damon Richardson, Appellees.
Judges: DAUKSCH, C. J., and COBB, J., concur.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 417
Pages: 788–796

Head Matter:
STATE of Florida, Appellant, v. Jessie James JONES, Gregory Stubbs, Joseph Chester and Damon Richardson, Appellees.
No. 81-661.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fifth District.
Aug. 4, 1982.
Jim Smith, Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, and James Dickson Crock, Asst. Atty. Gen., Daytona Beach, for appellant.
Anthony Paul Mario, Jr., of Mario & Green, Cocoa, for appellees.

Opinion:
PER CURIAM.
At approximately 10:30 P.M. on Saturday night, January 24,1981, a BOLO report was issued concerning an armed robbery of Mann's Jiffy Pood Store, a convenience food store on South A1A in Melbourne Beach, Florida. The BOLO stated that two blacks on foot had robbed the store and gave a general description of the men and their clothing. Three Indialantic policemen heard the report and concluded that there were only two reasonable ways of leaving the beachside community: one of the ways was five miles from the site of the robbery, the other was twenty miles. The officers also presumed that the suspects needed a car in order to successfully flee the island community. The police headed for a key intersection located near the closest route for any robbers to leave the island community.
At that point, the police saw a car containing four blacks pass by that intersection. The intersection was two to three miles away from the scene of the robbery and the car was spotted approximately two to three minutes after the BOLO report. The defendant's car was headed north away from the Jiffy Market. The car made a sharp left turn, in which no signal was used, with the wheels screeching. The vehicle was travelling approximately five to ten miles per hour above the speed limit, and its speed fluctuated throughout the ensuing chase, occasionally dipping below the speed limit.
The officers followed the car in an unmarked police car, staying approximately two to three car lengths behind. After seeing the driver of the car suspiciously look frequently in his rearview mirror, and observing three of the passengers drop down out of sight, the police stopped the vehicle. The officers testified that they knew there was only one black family living in the island community, and that the occupants of the car were not members of that family. They also testified that it was very unusual to see any blacks in the community on a weekend night. The only blacks normally seen in the community were there only in the daytime on construction jobs. When the officers stopped the car, they saw a sawed-off shotgun on the floor of the vehicle, and discovered money taken from the Jiffy store in a brown bag. Shortly thereafter, the victim of the robbery at the Jiffy store was brought to the scene and made a positive identification of two of the defendants as the men who had robbed her some half hour before.
At a subsequent hearing on a motion to suppress all tangible evidence obtained as a result of the stop, defense counsel argued that there were insufficient facts to constitute a founded suspicion that the appellees had committed the robbery and argued that they had been stopped merely as a result of the officers' "hunch" and because of the fact that they were black. Based upon this argument, the trial court granted appellees' motion to suppress and the state has timely filed this appeal.
We believe that the dispositive case in regard to this appeal is the recent United States Supreme Court case of United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 101 S.Ct. 690, 66 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981). In the majority opinion in Cortez, Chief Justice Burger wrote:
The Fourth Amendment applies to seizures of the person, including brief investigatory stops such as the stop of the vehicle here. Reid v. Georgia, 448 U.S. 438, 442, 100 S.Ct. 2752, 2753, 65 L.Ed.2d 890 (1980); United States v. Brignoni-Ponee, 422 U.S., supra, at 878, 95 S.Ct., at 2578; Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721, 89 S.Ct. 1394, 22 L.Ed.2d 676 (1969); Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 16-19, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1877-1879, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). An investigatory stop must be justified by some objective manifestation that the person stopped is, or is about to be, engaged in criminal activity. Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 51, 99 S.Ct. 2637, 2640, 61 L.Ed.2d 541 (1979); Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 661, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 1400, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979); United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, supra, 422 U.S., at 884, 95 S.Ct., at 2581; Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 146-149, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 1923-1924, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972); Terry v. Ohio, supra, 392 U.S., at 16-19, 88 S.Ct. at 1877-1879.
Courts have used a variety of terms to capture the elusive concept of what cause is sufficient to authorize police to stop a person. Terms like "articulable reasons" and "founded suspicion" are not self-defining; they fall short of providing clear guidance dispositive of the myriad factual situations that arise. But the essence of all that has been written is that the totality of the circumstances — the whole picture — must be taken into account. Based upon that whole picture the detaining officers must have a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity. See, e.g., Brown v. Texas, supra, 443 U.S., at 51, 99 S.Ct., at 2640; United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, supra, 422 U.S., at 884, 95 S.Ct., at 2581. The idea that an assessment of the whole picture must yield a particularized suspicion contains two elements, each of which must be present before a stop is permissible. First, the assessment must be based upon all the circumstances. The analysis proceeds with various objective observations, information from police reports, if such are available, and consideration of the modes or patterns of operation of certain kinds of lawbreakers. From these data, a trained officer draws inferences and makes deductions — inferences and deductions that might well elude an untrained person.
The process does not deal with hard certainties, but with probabilities. Long before the law of probabilities was articulated as such, practical people formulated certain common sense conclusions about human behavior; jurors as factfinders are permitted to do the same — and so are law enforcement officers. Finally, the evidence thus collected must be seen and weighed not in terms of library analysis by scholars, but as understood by those versed in the field of law enforcement. The second element contained in the idea that an assessment of the whole picture must yield a particularized suspicion is the concept that the process just described must raise a suspicion that the particular individual being stopped is engaged in wrongdoing. Chief Justice Warren, speaking for the Court in Terry v. Ohio, supra, said, "[tjhis demand for specificity in the information upon which police action is predicated is the central teaching of this Court's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence." Id., 392 U.S., at 21, n. 18, 88 S.Ct., at 1880, n. 18 (emphasis added). See also, Brown v. Texas, supra, at 661-663, 99 S.Ct. at 1400-1401; United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S., at 884, 95 S.Ct. at 2581. (Emphasis added.)
101 S.Ct. at 694-95. In our view, the police in the instant situation formulated common sense conclusions, based upon the whole picture and a reasonable suspicion that the occupants of the automobile stopped had engaged in wrongdoing. Based upon that whole picture, the detaining officers had a particularized and objective basis for suspecting these particular persons of criminal activity, and the trial court was in error in granting the motion to suppress. Accordingly, that ruling is reversed and this case remanded for trial.
REVERSED and REMANDED.
DAUKSCH, C. J., and COBB, J., concur.
COWART, J., concurs specially with opinion.