Opinion ID: 1463049
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Terry stop in reliance on dispatch

Text: The majority concludes that defendant Begin did not violate the Fourth Amendment when he stopped Dorsey and. Clark. I disagree. Nevertheless, because Begin executed the stop in good-faith reliance on the dispatch, he is entitled to qualified immunity as to the Terry stop. It is a factually intensive question whether there was a constitutional violation. Such an inquiry would need to examine (1) whether Officer Barber's report identifying Dorsey and Clark as the suspects was unwarranted, as Barber had picked them outin response to the dispatch he had heardbased on the generic, overly broad characteristic that they, were two black men wearing sports clothing. Next, the constitutional analysis under United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 232-33, 105 S.Ct. 675, 83 L.Ed.2d 604 (1985), would require one to consider (2) whether Barber's unwarranted report left the Portage County Sheriff Department dispatcher without enough of a basis in articulable facts to support reasonable suspicion, thus rendering Begin's stop in reliance on the dispatch unconstitutional. In concluding that Begin's stop was indeed based on reasonable suspicion, the majority's reliance on Smoak v. Hall, 460 F.3d 768 (6th Cir.2006), is misplaced. Majority opinion at 398-99. Smoak's ruling on reasonable suspicion is distinguishable from the instant case, because the dispatcher in Smoak had warranted facts pointing to a possible crime. In Smoak, a witness had called the state highway patrol when she saw a green station'wagon cruising down the highway with money flying out of it. Troopers met her at the scene and reported to the dispatcher that they found a lot of loose currency. Id. at 774. Without any basis in fact, subsequent BOLOs indicated that the green station wagon may have been involved in an armed robbery. Id. at 780. The stopping officers relied on these BOLOs, and conducted a highly intrusive felony `stop. With regard to reasonable suspicion, the Smoak panel merely determined that the dispatchers had reasonable suspicion that some mishap had occurred. Id. at 780. And of course the dispatchers did have this suspicion, because there was a witness report of lots of money flying out of a car, and this report was verified by state troopers. Smoak held that the dispatcher had enough articulable facts to support a reasonable suspicion that something was up. But Smoak did not say that there were enough facts to support reasonable suspicion of anything more than a mishap. In contrast, the dispatch targeting Dorsey and Clark had a weak basis in objectively warranted facts for the reasons already suggested. In the end, though, whether there actually was a constitutional violation is a question that the court does not need to resolve. Even assuming that the dispatch that Begin relied upon was issued unconstitutionally, Begin has a good-faith defense to Dorsey and Clark's suit, because he defensibly acted] in reliance on the be on the look out dispatch (BOLO) issued by the Portage County Sheriff Department. See Hensley, 469 U.S. at 232-33, 105 S.Ct. 675. In particular, the court is to examine (1) what information was clear or should have been clear to the individual officer at the time of the incident; and (2) what information that officer was reasonably entitled to rely on in deciding how' to act, based on an objective reading of the information. Humphrey v. Mabry, 482 F.3d 840, 848 (6th Cir.2007). This is an easy issue, because the description of the clothes and physical attributes in the BOLO that Begin heard did in fact match what he observed about Clark and Dorsey, because Robinson's description was incorporated into the dispatch issued by the Portage County Sheriff Department. See District court opinion at 7, JA 35 (one of the plaintiffs was wearing a light blue t-shirt, black pants, a white do-rag, and white tennis shoes, and had cornrows in his hair, while the other was wearing a white t-shirt, yellow or white shorts, a black baseball cap, and white tennis shoes). The information in the BOLO was clear and provided a reasonable basis for Begin to identify Clark and Dorsey as the men announced in the dispatch. Therefore, I ultimately concur in the majority's decision that Begin is entitled to qualified immunity regarding the Terry stop.