Opinion ID: 172874
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Officers' crash pad theory finds support in the record.

Text: On remand, the Officers put forth a crash pad theory, explaining that they suspected the main home's occupants used the garage apartment as a place to store and use drugs. The district court found this explanation credible and further concluded that [t]he indicia of a dwelling [observed by the Officers after they entered the Plaintiffs' apartment] did not so thoroughly dispel this idea [of a crash pad] as to dispel probable cause. Aplts' App. vol. III, at 840. In support of the crash pad theory, the district court noted that Agent Pollock knew the main home's suspects had young children, and believed that the suspected dealers wanted to keep the drug storage and usage away from the children. (There was also testimony, however, that perhaps weighed against this theoryIsabel would bring her children along when she was selling cocaine. Id. vol. II, at 382; see id. at 386.) After remand, further discovery indicated that Agent Pollock thought Ms. Harman was actually living in the main house and had just gone out to the garage temporarily or perhaps she had gone out to the garage partying. Id. at 372. And, although Agent Pollock did not suspect her to be a known character[] in the investigation (presumably based on the seven months of surveillance of the main house, where he observed only Hispanic-appearing suspects), Harman I, 446 F.3d at 1073, 1085, after discovering that Ms. Harman was involved, he believed she was just somehow intertwined in this. Aplts' App. vol. III, at 682. [3] Although the Officers did not previously assert the crash pad theory per se, they did put forth a similar theory below. It was the experience of the Defendants that people sleep all over the place in drug homes, so a person sleeping in the garage did not necessarily mean to the Defendants that the garage was a separate residence from the house. Officers' Br. filed 4/13/2005. (We must note that the Officers' related assertion in this appeal that they believed Isabel and Pawoo might utilize a crash pad for the well-being of their children is less tenable, given that Officer Pollock's reconnaissance team reported no sightings of these two entering the garage over a course of seven months, and given Officer Pollock's earlier characterization of the garage as a little workshop. See Harman I, 446 F.3d at 1085; Aplts' App. vol. III, at 683.) Nevertheless, Sergeant Barnett noted that drug dealers often use garages or back places and [t]hey sleep wherever. Aplts' App. vol. II, at 417. Sergeant Barnett noted that he has found people that have had a bed in the garage next to their drug dealing area or next to the meth lab.... Id. Other SERT officers confirmed that in the execution of similar warrants, the discovery of outbuildings with electricity and a sink was not uncommon. Id. at 432; see id. at 454 (A lot of times we go into these separate garages and things like that that have those facilities that are cooking meth.); id. at 425 ([A] lot of narcotics people selling or distributing narcotics don't like to do it out of their home itself.). Sergeant Barnett also stated that it was not until he interviewed Mr. Overton, Ms. Harman, and the occupants of the [main] house that he realized that the rear building and its occupants were not part of the drug dealing operation at the main house. Id. at 414. According to Sergeant Barnett, under department procedures, the officers would take everyone into custody, and question them to determine whether or not the officer was in the correct location. Id. at 260; but see id. at 237 (Testim. of Sergeant Pollock: They were restrained. They weren't taken into police custody. (emphasis supplied)). We agree with the district court's analysis of this evidence. We must defer to trained law enforcement personnel, allowing officers to 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. United States v. Guerrero, 472 F.3d 784, 787 (10th Cir.2007) (alteration and internal quotation marks omitted); see also United States v. Winder, 557 F.3d 1129, 1133 (10th Cir.2009). Here, the Officers invoked their experience in investigating drug trafficking offenses to support their theory that the garage apartment might have been used by the suspects in the main residence. Relying upon the Officers' expertise, to the extent that the garage apartment reasonably appeared to be an extension of the main residence, they acted reasonably. Under the unique facts of this case, it was not until after the completion of Sergeant Barnett's interviews that they discovered that there were two separate units ... and therefore were put on notice of the risk that they might be in a unit erroneously included within the terms of the warrant. Garrison, 480 U.S. at 87, 107 S.Ct. 1013. Thus, under the circumstances of this case, the Officers' failure to realize the overbreadth of the warrant until after the conclusion of the interviews was objectively understandable and reasonable. [4]