Opinion ID: 1034416
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Probable Cause to Make an Arrest

Text: According to Sgt. Fitzgerald, once Carrigan had driven up the driveway a second time, several officers, including himself, approached the Acura. Some of the officers had their guns drawn. The officers yelled to Carrigan to show his hands. Two officers then entered the Acura through the passenger-side door, turned off the engine and took physical control of Carrigan. Once the officers had Carrigan on the ground and on his stomach, they -14- handcuffed him and patted him down. They discovered a firearm in the front left pocket of his jacket. According to the PSR, Carrigan disobeyed the command to show his hands. Carrigan did not dispute this assertion in his objections to the PSR. Carrigan argues that, as soon as the officers physically went into the car and pulled him out, the Terry stop became a de facto arrest. He contends that, since the officers lacked probable cause to arrest him, the seizure of the firearm occurred in the context of an illegal arrest and should be suppressed. The government, for its part, argues that the police may take physical control of and handcuff a person without turning a Terry stop into a de facto arrest when it is necessary to protect their own safety and the safety of others in the area. United States v. Mohammed, 630 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir. 2010), cert denied 131 S. Ct. 2127 (2011). A de facto arrest materializes when a reasonable person in the suspect's position would have understood, given the circumstances, that he was essentially under arrest. Id.. It can safely be said that when reasonable people are forcefully pulled out of a car and handcuffed, they will generally understand themselves to be under arrest. We have stated, however, that due to the wide and unpredictable array of scenarios officers face in the course of confronting suspects, the touchstone is the reasonableness of the measure undertaken to quell or confirm the officers' suspicions. Id. (quoting Klaucke v. Daly, 595 F.3d -15- 20, 25 (1st Cir. 2010)) (alteration and internal quotation marks omitted). When the government intends to justify the use of handcuffs in the context of a Terry stop it must point to some specific fact or circumstance that could have supported a reasonable belief that the use of handcuffs was necessary. United States v. Meadows, 571 F.3d 131, 141 (1st Cir. 2009) (quoting United States v. Acosta-Colón, 157 F.3d 9, 18-19 (1st Cir. 1998)). The government has indeed pointed to specific circumstances that support the officers' reasonable belief that restraining Carrigan with handcuffs was necessary to conduct the Terry stop. It specifically argues that Carrigan had not put the car in park and that the engine was still running when the officers approached the vehicle, which increased the dangerousness of the situation given that he could have used the car as a weapon. The evidence presented during the evidentiary hearing, i.e., Sgt. Fitzgerald's testimony and the photographs of the driveway, established that the driveway was narrow. Sgt. Fitzgerald testified that the space between the fence and the driver side of the car was under 18 inches. The government also points out that the officers suspected that Carrigan was armed and that, if cornered, he could react violently. Given the confined space in which the police encountered Carrigan, the fact that the car was still running and in drive, and the fact that the police officers reasonably suspected that Carrigan was armed, we must conclude that -16- the officers acted reasonably in making sure Carrigan was seized and handcuffed as part of the investigatory stop. Therefore, the forceful seizure of Carrigan and the use of handcuffs in this particular case did not turn the lawful Terry stop into a de facto arrest because the officers had a reasonable belief that such measures were necessary to protect their own safety. We now turn to Carrigan's challenge to his sentence.