Opinion ID: 2008176
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Three Tiers of Police-Citizen Encounters

Text: It is well settled that not every encounter between the police and a private citizen results in a seizure. Delgado, 466 U.S. at 215, 104 S.Ct. at 1762, 80 L.Ed.2d at 254; People v. White, 221 Ill.2d 1, 21, 302 Ill.Dec. 614, 849 N.E.2d 406 (2006). Courts have divided police-citizen encounters into three tiers: (1) arrests, which must be supported by probable cause; (2) brief investigative detentions, or  Terry stops, which must be supported by a reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity; and (3) encounters that involve no coercion or detention and thus do not implicate fourth amendment interests. United States v. Black, 675 F.2d 129, 133 (7th Cir.1982); United States v. Berry, 670 F.2d 583, 591 (5th Cir.1982). Third-tier encounters are also known as consensual encounters. Gherna, 203 Ill.2d at 177, 271 Ill.Dec. 245, 784 N.E.2d 799. Previously, when listing the three tiers of police-citizen encounters, this court has often used imprecise language. This court has frequently referred to the third tier as the community caretaking function. See, e.g., White, 221 Ill.2d at 21, 302 Ill.Dec. 614, 849 N.E.2d 406; People v. Smith, 214 Ill.2d 338, 351-52, 292 Ill.Dec. 915, 827 N.E.2d 444 (2005); People v. Murray, 137 Ill.2d 382, 387, 148 Ill.Dec. 7, 560 N.E.2d 309 (1990). The appellate court, both in this case and other cases, has been critical of this court's use of the label community caretaking to describe third-tier consensual encounters. See 357 Ill.App.3d at 418-20, 293 Ill.Dec. 385, 828 N.E.2d 355; People v. James, 365 Ill.App.3d 847, 851, 303 Ill.Dec. 193, 851 N.E.2d 91 (2006); People v. Mitchell, 355 Ill.App.3d 1030, 1033-34, 291 Ill.Dec. 786, 824 N.E.2d 642 (2005). The use of this label is traceable to Murray, in which this court cited Berry for the three tiers, but then added an incorrect explanatory sentence. Initially, Murray properly stated that the third tier involves no coercion or detention and therefore does not involve a seizure. Murray, 137 Ill.2d at 387, 148 Ill.Dec. 7, 560 N.E.2d 309. Murray then incorrectly stated that [t]his tier is commonly known as the community caretaking function or public safety function. Murray, 137 Ill.2d at 387, 148 Ill.Dec. 7, 560 N.E.2d 309. No citation to authority was provided for this assertion. In Collins v. State, 1993 WY 83, 854 P.2d 688, the Supreme Court of Wyoming collected the state and federal cases that have recognized, either explicitly or implicitly, the three tiers, and this court's decision in Murray was the only one to refer to the third tier as community caretaking. See Collins, 1993 WY 83, ¶ 10 nn. 3, 4, 854 P.2d at 692 nn. 3, 4 (collecting cases). [4] That courts do not generally refer to the third tier as community caretaking makes sense. Third-tier encounters are consensual encounters involving no coercion or detention. Community caretaking, rather than describing a tier of police-citizen encounter, refers to a capacity in which the police act when they are performing some task unrelated to the investigation of crime. See D. Livingston, Police, Community Caretaking, and the Fourth Amendment, 1998 U. Chi. Legal F. 261, 261-63, 272 (1998) (noting that [p]olice spend relatively less time than is commonly thought investigating violations of the criminal law and spend a good deal of time performing such functions as responding to heart attack victims, helping children find their parents, helping inebriates find their way home, responding to calls about missing person or sick neighbors, mediating noise disputes, responding to calls about stray or injured animals, investigating premises left open at night, taking lost property into their possession, and removing abandoned property). Courts use the term community caretaking to uphold searches or seizures as reasonable under the fourth amendment when police are performing some function other than investigating the violation of a criminal statute. When a search is involved, courts use the term community caretaking to describe an exception to the warrant requirement. See, e.g., United States v. Coccia, 446 F.3d 233, 238 (1st Cir.2006); United States v. Johnson, 410 F.3d 137, 143-44 (4th Cir.2005). The community caretaking exception was first set forth by the Supreme Court in Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 93 S.Ct. 2523, 37 L.Ed.2d 706 (1973). In that case, a Chicago police officer who had been drinking was involved in an automobile accident in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin officers who responded to the scene were under the impression that Chicago police officers were required to carry their service revolvers with them at all times. Before the car was towed from the scene, the Wisconsin officers looked in the glove box and the front-seat area to see if they could locate the revolver. No revolver was found in those areas, and the automobile was towed to a garage. One of the officers later went to the garage and searched the passenger compartment and trunk. The officer testified that attempting to retrieve a weapon in these situations was standard police procedure. The purpose of this procedure was to prevent the public from the possibility that a revolver would fall into untrained or perhaps malicious hands. Cady, 413 U.S. at 443, 93 S.Ct. at 2529, 37 L.Ed.2d at 716. The officer did not find the revolver, but he did find various bloody items, and the question was whether they could later be used in a murder prosecution against the Chicago officer. The Supreme Court upheld the search as reasonable under the fourth amendment. The Court explained that [l]ocal police officers, unlike federal officers, frequently investigate vehicle accidents in which there is no claim of criminal liability and engage in what, for want of a better term, may be described as community caretaking functions, totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute. Cady, 413 U.S. at 441, 93 S.Ct. at 2528, 37 L.Ed.2d at 714-15. The search was reasonable because it was undertaken to protect the safety of the general public. Cady, 413 U.S. at 447, 93 S.Ct. at 2531, 37 L.Ed.2d at 718. The Court also noted that at the time the Wisconsin officer searched the car, he was unaware that a murder had been committed. Cady, 413 U.S. at 447, 93 S.Ct. at 2531, 37 L.Ed.2d at 718. An example of a seizure upheld under the community caretaking exception is found in State v. Chisholm, 39 Wash.App. 864, 696 P.2d 41 (1985). In that case, a police officer in an unmarked car noticed a pickup truck that had a hat on top of it. He tried unsuccessfully to get the driver's attention, and then radioed ahead to an officer in a marked vehicle. The second officer stopped the defendant's vehicle to tell him about the hat, and, upon approaching, noticed an open can of beer in plain view. The court upheld the stop under the community caretaking exception, noting that an individual's interest in proceeding about his business unfettered by police interference must be balanced against the public's interest in having police officers perform services in addition to the traditional enforcement of penal and regulatory laws. Chisholm, 39 Wash.App. at 867, 696 P.2d at 43. The courts in these cases upheld the searches or seizures as reasonable because the police were acting in a community caretaking or public safety function. The analysis had nothing to do with the encounters being consensual. Because the officer in Chisholm stopped the defendant's vehicle, the encounter could not be said to have involved no detention. The defendant in Cady did not consent to the search of his vehicle. Indeed, if community caretaking was just another name for consensual encounters, there would have been no need for the Supreme Court to formulate the exception in the first place. To be sure, a police officer acting in a community caretaking function can engage in a consensual encounter. For instance, if a police officer stops to aid a person whose vehicle has broken down on the side of the highway and then notices an open bottle of alcohol in the car, the officer would be both acting in his community caretaking function and engaging in a consensual encounter. However, because the act of stopping to assist a stranded motorist would not have been a seizure in the first place, a court would have no need to invoke the community caretaking exception. It is clear, then, that the community caretaking doctrine is analytically distinct from consensual encounters and is invoked to validate a search or seizure as reasonable under the fourth amendment. It is not relevant to determining whether police conduct amounted to a seizure in the first place. Those cases such as White, Smith, and Murray, that refer to the third tier of police-citizen encounters as community caretaking, should no longer be followed for that point. Similarly, cases such as People v. Gonzalez, 204 Ill.2d 220, 224, 273 Ill.Dec. 360, 789 N.E.2d 260 (2003), that state that community caretaking is a label to describe consensual encounters should no longer be followed on that specific point. This court's error in describing the third tier is not without consequence. If the third tier of police-citizen encounters is referred to as community caretaking, that would suggest that if the police lack a reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity, they may not approach a citizen unless they are acting in a community caretaking function. This is obviously not the case, as the law clearly provides that a police officer does not violate the fourth amendment merely by approaching a person in public to ask questions if the person is willing to listen. United States v. Drayton, 536 U.S. 194, 200, 122 S.Ct. 2105, 2110, 153 L.Ed.2d 242, 251 (2002); People v. Love, 199 Ill.2d 269, 278, 263 Ill.Dec. 808, 769 N.E.2d 10 (2002). There has never been a requirement that the police must be acting in a community caretaking function to prevent the encounter from turning into a seizure. Indeed, the Supreme Court has stated expressly that the police have the right to approach citizens and ask potentially incriminating questions. See Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 439, 111 S.Ct. 2382, 2388, 115 L.Ed.2d 389, 401 (1991) (The dissent reserves its strongest criticism for the proposition that police officers can approach individuals as to whom they have no reasonable suspicion and ask them potentially incriminating questions. But this proposition is by no means novel; it has been endorsed by the Court any number of times. Terry, Royer, [ Florida v. ] Rodriguez [, 469 U.S. 1, 105 S.Ct. 308, 83 L.Ed.2d 165 (1984)], and Delgado are just a few examples); see also, e.g., United States v. Winston, 892 F.2d 112, 117 (D.C.Cir.1989) (lawful for police officer to approach the defendant and ask questions regardless of whether the officer had a reasonable suspicion that the defendant was involved in a crime); People v. Melton, 910 P.2d 672, 677 (Colo. 1996) ([t]he subjective suspicions of the police do not distinguish a consensual encounter from an investigatory stop. In fact, in most cases regarding consensual encounters the police approach individuals because they have suspicions about them).