Court Opinion

ID: 9541357
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:24:44.607757+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:02:47.043719
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE O’MALLEY, specially concurring: I agree with the majority that the trial court erred in denying defendant’s motion to quash arrest and suppress evidence. I write separately to explain why I believe a community caretaking or public safety doctrine exists in Illinois that allows seizures in cases where probable cause or reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal activity is absent. The trial court found that the seizure of defendant was justified as an exercise of community caretaking. Challenging this, defendant contends, essentially, that where an officer stops an individual for the purpose of investigating crime, that seizure is by definition not a community caretaking exercise. Because the State has not even attempted to justify the seizure on community caretaking grounds, the majority summarily disposes of the issue, finding “nothing in this record to suggest that Deputy Quinones’ stop of defendant’s vehicle was justified on any basis other than reasonable suspicion.” 358 Ill. App. 3d at 125. In doing so, the majority quotes our supreme court’s remark that “[ejncounters falling within this tier do not involve coercion or detention, and therefore do not rise to the level of a fourth amendment seizure.” Smith, 214 Ill. 2d at 352. I am persuaded that Illinois law permits a warrantless seizure absent probable cause or a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity where the seizure is justified as an exercise of community caretaking or public safely. Wherever an individual harbors a reasonable expectation of privacy, he is entitled to be free from governmental intrusion (Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 9, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889, 899, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 1873 (1968)), but the parameters of this right are shaped by the context in which it is asserted, for “what the Constitution forbids is not all searches and seizures, but unreasonable searches and seizures.” Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 222, 4 L. Ed. 2d 1669, 1680, 80 S. Ct. 1437, 1446 (1960). The reasonableness of a search or seizure depends upon balancing the public’s interest against the individual’s right to be free from arbitrary interference by law officers. People v. Adams, 293 Ill. App. 3d 180, 183 (1997). That said, however, searches and seizures conducted without warrants are presumed to be unreasonable (Adams, 293 Ill. App. 3d at 183), and fourth amendment jurisprudence has evolved to delineate the situations in which a warrantless search or seizure will be deemed to be reasonable (or at least not unreasonable). In an oft-cited passage in People v. Murray, 137 Ill. 2d 382, 387-88 (1990), the supreme court divided warrantless police-citizen searches or seizures into three tiers: “One tier involves an arrest of a citizen, which action must be supported by probable cause; otherwise, the fourth amendment prohibition against unreasonable seizures is violated. [Citation.] The next tier involves a so-called ‘Terry’ stop, a brief seizure that must be supported by a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity to be within the acceptable fourth amendment boundaries. [Citation.] The last tier involves no coercion or detention and therefore does not involve a seizure. This tier is commonly known as the community caretaking function or public safety function. The Supreme Court elaborated on this level of police intrusion in Terry when it noted that ‘obviously, not all personal intercourse between policemen and citizens involves “seizures” of persons. Only when the officer, by means of physical force or show of authority, has in some way restrained the liberty of a citizen may we conclude that a “seizure” has occurred.’ [Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. at 19 n.16, 20 L. Ed. 2d at 905 n.16, 88 S. Ct. at 1879 n.16]; see also [Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 441, 37 L. Ed. 2d 706, 714-15, 93 S. Ct. 2523, 2528 (1973)] (local police 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’).” (Emphasis added.) Here, the supreme court describes third-tier encounters as involving no coercion or detention and therefore not amounting to seizures. This, taken alone, might imply that all seizures fall into the first two tiers and thus require probable cause or a Terry rationale, viz. a reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal activity. However, as I develop in more detail below, the supreme court supplements this description of third-tier encounters with a quote from Cady, a case that dealt with coercive police action, namely, the search of a vehicle by police, which the Supreme Court found justified for public safety or community caretaking reasons, not on the basis of probable cause or a reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal activity. See Cady, 413 U.S. at 446-47, 37 L. Ed. 2d at 718, 93 S. Ct. at 2530-31. Just what, however, is a seizure justified on community caretaking grounds? The quintessential example would he a police officer physically restraining an inattentive pedestrian as he is about to step into the path of a moving vehicle. If, while holding the citizen, the officer feels what may be a gun, then the “plain feel” doctrine (see, e.g., People v. Blake, 268 Ill. App. 3d 737, 739 (1995)) permits further investigation, and the officer need not justify the initial seizure by pointing to a reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal activity, for the action was reasonable as an exercise of a peace officer’s duty to protect the public. However, as I explain below, not all exercises of the community caretaking function need involve such an exigency as this hypothetical. In suggesting that Deputy Quinones’ investigative purpose in pursuing defendant served to transform their encounter into a seizure, defendant relies on past decisions of this district holding that the intentions of a police officer in initiating an encounter with a citizen determine whether that encounter amounts to a seizure. These authorities appear to assert that an encounter that the police initiate with a community caretaking purpose in mind is by definition not a seizure and that an exercise in crime detection or prevention is by definition a seizure. See, e.g., People v. Gonzalez, 324 Ill. App. 3d 15, 22 (2001) (“[W]hen a reasonable person would not feel free to decline the request or leave the scene, the officer is no longer acting in his community caretaking function”), rev’d on other grounds, 204 Ill. 2d 220 (2003); People v. Simac, 321 Ill. App. 3d 1001, 1004 (2001) (“[I]t is axiomatic that when an individual is stopped by an officer for community caretaking, that individual has no obligation to submit to any police detention or questioning”); People v. Leifker, 307 Ill. App. 3d 25, 28 (1999) (“Once a seizure has occurred, an officer is no longer acting in his community caretaking function, even if his original intention had nothing to do with the detection or investigating of a crime”). This district is now officially at odds with itself on this point, for just recently we said that “the community caretaker exception allows an actual seizure where the seizure is reasonable under certain circumstances.” People v. Luedemann, 357 Ill. App. 3d 411, 419 (2005). In my view, Luedemann is right and Gonzalez, Simac, and Leifker are wrong. Whether an encounter amounts to a seizure is a function not of what role the police were playing in initiating the encounter with the citizen, but rather of what the officer does and what would be a reasonable person’s reaction to the officer’s conduct. As Murray itself said, quoting Terry, a seizure occurs “ ‘[o]nly when the officer, by means of physical force or show of authority, has in some way restrained the liberty of a citizen.’ ” (Emphasis added.) Murray, 137 Ill. 2d at 387-88, quoting Terry, 392 U.S. at 19 n.16, 20 L. Ed. 2d at 905 n.16, 88 S. Ct. at 1879 n.16. A restraint on liberty has occurred where “ ‘in view of all of the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave.’ ” People v. Brown-lee, 186 Ill. 2d 501, 517 (1999), quoting United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 554, 64 L. Ed. 2d 497, 509, 100 S. Ct. 1870, 1877 (1980). My stance is not a novelty, I should emphasize, but rather finds support in federal and Illinois law. I begin by returning to Murray. There, the supreme court fleshed out the nature of third-tier encounters by quoting Cady’s description of community caretaking encounters. Notably, there is no suggestion in this description that all such encounters are by definition neither searches nor seizures. Indeed, Cady itself dealt with a search, that of the defendant’s car, which was towed to a private lot after an accident involving the defendant. Because the police reasonably believed that the car, unattended in the private lot, contained a gun that might be taken by vandals, the Supreme Court held that a police search of the car for “the protection of the public” was permissible. Cady, 413 U.S. at 447, 37 L. Ed. 2d at 718, 93 S. Ct. at 2531. Placed in context, the Cady passage quoted in Murray reads: “Because of the extensive regulation of motor vehicles and traffic, and also because of the frequency with which a vehicle can become disabled or involved in an accident on public highways, the extent of police-citizen contact involving automobiles will be substantially greater than police-citizen contact in a home or office. Some such contacts will occur because the officer may believe the operator has violated a criminal statute, but many more will not be of that nature. Local 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 433, 37 L. Ed. 2d at 714-15, 93 S. Ct. at 2528. Illinois courts, too, have found searches justified on grounds of public safety. In People v. Ocon, 221 Ill. App. 3d 311, 316 (1991), this district upheld the inventory search of a vehicle impounded after the defendant’s arrest for driving without a license. We reasoned: “The inventory of the contents of cars taken into police custody fulfills the community caretaking function of the police. [Citation.] Thus, inventory searches are a well-established exception to the warrant requirements of the fourth amendment. [Citation.] Probable cause, which is peculiar to criminal investigations, is unrelated and of no help in the reasonableness analysis required under the fourth amendment for routine administrative caretaking functions such as inventory searches. [Citation.] Rather, the reasonableness of such procedures arises from three legitimate objectives of inventory searches: to ascertain the extent and value of property needing protection while in police custody; to protect the police against claims or disputes over lost or stolen property; and to protect the police from potential danger emanating from items of personal property such as drugs or guns that may be found within a car. [Citations.]” Ocon, 221 Ill. App. 3d at 314-15. Our supreme court has suggested that seizures of persons, too, may be justified on community caretaking or public safety grounds. In People v. Gonzalez, 204 Ill. 2d 220, 236-37 (2003), the supreme court held that the fourth amendment permitted an officer’s request for identification from a passenger in a vehicle stopped for a traffic violation where the officer had no particular reason to suspect the passenger of criminal activity. The supreme court began its analysis by addressing the State’s suggestion that the request for identification was reasonable as an exercise of community caretaking. The supreme court rejected the argument: “ ‘Community caretaking’ is a label used to describe consensual police-citizen encounters that typically involve the safety of the public. [Citations.] This type of encounter involves no coercion or detention and thus requires no legal justification. [Citation.] The State fails to explain in what way the request for identification from defendant served a public-safety function, and we glean no facts from the record which would warrant using the communitycaretaking label in this case. Accordingly, we turn to an examination of the fourth amendment in the context of this traffic stop.” (Emphasis added.) Gonzalez, 204 Ill. 2d at 224. In the emphasized language, the supreme court appears to identify community caretaking functions with nonseizures. However, the court’s subsequent analysis belies this impression. Notably, the police had already stopped the car in which the defendant was riding when they asked for his identification. If the supreme court believed that a community caretaking exercise is simply a nonseizure, then the court would have disposed of the State’s argument with the brief observation that the defendant had already been seized. Instead, however, the court looked to whether a credible community caretaking rationale existed for the request for identification. Finding no such rationale, the court proceeded to examine whether the request exceeded the bounds of the prior seizure. Implied in the court’s analysis is the premise that seizures may be justified on community caretaking grounds (not that seizures are by definition not community caretaking exercises). As for the court’s earlier remark that community caretaking encounters are nonseizures, one may take this as a thumbnail description of what most such encounters are like, that is, noncoercive. Based on its analysis, however, the court could not have been suggesting that a community caretaking exercise is by definition not a seizure. Other jurisdictions have recognized that community caretaking concerns may justify seizures. See Commonwealth v. Leonard, 422 Mass. 504, 509, 663 N.E.2d 828, 831 (1996); State v. Anderson, 142 Wis. 2d 162, 417 N.W.2d 411 (1987); Crauthers v. State, 727 E2d 9, 10-11 (Alaska App. 1986) (“We hold that Trooper Miller’s action in engaging his emergency lights and contacting the defendant, following what he reasonably interpreted to be a request for assistance from the Crauthers vehicle, to be permissible under the 4th Amendment”); State v. Chisholm, 39 Wash. App. 864, 696 P.2d 41 (1985). In his treatise on the fourth amendment, Erofessor Wayne LaFave collects numerous state and federal cases recognizing that community caretaking or public safety grounds may justify seizures. See 4 W. LaFave, Search & Seizure § 9.2(b), at 292-96 (4th ed. 2004). In Chisholm, a particularly notable case, a police officer observed a pickup truck being driven while a hat was resting on top of it. The officer, who was driving an unmarked vehicle, could not get the truck to stop. He radioed ahead to a marked unit, who stopped the defendant to inform him about the hat. Upon approaching the car, the second officer observed an open can of beer in plain view. The court observed that standards such as probable cause and reasonable suspicion have no place where a stop is made to assist the driver of a vehicle. Chisholm, 39 Wash. App. at 866, 696 P.2d at 43. Instead, the court held that the reasonableness of the stop must be judged by balancing the “individual’s interest in proceeding about his business unfettered by police interference” and “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 court remanded for the trial court to apply the balancing test. There are two further points that need to be clarified. First, whether a seizure is justified on community caretaking grounds does not depend on the officer’s subjective purposes in effecting the seizure so long as his actions are objectively reasonable under the circumstances. Our district has in the past fallen into a subjectivist error. Thus, in Simae the court said: “The ‘community caretaking’ function must be completely divorced from any initial suspicion of criminal activity.” (Emphasis added.) Simac, 321 Ill. App. 3d at 1004. In People v. Croft, 346 Ill. App. 3d 669, 673 (2004), we said: “An encounter is a function of community caretaking when an officer initiates it to check on an individual’s well-being, without initial thought of criminal activity.(Emphasis added.) Elsewhere in Croft we again said: “When an officer questions an individual to check on his well-being, without initial thought of criminal activity, he is within the purview of community caretaking.” (Emphasis added.) Croft, 346 Ill. App. 3d at 673. In our analysis in Croft, we reasoned: “In the present case, we are not convinced that Officer Row’s initial contact with defendant fell within the community caretaking function. Rather, Officer Row’s testimony revealed that the purpose behind the encounter was investigative. Four thefts and two incidents of vandalism were reported the week before the encounter. According to Officer Row, seeing defendant push a bicycle while in dark pants at 11:15 p.m. ‘just seemed strange’ and was ‘not a normal occurrence in that neighborhood.’ Officer Row subsequently initiated the encounter ‘to make sure that there was [src] nothing else going to happen.’ *** officer Row did not question defendant without initial suspicion of criminal activity. On the contrary, he questioned defendant to investigate his possible involvement in recent instances of theft and vandalism in the neighborhood. See People v. Dent, 343 Ill. App. 3d 567, 578 (2003) (police are not performing a community caretaking function when they are specifically investigating reports of criminal activity). Because Officer Row’s purpose in questioning defendant was not totally divorced from detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence, we cannot say that he was performing community caretaking.” Croft, 346 Ill. App. 3d at 673-74. We took this approach as recently as Smith. See Smith, 346 Ill. App. 3d at 162 (“Where, as here, police action is not motivated by crime detection or investigation but, rather, by an intent to render aid in an emergency situation, a suspicionless seizure of a person in furtherance of that goal does not violate the fourth amendment”). This approach is improper. The test for determining whether a seizure is justified is objective, the question being whether the facts and circumstances known to the officer at the time of the seizure warranted his action. See People v. Chavez, 327 Ill. App. 3d 18, 31-32 (2001). An officer’s testimony is relevant not for what it reveals about his inner thoughts, but for what it discloses about the objective circumstances of the encounter. The error in Croft and these other cases is rooted in a misunderstanding of the language from Cady, quoted in Murray, that police 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.’ ” Murray, 137 Ill. 2d at 388, quoting Cady, 413 U.S. at 441, 37 L. Ed. 2d at 714-15, 93 S. Ct. at 2528. Cady was noting that many police-citizen encounters have nothing to do with crime, not requiring that they must have nothing to do with crime or else be illegal unless justified by probable cause or a reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal activity. Notably, Cady did not require the police officers in that case to have had a certain subjective state of mind in order to justify their search of the defendant’s car. And Murray, in quoting Cady, did not evince an intent other than to adopt Cady’s description. However, what Cady and Murray intended as descriptive has been transformed into a prescription in this district’s cases, culminating in Croft’s subjectivist error. Following the Washington case of Chisholm, I would hold that courts must determine whether a community caretaking or public safety rationale exists by balancing the “individual’s interest in proceeding about his business unfettered by police interference” and “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 E2d at 43. A seizure satisfies the fourth amendment’s overarching requirement of “reasonableness” if warranted either by probable cause or a reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal activity or by a reasonable concern for the welfare of the general public or individuals and their property. The latter criterion is stated at a high level of generality, for it subsumes a broad spectrum of encounters. In Illinois v. Lidster, 540 U.S. 419, 157 L. Ed. 2d 843, 124 S. Ct. 885 (2004), the United States Supreme Court reversed our supreme court’s ruling that a roadblock set up by police to ask drivers if they had any information about a prior fatal traffic accident on that same road was unconstitutional (see People v. Lidster, 202 Ill. 2d 1 (2002)). The Supreme Court likened the roadblock to “certain other forms of police activity, say, crowd control or public safety.” Lidster, 540 U.S. at 424-25, 157 L. Ed. 2d at 851, 124 S. Ct. at 889. The Supreme Court found the roadblock justified under the general criterion of reasonableness, which is determined by examining “ ‘the gravity of the public concerns served by the seizure, the degree to which the seizure advances the public interest, and the severity of the interference with individual liberty.’ ” Lidster, 540 U.S. at 427, 157 L. Ed. 2d at 852, 124 S. Ct. at 890, quoting Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 51, 61 L. Ed. 2d 357, 362, 99 S. Ct. 2637, 2640 (1979). By its nature, the test leaves open the possibility that warrantless seizures not supported by probable cause or reasonable suspicion may be justified in all sorts of circumstances, emergency or otherwise. It is simply a matter of how the balance weighs on the unique facts of each case. A justifiable “community caretaking” or “public safety” or “public order” seizure may occur not just when police stop a car to insure the protection of an individual’s property (as in Chisholm) but when they direct traffic or set up a roadblock or control crowds. I need to stress, however, that a seizure is not reasonable under the fourth amendment unless wholly justifiable on grounds of probable cause or reasonable and articulable suspicion or on public safety or community caretaking grounds. That is, the State may not remedy an inadequate rationale on one ground by proffering an inadequate rationale on another ground, as if attempting to form a single whole out of two parts. Nor, however, may a seizure be deemed unreasonable where one rationale is nonexistent or lacking, if another is sufficient. Thus, a seizure otherwise justifiable on community caretaking grounds is not rendered unreasonable by the officer’s inability to offer probable cause or a reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal activity. Again, the test of whether a seizure is justified is objective, and so a seizure may not be deemed unreasonable based on the officer’s subjective beliefs. For example, if an officer effects a seizure while believing, unreasonably, that criminal activity is afoot, the State is not precluded from proffering a community caretaking rationale for the officer’s action based on an objective assessment of the circumstances. Applying these principles to the present case, I see no basis in the record for the trial court’s conclusion that the seizure in this case was justified on community caretaking grounds.