Court Opinion

ID: 9792962
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:40:11.957059+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:02:03.439209
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J., Concurring.
I agree with the result and much of the reasoning of the majority. I write separately to express disagreement on one particular point.
The majority wisely decline to adopt a “bright-line” rule that flight alone justifies a temporary detention by the police. Instead, they endorse a totality-of-the-circumstances test, in which flight can be considered among other factors in determining whether the police possessed “reasonable suspicion” to initiate a temporary detention.
But the majority seem to retreat from this fact-specific inquiry into reasonable suspicion when they state categorically: “There is an appreciable difference between declining to answer a police officer’s questions during a street encounter and fleeing at the first sight of a uniformed police officer. Because the latter shows not only unwillingness to partake in questioning but also unwillingness to be observed and possibly identified, it is a much stronger indicator of consciousness of guilt.” (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 234-235.)
*243I believe this point is considerably overstated. As the majority concede, an individual may have quite innocent motives for avoiding the police. This avoidance may sometimes take the form of quick, rather than slow, flight—of running rather than walking—particularly when the police are known to pursue those who decline to allow themselves to be voluntarily detained.
An example of such potentially innocent flight may be found in People v. Aldridge (1984) 35 Cal.3d 473 [198 Cal.Rptr. 538, 674 P.2d 240] (Aldridge). However one may read Aldridge's reliance on state rather than federal constitutional grounds, our opinion in that case is wholly consistent with the totality-of-the-circumstances approach the majority adopt today. In Aldridge, the officer in question testified to his practice of routinely detaining every person he found in a particular liquor store parking lot, the site of frequent drug transactions. On the night of defendant’s arrest, the officer and his partner saw defendant and some other men first walk, then run, away from them as they approached in a marked patrol car. This flight eventually led to defendant’s detention and to the discovery of a stolen weapon on his person. (Id. at p. 476.)
In holding the detention to be unlawful, we stressed the contextual nature of the inquiry: “Under different circumstances, such flight might imply a consciousness of guilt, and combined with other objective factors could justify an investigative stop. Here, however, [the police officer] admittedly intended to follow his routine practice to make an indiscriminate investigative detention of all persons on the lot. The record reveals that defendant had previously been detained and interviewed by [the officer] on Dr. J’s lot, and it can be safely assumed that he knew what was in store for him if he were to remain. Defendant had every right to avoid such persistent harassment.” (35 Cal.3d at p. 479.)
Aldridge illustrates the unfortunate reality that some individuals in our society, often members of minority groups, improperly view the police more as sources of harassment than of protection. These individuals may innocently flee at the first sight of police in order to avoid an encounter that their experience has taught them might be troublesome.
Although this case and Aldridge reach opposite results, they do so not because of doctrinal disagreement, but because of factual dissimilarities. There is an important difference between observing a group of men in a liquor store parking lot at 10:15 p.m., as was the case in Aldridge (35 Cal.3d at p. 476), and observing a gathering on a residential street at 3 a.m., as in this case. While the former situation is “neither unusual nor suspicious” (id. *244at p. 478), the latter may be both. Significant also is the fact that in this case, unlike Aldridge, no pattern of police harassment has been established. These circumstances, together with defendant's flight from the police, legitimately justify the temporary detention at issue here.
Thus, without agreeing that an individual’s flight at the sight of a police officer invariably constitutes “a much stronger indicator of consciousness of guilt,” I nonetheless agree that, in this case, the totality of the circumstances supported defendant’s “pat-down” search.
Appellant’s petition for a rehearing was denied March 16, 1995.