Court Opinion

ID: 9591037
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:01:28.119984+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:25.117473
License: Public Domain

Smith, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. “An authorized officer may stop an automobile and conduct a limited investigative inquiry of its occupants, without probable cause, if he has reasonable grounds for such action; a founded suspicion is all that is necessary, some basis from which the court can determine that the detention was not arbitrary or harassing. The Fourth Amendment does not require a policeman who lacks the precise level of information necessary for probable cause to *55arrest simply to shrug his shoulders and allow a crime to occur or a criminal to escape.” (Citation omitted.) Williams v. State, 163 Ga. App. 866, 868 (2) (295 SE2d 361) (1982).
Decided June 5, 1997
Reconsideration denied June 25, 1997.
Clark & Toume, David E. Clark, for appellant.
Gerald N. Blaney, Jr, Solicitor, Scott A. Drake, Richard E. Thomas, Assistant Solicitors, for appellee.
The facts observed by this officer are similar to those in Williams, and indeed to those in the seminal case of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1 (88 SC 1868, 20 LE2d 889) (1968).3 In an isolated area of an office park which had suffered “some entering autos” over the past two days, a police officer observed a car with three occupants circling “one or two times” through two different parking lots at a very slow rate of speed, passing empty parking spaces close to the office buildings. When the officer stopped them, the driver gave inconsistent explanations for their presence and the passengers appeared “furtive” and “nervous.”
Under these circumstances, the officer was certainly justified in his suspicion that the occupants of the vehicle were “scoping out” the parked cars, and he was in the lawful discharge of his official duties in questioning Holt “in order to determine his identity or to maintain the status quo momentarily while obtaining more information.” Williams, supra, 163 Ga. App. at 868 (2). How the officer chose to record any information he obtained is irrelevant to whether he had an articulable suspicion sufficient to justify the stop and limited questioning.
For this reason, I respectfully dissent.
I am authorized to state that Chief Judge Andrews and Presiding Judge Birdsong join in this dissent.

 While committing no obvious crime, the defendants in Terry were slowly and repeatedly passing a location and appeared to be “casing a job.” 392 U. S. at 6. The defendant in Williams drove slowly past a location that had been the subject of telephoned threats and appeared to act furtively after he saw a police officer. 163 Ga. App. at 868.