Court Opinion

ID: 9484476
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:54:30.75594+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:50:16.088193
License: Public Domain

WALD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
It is well settled that an officer may not stop and search a person for weapons absent a reasonable belief, supported by “specific and articulable facts,” that “the individual whose suspicious behavior he is investigating at close range is armed and presently dangerous to the officer or to others.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21, 24, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1880, 1881, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). Significantly, the record in this case provides no basis for a reasonable belief that Reid was “armed and dangerous.” Moreover, it provides only the most attenuated basis—his proximity to or possible emergence from the apartment to be searched—for believing that he had any connection at all with suspected criminal activity. Accordingly, I dissent from the majority’s affirmance of the denial of the motion to suppress.
The Supreme Court has “invariably held” that a “reasonable belief that [a person] [i]s armed and presently dangerous ... must form the predicate to a patdown of a person for weapons.” Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 93, 100 S.Ct. 338, 343, 62 L.Ed.2d 238 (1979); see also Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 146, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 1923, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972) (officer may conduct weapons search only if she is entitled to make a forcible stop and has reason to believe the suspect is armed and dangerous).1 To justify a pat-*1581down, “the police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion.” Terry, 392 U.S. at 21, 88 S.Ct. at 1880; Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 51-52, 99 S.Ct. 2637, 2641, 61 L.Ed.2d 357 (1979) (stop and frisk not justified where officer testified that person was “looking suspicious,” but could not point to “specific, objective facts” supporting that conclusion). Such facts are absent in this case.
Officer Carter, the one who actually stopped and frisked Reid, did not have any information indicating that Reid was carrying a weapon. Cf. United States v. Clipper, 973 F.2d 944, 950 (D.C.Cir.1992) (finding reasonable suspicion for a Terry stop where officers were informed that person was carrying a gun, and distinguishing a gun tip from a drug tip because of the “unique dangers” of firearms), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 113 S.Ct. 1025, 122 L.Ed.2d 171 (1993). He saw nothing in Reid’s hands, nor did he see Reid reach into his pocket. The search warrant did not indicate any probable cause to believe there were weapons in the apartment; it authorized only the search for drugs and for personal papers, such as residency papers. Cf. United States v. Harvey, 897 F.2d 1300, 1304 (5th Cir.) (upholding stop and frisk of person approaching house that was well-known as site for gun deals and in which guns had just been seized), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 1003, 111 S.Ct. 568, 112 L.Ed.2d 574 (1990); United States v. Clay, 640 F.2d 157 (8th Cir.1981) (even where officers had already seized arms in a residence, there was no reason to search person who approached the residence, then hesitated and stepped back upon seeing the officers).
Nor do the other circumstances surrounding this stop and frisk support the reasonable belief that the officers were at risk from Reid as they went about their business of executing the search warrant.
Factors that may justify an investigative stop, a search for weapons, or the escalated use of force include the time of day, the “high-crime” nature of the area, an informant’s tips that person might be armed, furtive hand movements, flight or attempted flight by the person sought to be detained, and a pressing need for immediate action.
United States v. Laing, 889 F.2d 281, 286 (D.C.Cir.1989) (citations omitted), cert. denied sub nom. Martin v. United States, 494 U.S. 1008, 110 S.Ct. 1306, 108 L.Ed.2d 482 (1990). The court found no evidence that Mr. Reid was attempting to flee. There was no testimony that he made furtive movements, resisted arrest, or did anything other than instantly and quietly comply with the officers’ commands. Moreover, there were at least a half dozen officers, weapons drawn, entering this apartment building at midday. Cf. Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. at 146-48, 92 S.Ct. at 1923-24 (stop and frisk reasonable where officer alone at night in high-crime area acting on a tip from known informant that person was carrying drugs and a gun and the suspect did not comply with officer’s request); Laing, 889 F.2d at 286 (reasonable to search person who shoves his hands into his pockets and attempts to flee when found in dead of night outside apartment that is believed to contain automatic weapons and is located in a high-crime area). Finally, Reid was in the building’s public space, not inside the apartment to be searched,2 so there was not, as the govern*1582ment urged, “a compelling need to search for weapons, since (unlike a street encounter) the officers may be in close proximity to the individual for a period of time, with their attention directed to the premises, rather than to the individual.” Cf. Maryland v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325, 333, 110 S.Ct. 1093, 1098, 108 L.Ed.2d 276 (1990) (noting that in an arrest in a home officers face dangers of “an ambush in a confined setting of unknown configuration”).
Additionally, the search warrant did not name or describe any individuals, and Carter testified that he did not know who Reid was and did not have any information, other than his presence in the building, connecting him to the apartment to be searched or to the suspected drug activity. Indeed, the only reason Officer Carter offered for searching Reid was his experience that “in executing narcotics search warrants, it’s always a chance that sometime there is weapons in the premises or on persons in that premises.” Reid, of course, was not “in the premises” to be searched. Instead, Officer Carter testified that he encountered and stopped Reid on the stairs that descended from the landing in front of the apartment to be searched. Granted, Carter also testified that he saw Reid leaving that apartment. But even assuming that the district judge credited this testimony, which, as discussed below, is unclear, this alone does not give rise to a reasonable belief that Reid was “armed and dangerous.” At most it meant that he associated in some capacity — as a neighbor, friend, door-to-door salesperson, spiritual counselor, or whatever — with persons suspected of having drugs in their apartment. It certainly does not create a reasonable belief that he was a “substantial dealer in narcotics,” who could be expected to own firearms. See United States v. Payne, 805 F.2d 1062, 1065 (D.C.Cir.1986) (per curiam).
It is beyond dispute that mere association with persons suspected of criminal activity does not justify a protective search. In Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968), the Supreme Court held that a person’s conversations with ten or so known narcotics addicts on the street and in a restaurant over an eight-hour period did not give a police officer reason to seize him in the restaurant and search him. See also Ybarra, 444 U.S. at 91, 100 S.Ct. at 342 (“[A] person’s mere propinquity to others independently suspected of criminal activity does not, without more, give rise to probable cause to search that person.”) (citing Sibron, 392 U.S. at 62-63, 88 S.Ct. at 1902-03). Indeed, the majority itself recognizes the danger of slipping into “a guilt by association pattern” of frisking “anyone seen near prospective drug activity.” Maj. op. at 1578-79. I do not believe that this danger is averted by the majority’s admittedly “thin” distinction between “people who talk to narcotics addicts and people who frequent apartments where narcotics activity is being conducted,” Maj. op. at 1578-79, especially since, in this case, the officer had no information that Reid “frequented” the apartment and there was merely a suspicion that narcotics activity was going on inside. This is not a ease in which the drug activity is conducted directly under someone’s nose, see, e.g., Holder, 990 F.2d at 1329 (upholding arrest and search of person found five feet from drugs in plain view), supporting the belief that he was aware of or involved in the activity. Instead, an unidentified person leaving the apartment may well have watched television in the living room or repaired a pipe in the kitchen, blissfully unaware that drugs were stashed in a bedroom closet or hidden in a nightstand drawer. Besides, even if the officer could infer that, because Reid had been in the apartment, he was aware of any drug activity conducted there, that does not justify the belief that he was “presently armed and dangerous.” Accordingly, I cannot conclude under these circumstances that Reid’s emergence from or proximity to the apartment, without more, justified a weapons search.
The district court’s stated basis for the ruling below casts even greater doubt on the reasonableness of the search. Although Car*1583ter testified that he first saw Reid “as he came out of the apartment beginning to come down the steps,” the district court made no finding that Carter did, in fact, see Reid leave the apartment, instead of first sighting him coming down the stairs, or — as Reid and a corroborating witness testified — at the entrance of an apartment on the floor below. Noting only that Reid was near the apartment to be searched, the court concluded that the officers “had a right” to detain and search Reid “while he was on the stairway at the premises in question outside, just outside, four/four-and-a-half feet away from the object of the search [the apartment].” He was, said the court, nearer the entrance of the apartment to be searched than to the entrance of the apartment where he apparently lived. Thus, the court apparently relied on Reid’s proximity to, not his emergence from, the apartment. But if the fact that a person “happens to be on premises where an authorized narcotics search is taking place” does not justify searching him for weapons, see Ybarra, 444 U.S. at 94, 100 S.Ct. at 343, the fact that he happens to be standing “just outside” the premises to be searched is even less availing.
Without a reasonable belief that Reid was armed and dangerous, the officers had no right to frisk him. This does not mean, however, that they could not have taken prudent steps to protect themselves. The government posits that “[a]n armed person in [Reid’s] circumstances would have been in a position to make an attack from the rear just as the officers were turning their full attention to gaining entry to the apartment.” Nothing in the Constitution would preclude the officers from instructing Reid, whom the officers saw to be empty-handed, to step aside or to “freeze” until the officers had filed by in the stairwell and gained entry to the apartment. Or, as several of the officers already had their weapons drawn, one of them could simply have kept Reid in his sight either until the other officers were inside the apartment or until Reid had gone on his way, as it appears he was attempting to do.3 A reasonable officer must to be sure watch out for potential dangers from persons nearby while she arrives at or leaves a place to be searched. But to say, as the government does, that a hypothetical “armed person in [Reid’s] circumstances” could have posed a danger to the officers is to say no more than that, if the officers had had any reason to believe that Reid was armed, they could reasonably have believed that he was dangerous. While it is probably good police behavior to consider the possibility of an armed onlooker, that possibility, without more, does not satisfy the Fourth Amendment’s “demand for specificity in the information upon which police action.is predicated,” Terry, 392 U.S. at 21 n. 18, 88 S.Ct. at 1880 n. 18, before an innocent-behaving onlooker can be patted down. A frisk must be based on a reasonable suspicion “directed at the person to be frisked." Ybarra, 444 U.S. at 94, 100 S.Ct. at 343 (emphasis added).
Judges ensconced in the security of their chambers are loath to second-guess the reasonableness of on-the-spot decisions by officers whose survival may hinge on their own instinctive reactions to potentially dangerous situations. We are, nonetheless, required to ensure that however important the objectives of maintaining order and safeguarding officers’ lives, they do not eclipse the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee that citizens be free from unreasonable searches. Here, Reid’s link to alleged drug activity in the apartment was based on nothing more than his proximity to (or at best, emergence from) the apartment’s entrance, and the belief that he was armed and dangerous on nothing more than general assertions about “the dangerousness and violence associated with drug activity.” This precarious linkage falls short of what *1584the Constitution requires. I respectfully dissent.

. The district court concluded that the officers "had a legitimate, if not a safety, reason for doing what they did." Since this stop and frisk cannot be justified as a search for evidence or a search incident to arrest, the officers' safety seems to be the only legitimate reason remaining. See Terry, 392 U.S. at 29, 88 S.Ct. at 1884 ("The sole justification of the search [under Terry ] ... is the protection of the police officers and others nearby....”).

. While I agree with the majority that there may be distinctions between searching someone "found in a small private residence containing drugs,” Majority opinion ("Maj. op.”) at 1578, and someone in the public tavern at issue in Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 100 S.Ct. 338, 62 L.Ed.2d 238 (1979), I find that the common areas in an apartment building or complex— hallways, laundry rooms, lobbies — fall somewhere between the two. The stairwell in which the officer encountered Reid may not be as public as a tavern, but it appears that it was open to any member of the public who chose to walk in, from a police officer to a Girl Scout selling cookies. Under these circumstances, a person's presence in the hallway, unlike her presence in a "small private residence containing drugs,” would not necessarily suggest any involvement, much less an illegal involvement, with the occupants of a specific apartment. Besides, even in a private residence, a person’s mere presence is less suggestive than her proximity to openly-displayed drugs. See United States v. Pace, 898 F.2d 1218, 1240 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 497 U.S. 1030, 110 S.Ct. 3286, 111 L.Ed.2d 795 (1990) (fact that persons were inside another's home with money and drugs out in the open suggested *1582that occupant trusted them and that they were involved in his drug operation, thus providing probable cause to arrest them); United States v. Holder, 990 F.2d 1327, 1329 & n. 3 (D.C.Cir.1993) (when person found inside apartment being searched and only five feet from a "drug-laden table,” it didn’t matter "[wlhether he was entering, exiting, or merely present”).

. It may also be that, under Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 692, 101 S.Ct. 2587, 69 L.Ed.2d 340 (1981), the officers could have questioned Reid about his reasons for having been in the apartment, and if satisfied, released him, and if not, detained him during the search to see if it produced any evidence connecting him to the suspected drug activity, at which point they could have arrested and searched him. Since this scenario is not presented in this case, it remains for another court to determine whether Michigan v. Summers, which upheld such a detention of the known owner of a house, extends to someone who is merely seen leaving the premises. In any event, even assuming that the officers had reason to stop Reid, "[n]ot all stops call for a frisk.” United States v. Clay, 640 F.2d 157, 161 (8th Cir.1981).