Court Opinion

ID: 9625720
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:49:28.570639+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:56:20.236753
License: Public Domain

DISSENTING OPINION OF
RICHARDSON, C.J.
I respectfully dissent.
The threshold issue posed in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 15 (1968) was “whether it is always unreasonable for a policeman to seize a person and subject him to a limited search for weapons unless there is probable cause for an arrest.” The Court in Terry answered that question in the negative. Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143 (1972), elaborates on the guidelines set forth in Terry. The Court in Adams concluded:
. . . [W]e reject respondent’s argument that reasonable cause for a stop and frisk can only be based on the officer’s personal observation, rather than on information supplied by another person. Informants’ tips, like all other clues and evidence coming to a policeman on the scene, may *601vary greatly in their value and reliability. One simple rule will not cover every situation.
The police officers in the instant case were in possession of and familiar with the contents of a search warrant and accompanying affidavits placed before this court by attachment to the defendant’s brief. The police officer who patted down the defendant testified that he had personally examined the search warrant. He also testified to being present during part of the time that the informant Jaleen Clarke gave information to the detective in charge of the execution of the search warrant and that the detective informed him as to what she had said. The warrant directed them to search the dwelling of the accused for various articles stolen from a police car, including among other things, a shotgun and rifle. The affidavit of the informer Jaleen Clarke attached to the search warrant accused the defendant of theft of the above-named articles, theft of the police car in which they were carried and of a burglary of a restaurant.1 All crimes had occurred within six days prior to the confrontation between the defendant and the police officers. The burglary of the restaurant was committed just 24 hours earlier.
The police officer who actually frisked the defendant testified: “Mr. Onishi was frisked by me due to the fact that I had knowledge that Mr. Onishi is a dangerous person . . . and that on occasion Mr. Onishi carries pistols . ...” If the police officer had not had the information supplied by the affidavit of the informer and relied only on his own opinion as to Mr. Onishi’s status as a “dangerous person” and his “knowledge that Mr. Onishi carries pistols” we would be presented with a very different case. Without further evidence as to the reasons why the officer reached these conclusions they come dangerously close to “inarticulate hunches,” not sufficient to warrant a man of reason*602able caution to believe that the accused on this occasion would be offensively armed. But the officer who patted down the defendant had information from a named person’s affidavit accusing the defendant of having committed at least two felonies within the week.
While the police officers may not have had sufficient evidence to secure a warrant for defendant’s arrest, they did have in their possession sufficient evidence to support a stop for further investigation of the reported crimes. Given an adequate evidentiary basis for the focus of police attention upon the accused, our inquiry should then be: Could the police officers reasonably conclude from the reading of the warrant and affidavits that “criminal activity” might “be afoot” and that the person with whom they were dealing might be “armed and presently dangerous?” This question must be answered in the affirmative. The inference that “criminal activity may be afoot” is unescapable. The warrant and affidavits indicate that Mr. Onishi was accused of committing two separate crimes. It would be fatuous to suggest that because the crimes in the instant case had been completed, “criminal activity” is no longer “afoot.” To engage in such reasoning is to ignore the relationship of the test of Terry, supra, to the police officer’s duty to investigate and to confront. The duties of a policeman range from the situation where the officer attempts to prevent crime at its incipiency to the situation where the officer attempts to apprehend perpetrators of crime. Confrontation creates the hazard to the physical safety of the officer and there must be a corresponding right to engage in a protective search. The taking of a law enforcement officer’s vehicle and the larcenous removal and secretion of the vehicle’s contents, as revealed in the affidavit, certainly form the basis for a reasonable inference that the accused may be the sort of person who stands in open defiance of the law and those chosen to enforce it.2 Just as the police officer in Terry *603was justified in concluding that he was dealing with daytime robbers who were probably armed, the officers were justified in inferring from the crime committed that the accused was the sort of person who “may be armed and presently dangerous.” There is in the instant case additional support for the inference that the accused was armed. The officer testified that the accused was known to carry a gun.
We must not take lightly the right of innocent people to walk our streets unmolested by illegal searches. But we must also protect the police officers who risk their lives on our behalf. “The Court recognized in Terry that the policeman making a reasonable investigatory stop should not be denied the opportunity to protect himself from attack by a hostile suspect.” Adams at 146. It is my conclusion that the police officers acted reasonably, upon reliable information, and that the weapon seized was admissible as evidence.
I would affirm.

The affiant attests to having seen “three shotguns, one of which has a double barrel; ...” in defendant’s apartment. Only one shotgun and one carbine are reported to have been stolen from the police officer’s car, according to the police officer’s own affidavit attached to the search warrant.

Had the warrant directed the police officers to search the dwelling of a bank teller suspected of embezzling from his employer, it is unlikely that the police *603officers could, from reading such a warrant, reasonably conclude that the accused might be “armed and presently dangerous.”