Court Opinion

ID: 9649877
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:12:09.197735+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:15.629726
License: Public Domain

KERN, Associate Judge
(concurring):
The suppression issue in this case is very close and I am constrained to state with particularity my reason for agreeing with the result reached by the court.
Whenever a police officer stops a person on the street for brief questioning because of suspicious circumstances, as was true here, the Fourth Amendment requires that there be facts which the officer can articulate to justify his action. Such facts of course need not rise to the level of probable cause to believe a crime has been committed and the person stopped has committed it. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). The officer here received a radio broadcast in his cruiser that “a citizen was chasing” a person of a certain description east in the 1700 block of Euclid Street. He was in *548that immediate vicinity and a minute later he saw and stopped a person of that description — appellant. While the police officer was questioning appellant as to his identity and where he had been and where he was going — all proper under the authority of Terry, see Stephenson v. United States, D.C.App., 296 A.2d 606 (1972) — another police officer arrived on the scene and advised him of the address (which was nearby) of the citizen who was giving chase and who had turned in the report to the police. Although at that moment the officers did not know of the specific crimes that had in fact taken place at that address (i. e., armed robbery and assault with a dangerous weapon), it seems to me that they nevertheless had sufficient information1 to constitute probable cause and justify the arrest of appellant which they effected by putting him into their car and transporting him back to the scene.

. The fact that the citizen giving chase had reported to the police removes the reasonable probability that the incident was some sort of private altercation rather than the response of one who had suffered harm and was calling on law enforcement for assistance; and the fact that the police knew the address of that citizen added an element of trustworthiness to his report.