Court Opinion

ID: 9658951
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 21:23:37.156427+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:02.150378
License: Public Domain

*457DIANE S. SYKES, J.
¶ 52. (concurring). I respectfully concur. I agree with the majority's two-part analysis of the stop in this case. However, I agree with the dissent's assessment of the weapons frisk under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), at least insofar as it concludes that the facts of this case do not establish an objectively reasonable suspicion that Kelsey was armed and dangerous.
¶ 53. But that does not end the inquiry. That the facts of this case are insufficient under Terry does not necessarily mean that the search was illegal and the gun must be suppressed. It only means that the well-established Terry exception to the general rule against warrantless searches does not apply. Other grounds justify the search.
The touchstone of our analysis under the Fourth Amendment is always "the reasonableness in all the circumstances of the particular governmental invasion of a citizen's personal security." Reasonableness, of course, depends "on a balance between the public interest and the individual's right to personal security free from arbitrary interference by law officers."
Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 108-09 (1977) (citing Terry, 392 U.S. at 19, and United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 878 (1975)). This evaluation turns on an assessment of "the degree to which [the search] intrudes upon an individual's privacy and. . .the degree to which it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental interests." Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 300 (1999). See also State v. McGill, 2000 WI 38, ¶ 18, 234 Wis. 2d 560, 568, 609 N.W.2d 795 (courts balance "the government's need to *458conduct the search against the invasion the search entails" in order to determine its reasonableness).
¶ 54. Applying these general principles of Fourth Amendment law, I would conclude that when a law enforcement officer has an objectively reasonable need or basis to transport an individual in his squad car, the officer's paramount interest in protecting himself against attack by his passenger outweighs the individual's interest in being free from the personal intrusion of a weapons frisk. This is not dependent upon any suspicion that the person being transported is armed and dangerous. Terry's requirement of reasonable suspicion for a weapons frisk in connection with an investigative stop properly balances the relative interests at stake in that sort of police-citizen encounter in the field.
¶ 55. But when an officer is called upon in the course of his duties to transport an individual in a squad car, he necessarily exposes himself to greater risks than in the ordinary field investigation. He will have his hands on the wheel, his eyes on the road, and his back to his passenger, and, as such, is extremely vulnerable to assault, much more so than in an ordinary field investigation. Under these circumstances, I have no difficulty concluding that a weapons frisk, even absent reasonable suspicion that the passenger-to-be is armed and dangerous, is perfectly reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.
¶ 56. This is not to say that I would find every search-incident-to-squad-car-ride reasonable. There must be an objectively reasonable need or basis for providing the ride in the first place before the prospective passenger can reasonably be subjected to a weapons frisk. It cannot be pretextual. An officer cannot convert a routine traffic stop or field investigation *459into an opportunity to search by conjuring up a reason to provide a ride.
¶ 57. Furthermore, I would not, in this case at least, conclude that it is constitutionally reasonable for an officer to conduct a weapons frisk anytime he merely places a person in a squad car during a traffic .stop or field investigation. That, it seems to me, might go too far, and in any event, is not the precise question in this case. Placing someone in a squad car during the course of a traffic stop or field investigation does not necessarily present the substantially higher degree of risk to the officer's safety that giving someone a ride does. Also, the practice is susceptible to greater abuse as a pretext for an otherwise unreasonable search. Pretex-tual squad car rides, I think, are rare.
¶ 58. I recognize that only a few courts have considered this question, and they are divided in their conclusions. In United States v. Glenn, 152 F.3d 1047, 1049 (8th Cir. 1998), the Eighth Circuit held that an officer's decision to place a motorist stopped for a traffic violation in the back of the squad car while running a records check did not independently justify a frisk for weapons. A contrary conclusion, according to the court, "would permit law enforcement officers to pat down all traffic offenders simply by choosing to place them in the back seat of patrol cars during traffic stops." Id.
¶ 59. This case, however, involves not a temporary squad car detention but a squad car ride, which considerably heightens the risk to the officer and is less susceptible to the manipulation which concerned the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Glenn, therefore, is distinguishable.
¶ 60. State v. Varnado, 582 N.W.2d 886, 891 (Minn. 1998), is factually similar to Glenn, and the Minnesota Supreme Court reached a similar conclu*460sion. The court focused, however, on the, unreasonableness of requiring the motorist to wait in the squad car while the records check was being run, and acknowledged that under different circumstances, a frisk might be constitutionally permissible even in the absence of suspicion of armed dangerousness:
[W]e agree that officer safety is a paramount interest and that when an officer has a valid reasonable basis for placing a lawfully stopped citizen in a squad car, a frisk will often be appropriate without additional individual articulable suspicion. However, the inability of a minor traffic violator to produce a driver's license in and of itself is not a reasonable basis to require the driver to sit in the back of the squad car. We will not allow officers to contravene the reasonableness requirement of the Fourth Amendment simply by requesting that a person sit in the squad car.
Id. at 891-92.
¶ 61. The Ohio Supreme Court reached the opposite conclusion in State v. Evans, 618 N.E. 2d 162, 167 (Ohio 1993), a case .involving a weapons frisk prior to a temporary detention in the back of a squad car. The court upheld the reasonableness of the search for these reasons:
Here, the officers' pat-down search of defendant was in accordance with standard police procedure which dictates that protective measures be taken before a person is to be held in the back seat of a squad car. . . .Certainly, it is reasonable that the officer, who has a legitimate reason to so detain that person, is interested in guarding against an ambush from the rear....
We, therefore, find that the police officers' proffered justification in patting down the driver — their *461own personal security — is legitimate. When balanced against the driver's minimal privacy interests under these circumstances, we can only conclude that the driver of a motor vehicle may be subjected to a brief pat-down search for weapons where the detaining officer has a lawful reason to detain said driver in the patrol car.
Id. (citations omitted). Evans, like Glenn and Varnado, involved frisks incident to temporary squad car detentions, not frisks prior to squad car rides.
¶ 62. In People v. Otto, 284 N.W. 2d 273, 276 (Mich. App. 1979), the Michigan Court of Appeals upheld an officer's decision to frisk a hitchhiker prior to transporting him off the freeway. The court focused on the reasonableness of the squad car transport as well as the reasonableness of the frisk, concluding that ticketing the hitchhiker and his companion but leaving them to continue walking on the freeway would have been dangerous and irresponsible, and that the officer's interest in protecting himself from assault while transporting the hitchhikers was legitimate and substantial. Id.
¶ 63. Similarly, in People v. Tobin, 269 Cal. Rptr. 81, 84 (Cal. Ct. App. 1990), the California Court of Appeals held that an officer's need to transport the occupants of a vehicle that was about to be towed off the freeway justified frisking them for weapons before transporting them. In Tobin, a police officer stopped a vehicle for registration irregularities and determined that the driver's license was suspended. The passengers were either unlicensed or apparently intoxicated, and so the car had to be towed. Instead of leaving the driver and his passengers on the freeway, the officer decided to drive them to a restaurant at the next exit where they could be picked up by friends. Before doing *462so, however, he frisked them for weapons. The court upheld the search, based upon the exigencies of the situation, in particular, the officer's duty to transport the driver and his passengers since they could not be permitted either to drive or to remain on the freeway on foot. Id. at 84.
¶ 64. In finding the search reasonable, the court in Tobin distinguished People v. Scott, 546 P.2d 327, 332-33 (Cal. 1976). In Scott, the California Supreme Court concluded that absent reasonable suspicion of armed dangerousness under Terry, an officer may frisk for weapons prior to transporting an individual in a squad car only upon consent of the person to be frisked and transported. In Scott, a highway patrol officer came upon the defendant and his young son urinating on an island adjacent to the highway off-ramp. The defendant appeared to be intoxicated and said he was returning his son to his ex-wife. The officer offered to give them a ride, but searched the defendant for weapons first. The court concluded that the search was not incident to arrest and did not meet the criteria of Terry, and therefore invalidated it:
We are not oblivious to the dilemma faced by the conscientious officers under the circumstances of this case. The lateness of the hour, the dangers inherent to pedestrians on a freeway, the presence of a young child, the condition of the defendant, combined to suggest some remedial action was necessary. The officers could have found cause to place defendant under arrest and to take him into custody. A search before transporting the arrestee in the police vehicle would then have been proper. Instead they exercised discretion, perhaps compassion, to avoid arrest....
The dilemma, however, is not insoluble. We are required to accommodate the state's interest in the *463safety of police officers who volunteer to give rides not required by their duty, and the individual's right to be secure from unreasonable invasions of privacy. In our view the simple expedient of a warning and option will at once preserve both laudatory objectives. Accordingly, in order for a pat-down search to be valid under these or similar circumstances the officer must first inform the individual that he has a right to refuse the ride but if he accepts it he will be subjected to a pat-down search for weapons. Such a brief admonition will protect both the officer's safety and the individual's right to decide for himself whether he is willing to undergo a pat-down search in order to obtain the offered assistance of the police.
Id. The court in Tobin essentially found that the squad car ride was not gratuitous but part of the officer's duty under the circumstances of that case, and therefore concluded that it was not subject to the Scott requirement of consent to search before transport. Tobin, 269 Cal. Rptr. at 84.
¶ 65. The dissent approves the Scott approach of " 'the simple expedient of a warning and option,'" dissent at ¶ 94, and some courts have applied variations of it in evaluating the reasonableness of searches in this context. See People v. Hannaford, 421 N.W.2d 608 (Mich. Ct. App. 1988); Village of Pemberville v. Hale, 709 N.E.2d 227, 229 (Ohio Ct. App. 1998); Commonwealth v. Rehmeyer, 502 A.2d 1332 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1985); People v. Lombardi, 727 A.2d 670, 674 (R.I. 1999). But I do not believe that the expedient is simple to apply in the field in every case, or that it realistically takes into consideration the full range of circumstances that may give rise to a legitimate need to provide squad car transport. And I do not believe that officers should be encouraged to find cause to arrest where they other*464wise would not in order to justify giving someone a ride in the course of their duties, as the Scott court seemed to suggest should have been done in that case.
¶ 66. Simply stated, police officers are sometimes called upon in the course of their duties to transport individuals who are not under arrest. Not all of those individuals will behave in such a way as to give rise to a reasonable suspicion that they are armed and dangerous. Yet they may be. And the risk to the officer's safety is considerably greater during a squad car transport than an investigative stop because the officer cannot watch the passenger's hands and cannot defend against an attack while driving the squad car. Therefore, where, as in Otto, Tobin, and here, an officer has an objectively reasonable basis to transport a person in a squad car, it is not unreasonable to allow him to protect himself from assault during the transport by conducting a minimally intrusive protective frisk for weapons.
¶ 67. This conclusion does not run afoul oí Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U.S. 385 (1997), or Florida v. J.L., 529 U.S. 266 (2000), as the dissent suggests. Richards rejected a blanket rule dispensing with the knock and announce rule in the execution of search warrants in all drug cases, and Florida v. J.L. declined to adopt a rule that an anonymous tip alleging possession of an illegal gun justifies a Terry stop without more. The approach I advocate requires the customary post hoc assessment of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment in each case, and therefore does not establish a constitutionally impermissible "blanket rule."
¶ 68. Applying this approach, I join with the majority in sustaining the search in this case. Kelsey was a 15-year-old girl alone on the streets at night in early March in an unsafe area of the City of Milwau*465kee. The police officers decided, reasonably, that her flight upon their approach, and the brief foot chase that ensued, did not justify an arrest but only a citation for resisting. They further determined, based upon a phone call to her mother, that she was not a runaway. Kelsey's mother asked them to bring her home.
¶ 69. The Juvenile Justice Code specifies that under these circumstances, when a juvenile is detained for a civil offense, the officer "shall make every effort to release the juvenile immediately to the juvenile's parent, guardian or legal custodian." Wis. Stat. §§ 938.19(l)(d)8 and 938.20(2)(ag). Because Kelsey was 15, the officers had the option of releasing her without adult supervision. Wis. Stat. § 938.20(2)(c) ("[i]f the juvenile is 15 years of age or older, the person who took the juvenile into custody may release the juvenile without immediate adult supervision after counseling or warning the juvenile as may be appropriate"). But under the circumstances of this case, and with a specific request from Kelsey's mother that they transport her home, the officers reasonably rejected that option in favor of complying with the mother's request as well as the statute's command that they "make every effort" to return Kelsey to her parent.
¶ 70. Indeed, the facts of this case demonstrate the impracticality of the Scott approach across the wide spectrum of police duties and responsibilities. Kelsey was a vulnerable 15-year-old girl who would have been at risk of harm if the police had left her alone at night in an unsafe neighborhood. Her wishes may or may not have coincided with her mother's. Leaving it to Kelsey to decide whether she wanted the ride and the accompanying search would have violated her mother's request and better judgment and the statute's prefer*466ence in this situation for returning juveniles to their parents.
¶ 71. There was an entirely reasonable and legal basis for this particular squad car ride. It was not a pretext to conduct an otherwise unreasonable search. Under these circumstances, and upon this independent basis — even absent a reasonable suspicion that Kelsey was armed and dangerous under Terry — I would find the officer's protective frisk for weapons constitutionally reasonable.
¶ 72. I am authorized to state that Justice DAVID T. PROSSER joins this concurring opinion.