Court Opinion

ID: 9785989
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 23:44:04.670066+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:39.989095
License: Public Domain

Justice HOBBS,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. In my view, the trial court correctly applied Fourth Amendment principles and our case precedent to the facts of this police-citizen encounter. The trial court found that officers had secured the crime scene and no articulated danger to public safety had presented itself or justified police seizure of Hardriek.
The Majority posits the existence of drugs in the house, then associates drugs with violence, then ascribes the initial non-cooperation of persons inside the house to Hardriek, then concludes that the police were justified — having drawn Hardriek into the net of their criminal investigation — in requiring him to show hands in order to secure their safety.
However, the facts demonstrate that the police threw their investigative net over Har-driek from the time of his arrival at the house. That the police were casting the investigative net as far as they could stretch it is clear from the facts the trial court relied on for suppression of the evidence against Hardriek. Having secured the premises and found no weapons present, the police, prior *270to Hardrick’s arrival, admitted two persons, one of whom they frisked, discovering drug paraphernalia. Shortly thereafter, Hardrick arrived at the residence with a companion. The trial court’s findings of fact describe what happened next:
Espino walked to the door and Defendant [Hardrick] followed him, intending to accompany him inside. When Espino knocked on the door, Detective Craig Tyer of the Task Force opened it and invited them in. Espino hesitated and Detective Tyler again invited them in, telling them there was a party going on inside. Espino entered and Defendant followed him.
Thus, instead of turning Hardrick away at the threshold, or soliciting his cooperation in avoiding intrusion upon their investigation, the police actually lured Hardrick and his reluctant companion across the threshold by an invitation to party. The police did this with no apparent purpose other than to search for drugs or drug paraphernalia, as they had searched a prior-arriving person.
The police did not request Hardrick’s cooperation or voluntary consent for a search of his person before issuing the show hands order to Hardrick inside the house. Dressed in plain clothes and not identifying themselves as officers until after they invited Hardrick into the house, the officers’ investigative purpose operated throughout this encounter, without reasonable suspicion that Hardrick was a participant in the crime they were investigating within the premises. The trial court made the following findings regarding what occurred after Hardrick crossed over into the house:
After Espino and Defendant entered, Detectives Frank Kramer and Douglas Nor-cross identified themselves as law enforcement officers. Defendant already had one or both of his hands in his pants pockets. Detective Kramer ordered him to take his hands out of his pockets. Defendant partially complied at most but kept one of his hands in his pocket, clenched in a fist, and, according to Detective Kramer, turned partly away from him and toward another detective. Detective Kramer then grabbed Defendant’s wrist above the hand still in his pocket. At this point, Defendant’s hand came out of his pocket with two baggies of methamphetamine in it, which were propelled down the adjacent hallway. Detective Kramer testified that Defendant removed his hand from his pocket himself; Defendant testified that Detective Kramer pulled it out. In either case, it is clear that Defendant did not remove his hand from his pocket voluntarily but because Detective Kramer had ordered him to do so.
In my view, the trial court correctly applied our precedent to these circumstances. Police-citizen encounters are of three different types: (1) arrests, (2) investigative stops or detentions, and (3) consensual interviews or encounters. People v. Heilman, 52 P.3d 224, 227 (Colo.2002); People v. Jackson 39 P.3d 1174, 1179 (Colo.2002). In Heilman, we held that an officer’s command to “show your hands,” directed at an occupant of a parked van effected a seizure because the circumstances did not create a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. Id. at 228. Reasonable people would not feel free to disobey an order to “raise their hands to plain view” when directed at them by an armed police officer. Id. at 229.
The holding of Heilman is consistent with the generally applicable rule that police orders, instead of requests for cooperation, usually effectuate a seizure of the person to whom the order is directed. See Jackson, 39 P.3d at 1184 (identifying the demand/request distinction as an important factor in determining whether a police-citizen contact is a seizure); People v. Melton, 910 P.2d 672, 677 (Colo.1996) (no seizure where, inter alia, police “asked rather than demanded” defendant’s name and address); Wayne R. La-Fave, Search and Seizure § 9.3(a) at 100-08 (3d ed.1996) (distinguishing between requests and orders, and indicating that the latter effectuate a seizure).
In Jackson, the police stopped a car on reasonable suspicion that the driver committed a traffic infraction. 39 P.3d at 1177. We held that the police unconstitutionally seized a passenger in the car when the police temporarily confiscated the passenger’s identification without reasonable suspicion. Id. at 1188-90. In so holding, we recognized that *271even if the police have sufficient reasonable suspicion to search the driver of a car, separate reasonable suspicion is required to perform an investigative stop of the passenger. Thus, Jackson recognized that a person’s mere presence at the scene of a crime or search is not of itself sufficient to justify a search or seizure of that person.
There are many circumstances where a person might inadvertently happen on a crime scene investigation in a public open space, private business, or at a person’s home, as here. A person’s arrival at such a scene is no indicator of criminal activity or per se justification for a weapons search of him or her. The Majority’s discussion concedes this. See Maj. Op. at 269 (reasonable suspicion “that officer safety and the safety of others may be compromised” exists when a person “inserts himself into the situation” and the person refuses to show hands or makes a furtive gesture).
Likewise, a person’s choice to turn away from the scene of a police investigation is not grounds for reasonable suspicion. In Outlaw v. People, 17 P.3d 150, 157 (Colo.2001), we said “when a police officer approaches an individual in a public place and seeks to ask him questions, the individual may ignore the officer and proceed on his way.” See also People v. Padgett, 932 P.2d 810, 814 (Colo.1997) (“An individual’s attempt to avoid coming into contact with a police officer does not, without more, justify an investigative detention of the individual.”).
Nor does reasonable suspicion exist solely because a person makes a “furtive gesture.” Heilman, 52 P.3d at 229; Outlaiv, 17 P.3d at 157. For example, Outlaw had his hand cupped and he was walking away from a circumstance that the police suspected to involve drug dealing, but they lacked reasonable suspicion for this hunch. The police wanted to see what Outlaw was cupping in his hand. We held that the police officers could not turn Outlaw from his course of walking away with his hand cupped, unless they had reasonable suspicion that he was committing a crime. See Outlaw, 17 P.3d at 159.
As in Outlaw, the police here did not have reasonable suspicion that Hardrick was engaging in criminal activity. The Majority’s discussion concedes this point also. See, e.g., Maj. Op. at 267 (relying on officer safety concerns, rather than reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, as the basis for this seizure). A furtive gesture is “too ambiguous, standing alone, to constitute the basis for an investigatory stop.” Heilman, 52 P.3d at 229. While the police might have had a hunch that Hardrick was engaged in criminal activity, a mere hunch is insufficient to create reasonable suspicion. E.g. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 27, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968); People v. Haley, 41 P.3d 666, 674 (Colo.2001); People v. H.J., 931 P.2d 1177, 1180 n. 5 (Colo.1997) (“Reasonable suspicion falls below probable cause, but above a mere inarticulate hunch.”).
The Majority identifies three factors that it believes justified the search of Hardrick: the police found drugs in the residence shortly before Hardrick arrived there, the occupants of the house were uncooperative with the police, and Hardrick did not comply with the police officer’s attempts to ensure that he was not a safety threat.
None of these factors create reasonable suspicion. Hardrick’s arrival at a house where others had drugs therein does not create reasonable suspicion. As we held in People v. Carillo-Montes, 796 P.2d 970 (Colo.1990), “[t]he fact that a person keeps cocaine at a residence is simply insufficient to raise a reasonable suspicion that everyone who approaches that residence ... [is] in some way involved in a transaction related to the cocaine.” Id. at 974.
The fact that occupants of the house were uncooperative with police also fails to create reasonable suspicion that Hardrick was engaged in criminal activity or that he posed a risk to officer safety. There is simply no inferential link between Hardrick’s behavior and the behavior of others before Hardrick arrived. Moreover, by the time that Har-drick arrived, the situation in the house was under officer control. In the words of the trial court’s suppression order: “Once Defendant and Espino arrived ... the situation was under the control of law enforcement, so much so that one officer left to seek a search warrant.” What is more, the trial court *272found that the situation in the house was not apparently dangerous. The police did not find any weapons. The police had already arrested one particularly uncooperative occupant of the house and taken him to jail. A number of police were conducting the investigation and had secured the premises.
The trial court found and concluded that Hardrick’s encounter with the police became a seizure of Hardrick when one of the officers “ordered him to remove his hand from his pocket and then grabbed his wrist when he did not comply.” The thread on which the Majority hangs its judgment to justify this seizure is police safety. This thread is too thin to support the net of criminal investigation the police threw over Hardrick. Particularly telling is the fact that the police admitted four people into the house without identifying themselves as officers or seeking the voluntary assistance of these citizens in avoiding intrusion into the scene of the investigation. Adding persons to the crime scene increases rather than decreases the burden of officers to secure the scene; the police added four persons to the circle of those in the house for the apparent purpose of investigating them.
The police safety cases on which the Majority relies differ significantly from this case. People v. Smith, 13 P.3d 300 (Colo.2000) involved a traffic stop of a stolen car at 2:50 a.m. Id. at 303. During the stop, the police observed the occupant of the stopped car making a cell phone call. Id. Shortly thereafter, a Suburban inexplicably pulled up behind the police car and left its headlights on, preventing the police from seeing into the carl Id. We held that the police had authority to contact and restrain the driver of the Suburban in order to protect their safety. Id. at 305.
In People v. Garcia, 11 P.3d 449 (Colo.2000), we justified the handcuffing of Garcia and his detention in the patrol car on the circumstances of a domestic disturbance at night when the police responded to a report of men and women yelling and screaming at the residence. Id. at 454. The police did not know how many people were involved or if they were armed. Id. Garcia answered the door and stepped outside to talk with the officers. Id. at 451. As the police spoke with Garcia, they noticed a drug pipe at his feet. Id. They then detained him in the patrol car while they continued their investigation. Id.
Here the trial court found that Hardrick had his hand in his pocket before the plainclothes officers identified themselves as police officers: “Indeed, the evidence indicates that Defendant did not put his hands in his pockets only after he entered the residence and recognized the presence of law enforcement but beforehand.” The trial court then distinguished this circumstance from others in which a person makes a potentially threatening gesture in reaction to the police, thereby triggering a protective police response.
Hardrick had his hand in his pocket while he crossed into the house, thinking he was going to a party. He had no apparent reason -to be reaching for a weapon or for putting his hand in his pocket to conceal anything. We defer to the trial court’s findings of fact, if the evidence supports them. See People v. D.F., 933 P.2d 9, 14 (Colo.1997). Under these circumstances, the officers had no reason to believe that Hardrick constituted a threat to them.
In Smith, we underscored the importance of the circumstances in determining whether a reasonable police officer would have recognized “the potential danger in the situation and conducted a protective search in order to secure his safety.” 13 P.3d at 307. The police here lacked the circumstances showing “a reasonable nexus” based on articulable facts for the intrusion upon Hardrick. Garcia, 11 P.3d at 454; see also Smith, 13 P.3d at 305.
In my view the Majority misplaces reliance on People v. Martinez, 801 P.2d 542 (Colo.1990). There, the police found drugs and a substantial number of weapons in the house. Id. at 543. There was reasonable concern for officer safety. Our cases, such as Smith, 13 P.3d 300, and Garcia, 11 P.3d 449, demonstrate that invocation of the officer safety rationale for restraint of a citizen requires more justification than existed in this case.
In sum, the trial court found that there were no dangerous circumstances present *273when the police searched Hardrick. The police were in control of the situation, and could have avoided contact with Hardrick by turning him away from the door. Instead, the police lured Hardrick and his companion into the residence by telling them that there was “a party going on inside.” The facts show that the police wanted Hardrick in the house as part of their drug investigation, so they took charge of the situation to effectuate this purpose. They seized Hardrick without reasonable suspicion. The trial court correctly suppressed the drug evidence that the police discovered as a result of then-conduct.
Accordingly, I would uphold the suppression order and respectfully dissent.