Court Opinion

ID: 9610245
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:38:54.141885+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:57.737151
License: Public Domain

Guy, J.
(concurring)—The location in which the appellants were stopped was enclosed property subject to flagrant and recurring criminal trespass. It was not a common thoroughfare or public street. Based on the totality of the circumstances, the officers possessed a reasonable suspicion that the persons they attempted to stop were criminally trespassing on this private property. This suspicion did not need to rise to the level of probable cause for the stop orders to be justified. Nor are the officers required to suspect a felony or serious crime is being committed to justify a Terry stop.
While concurring, I would confine the majority's holding to the context of stops for criminal trespass. The background of these cases was a response by police officers to a chronic criminal trespass situation on enclosed premises familiar to the patrolling officers. This sets apart the majority analysis. The appellants were not stopped by the officers merely for loitering. They were not stopped solely for being in a high crime area. They were not stopped only because they were not recognized, although that may have contributed to their being approached. They were not stopped singly because of their flight in the presence of an officer. All these factors, along with the nature of the location, properly contributed to the officers' decisions to stop. The totality of the circumstances allowed experienced officers to make rational inferences, thus arousing suspicion of *499criminal trespass. Within these limited parameters, the stops involved in these cases fell within the conduct permitted under Terry and its progeny.
The officers reasonably suspected the appellants of being on private property without permission, invitation, or authorization. In such instances, the location of a stopped party may help to justify the stop under Terry. People do not have to be observed flattening themselves against a wall to provoke reasonable suspicion of their unauthorized presence in a restricted area. Criminal trespass is no less committed by parties lingering in unauthorized areas than by parties skulking around in them. Criminal trespass cases may present ambiguous, unassuming conduct by suspected persons; it is the presence and not the attendant behavior that is the criminal conduct. Ambiguous conduct does not vitiate the validity of a Terry stop.
The officers articulated the reasons for their suspicion. These reasons might fail if the context of these stops was not a patrol of private enclosed property that has been in the experience of the officers subject to constant flagrant trespass. To deny law enforcement under these circumstances the ability to make a brief investigatory stop, however, would reduce the officer's function to that of a watchdog, able only to provoke flight at his or her approach, and unable to detain likely trespassers or to communicate intelligible warning to transgressors of their breach of the law.
Brachtenbach and Andersen, JJ., concur with Guy, J.