California Court of Appeal Oct 10, 2013 No. E057160Unpublished
Filed 10/10/13 P. v. Parker CA4/2
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION TWO
THE PEOPLE,
Plaintiff and Appellant, E057160
v. (Super.Ct.No. INF1200078)
RONALD DUVERN PARKER, OPINION
Defendant and Respondent.
APPEAL from the Superior Court of Riverside County. Anthony R. Villalobos
and Charles Everett Stafford, Jr., Judges. Affirmed.
Paul E. Zellerbach, District Attorney, Matt Reilly, Vincent Chen and Natalie M.
Pitre, Deputy District Attorneys for Plaintiff and Appellant.
Alan S. Yockelson, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and
Respondent.
The People filed an information charging defendant and respondent, Ronald
Duvern Parker, with unlawful possession of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia.
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The trial court granted defendant’s motion below to suppress evidence produced as a
result of the detention and patdown search of defendant. The People were unable to
proceed to trial after the court granted the motion to suppress. The trial court dismissed
II. The Trial Court Properly Granted the Motion to Suppress Evidence
The People argue that Officer Barth articulated specific facts to justify a temporary
detention of defendant. “A detention is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment when
the detaining officer can point to specific articulable facts that, considered in light of the
totality of the circumstances, provide some objective manifestation that the person
detained may be involved in criminal activity.” (People v. Souza (1994) 9 Cal.4th 224,
231.)
The facts relied upon are that Officer Barth heard a broadcast of a report of “shots
fired,” sometime shortly after midnight on New Year’s Eve/early morning hours of New
Year’s Day. The shots had reportedly been fired just north of a named bar, about one
mile from where Officer Barth was patrolling in Palm Springs. He decided to drive
toward the bar along North Palm Canyon Road. He passed a convenience store and a
hotel, and saw defendant walking along the road. Defendant was wearing dark clothing
and a hat pulled down over his face. Defendant appeared to look at the officer, and then
thrust his hands into the pockets of his hooded sweatshirt, and partially turned away. It
was a “high-crime area.” From these factors, Officer Barth decided that defendant must
have been “involved in some sort of crime possibly related to the shooting.”
The articulated facts were insufficient to support a reasonable suspicion that
defendant had been involved in any criminal activity. As the court below stated, “You
have to put it in context. This was January 1st, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day. The
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shot situation, there was shots going off all over the valley over New Year’s. In this
particular case, we have a report of shots fired, but it’s not definitive as to where it
actually took place. We think it’s around the Toucan’s Bar area, but no one knows
exactly where. [¶] There is no description of any possible subject that might be involved
in the shooting; no description whatsoever. The officer that testified is some distance
away when he gets the call that he heard that shots were fired in the general vicinity of
Toucan’s Bar, and he proceed[s] in that direction. [¶] He [sees] an individual walking on
the street, not doing anything other than walking down the street. It’s not unusual for
people to be out and about a little after midnight on New Year’s Eve, New Year’s night.
So just being out on the street that is not unusual. The dress that the individual was
in – – while some people might view the clothing as what someone might be wearing if
they were engaged in criminal activity, a hoodie in this day and age is a popular item of
clothing.”
The court also considered the officer’s actions inconsistent with his stated beliefs.
“If the officer had some basis to believe that this individual was involved in a shooting
just minutes prior – – I don’t think an officer at that point in time would have allowed the
gentleman to leave that area where he was first observed, to give him an opportunity to
leave, or to get rid of [the] weapon, or to whatever. I don’t think an officer fully
believing that this individual was armed and part of a shooting would have let him go.”
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Officer Barth had also called in his pedestrian check of a Hispanic male. The
court commented particularly on this: “This officer, for some reason, believes that the
person he saw was Hispanic,” but there was no call or other information indicating the
nationality or ethnicity of any particular shooter. At the hearing, Officer Barth testified
that, “the hat was pulled down over his face. Like I said, it was pulled down over his face
so far down that he was hard to identify. I thought this was a Hispanic male.” The court
queried, “If he was wearing a hoodie and wearing a hat and the hat was pulled down over
his face, and he was wearing baggy pants, how did you ascertain whether or not he was
Hispanic?” Officer Barth admitted, “I don’t know.” Although no one at the hearing
clearly came out and said so, inferentially from the court’s focus on Officer Barth’s
identification of the subject as “Hispanic,” and Officer Barth’s admission that he did not
know why he thought the subject was Hispanic, defendant evidently was not Hispanic.
The court had “real concerns in my mind how he was able to indicate that the individual
was Hispanic, and that basically he ran that over the radio that he was stopping somebody
that was Hispanic when he had nothing upon which to base.”
Further, “it was not a pedestrian stop. He didn’t ask the individual who he was
and why he was in the area. That’s a pedestrian stop. This was where he basically had in
his mind that he was involved in a shooting, and he had a weapon. It was based on a
hunch. It was based on speculation in the officer’s mind, not based on anything
substantive that would give a person reasonable cause to believe that he was involved in a
shooting or had a weapon.”
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Defendant’s actions were “normal activity,” which did not give a reasonable
suspicion of anything criminal or untoward. “The individual is just walking down the
street wearing certain clothes, not doing anything at a time when it is reasonable to
assume that there would be a lot of people walking around, not only in that area but
probably all over Palm Springs and the valley. It’s after midnight on New Year’s Eve
and New Year’s morning. That’s not unusual conduct.”
The trial court properly found that the evidence was insufficient to raise an
objectively reasonable suspicion that defendant was engaged in any criminal activity
whatsoever, and certainly nothing upon which to base any belief that defendant had a
weapon. The detention was not justified.
The patdown search was also unlawful. During a temporary detention, an officer
may be justified in conducting a brief patdown search, “[w]hen an officer is justified in
believing that the individual whose suspicious behavior he is investigating at close range
is armed and presently dangerous to the officer or to others.” (Terry v. Ohio (1968) 392
U.S. 1, 24 [88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889].) Here, however, as already indicated, Officer
Barth had no articulable reason to believe that defendant was armed or dangerous. The
unjustified belief that defendant may have been armed was the entire reason for the
detention in the first place. The absence of any evidence to suggest that defendant was
armed precluded not only the detention, but also any justification for a patdown search.
The trial court properly granted defendant’s motion to suppress the evidence
produced as a result of the search.
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DISPOSITION
The trial court properly granted defendant’s motion below to suppress the
evidence obtained as the result of an unlawful detention and search. The judgment of
dismissal, based on the People’s inability to proceed, is affirmed.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
McKINSTER J. We concur:
HOLLENHORST Acting P. J.
MILLER J.
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AI Brief
AI-generated · verify before citing
Holding. The court held that the trial court properly granted the defendant's motion to suppress evidence because the officer lacked reasonable suspicion of criminal activity to justify the initial detention and subsequent patdown search.
Issues
Whether the officer had reasonable suspicion to detain the defendant based on a report of shots fired and the defendant's appearance and behavior.
Whether the officer had a lawful basis to conduct a patdown search of the defendant.
Disposition. affirmed
Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion
“The articulated facts were insufficient to support a reasonable suspicion that defendant had been involved in any criminal activity.”
“The absence of any evidence to suggest that defendant was armed precluded not only the detention, but also any justification for a patdown search.”
“The trial court properly granted defendant’s motion to suppress the evidence produced as a result of the search.”