People v. Jiminez

THE COURT.

This is an appeal by the People from an order dismissing informations against Raymond Jiminez who had been charged with possession of marijuana, and Tony Galvan and John R. Balazs who had been charged with transportation thereof. The dismissals were granted by the trial court on the basis that search for and seizure of the indispensable evidence, which was marijuana, was unlawful. When the officers found the first quantity of marijuana in an automobile in which defendants had been, they were looking, not for narcotics, but for weapons. Consideration of the evidence, then, falls into two categories: first, that which has to do with the police investigation in the matter of weapons, and second, that which has to do with search for narcotics.

On October 27, 1955, the police officers who later arrested defendants were told by their lieutenant when they reported for duty in the late afternoon that there was to be a juvenile gang fight in the Glen Park district between 7 and 9 o’clock that night. They were informed by the lieutenant that several of the juveniles were armed with guns which they had attached to their legs, and they were instructed to stop and to question “suspicious juveniles” in cars and on foot. At about 7:20 p. m., it being dark, the officer who later arrested defendants was told by another officer that persons armed with chains and baseball bats had been stopped in the neighborhood. At 7:30 p. m. the officer in his patrol ear saw a car with three young men in it driving down Chenery Street, and after he had circled the block, he saw this ear parked at Chenery and Diamond Streets, and now a fourth young man was in it. The place was one block from the center of the Glen Park district and six blocks from the playground where the fight was supposed to occur. The officer stopped and approached the car, and when he was about four feet

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away, he saw defendant Balazs, who was in the front seat, lean towards the seat of the car. He thought he was reaching for a gun. With this, he ordered the occupants to get out of the ear, which they did. Up to this point, then, the police work was concerned with the possible gang fight and with the weapons that might be used in it. The reasonableness of the police activity up to this point is discussed following narration of those features of the case relating to narcotics.