Experienced LEO opinions wanted.

[Bolt_Overide]

There have been a lot of stories in the news lately about stops that went to far, and most of them have resulted in multiple lawsuits that, regardless of validity, cost finite resources.

I want to be clear that I know the jobs hard, and I know next to nothing about it. This is NOT a cop bash thread, rather I am curious about what most of y'all think about some of these cases. There have been several that seem to me to be pretty clear abuse of authority etc., but again, I'm a layman, and don't even know the nuances of relevant law in my state, let alone all 50.

What I'm curious about is in regards to a "terry stop". I read the supreme courts decision on it, and frankly I was struck by the vagueness of it. Do y'all feel that it needs to be re-addressed by scotus with more clarity? Do you prefer the ambiguity that it now has as it makes it a better tool for times when you have a gut feeling? I have no doubt that some of the cops in some of these viral video cases are in fact wrong, and a small percentage are just not suited for the job or plain bad at it. Conversely, there has to be at least some of them that are genuinely good dudes, and good cops, who made an honest mistake. I don't have anything specific to link, but I have seen a few that I felt like were an honest mistake but the LEO in question just wouldn't back down.

I guess what I'm asking for is a bit more understanding that might result in some more insight into these things. In the end its really just my own curiosity and wanting to cure some of my ignorance.


P.S. Please don't start a pissing match in here if you've got a problem with cops.

edit: can't find the link for it, but a perfect example that comes to mind is the guy from Daily Driven Exotics getting stopped in Beverly Hills and the officer had no clue it was legal to drive in the US on a Canadian license. As I recall the dudes lambo got towed by BHPD two or three times for this.

[Jason M]

Which part(s) is/are "vague"? Are you looking for a list of bright-line facts that make the stop of a subject and maybe a frisk of the subject reasonable?

This is a pretty good video link:

[TC215]

There’s nothing vague about a Terry stop.

[BehindBlueI's]

edit: can't find the link for it, but a perfect example that comes to mind is the guy from Daily Driven Exotics getting stopped in Beverly Hills and the officer had no clue it was legal to drive in the US on a Canadian license. As I recall the dudes lambo got towed by BHPD two or three times for this.

*IF* that's true, then it's nothing to do with Terry stops. That's failure to know the law, which is not a bright line "no" versus a mistake in fact which is ok if reasonable. Mistake in fact are things like shooting someone holding an airsoft gun like a real gun.

I'm not really sure I understand the question. Reasonable suspicion can't be as simply legislated/judiciated as "if X than Y" because there's a nearly infinite amount of variables. I can develop reasonable suspicion for a stop where another officer may not, and vice versa, based on training and experience. If Officer DopeHound in Interdiction has multiple training classes and years of experience at interdiction, he's likely to be able to articulate reasonable suspicion on factors that Det. DeskRider in Financial Crimes would never notice. You can't legislate that specifically.

[UNM1136]

There’s nothing vague about a Terry stop.

Nope.

I teach my rookies that CYA stands for "Can You Articulate?". Thanks @Mas for that one.

Most cops get into trouble by not capably, credibly explaining things after the fact. They react, do what they are gonna do, and then fail to explain it well. The faiure to explain can be because they didn't have observations or facts that were needed to do what they did, or they had them and didn't explain or document them properly and clearly. Or belt recorders and/or body cams catch officers chatting afterwards in a manner that casts doubt.

Every suppression hearing argues lack of probable cause/reasonable suspicion. If the trier of fact (and in most cases, law) finds that to be true, the evidence gets suppressed. An attorney's job is to argue. Just this week I was in a detention hearing involving one defendant, and 6 officers from three agencies. Every time this clown gets stopped and talked to, he tries to knock the crap out of the cop. He is 5'4/140. He is facing four counts of breaking and entering and 6+ counts of battery on a peace officer among other things. The detention hearing was to determine if he was a threat to public safety and had to stay in jail or if he could get out. His attorney argued that because no one was injured when he allegedly hit and/or bit them them and no one required medical attention afterward (the genius tried to fight with most of the officers after he was properly handcuffed or in the jail booking area where there were tons of blue suits climb aboard him and resecure him) that was illustrative of a lack of dangerousness.

The first time I was sued the attorney alleged false arrest after signing off on a plea deal that reduced a DWI to Reckless Driving. The Federal District Court Judge literally looked at the complaint, asked about the guilty plea of Reckless Driving and when defense counsel agreed that her client pled literally said "well I guess false arrest goes away, doesn't it, counselor?"

The attorney doesn't have to make a good arguement. Doesn't have to believe their argument. A good attorney will do both, but many attorneys go through the motions to show that they provided the best defense possible to their client. Around here attorneys rarely specialze in criminal defense and take the odd case that walks in. There is a lot more money in other areas and defending clients in cases where misdemeanants are prosecuted by the police officer, and not the district attorney, is not a money maker. Around here attorneys that specialize in criminal defense get hired for big, publicised cases. I prosecute about 1/4-1/2 of my caseload myself without the district attorney getting involved, depending on the year.

With the right judge a bad arguement can become bad case law. In one case I can recall off the top of my head led to us not being allowed to testify to our observazions during our most accurate Standardized Field Sobriety Test. For more than 20 years now. In 1998 I was trained in DWI detection and sobriety testing, and I have to recertify every two years on that same, validated, national curriculum. To include written and proficiency tests. But thanks to the Torres decision I am not allowed to testify to my observations of 1/3 of my Fields that I use to make an arrest decision. For a while attorneys were subpoenaing personal phone records for the day of SFST training to show that the officers were surfing the internet on their phone during the instructional blocks, calling training into question.

pat

[WobblyPossum]

The video above gives a good explanation of the basics of a Terry Stop. Another term you might hear is Investigative Detention. It’s important to not that a Terry Stop isn’t about “gut feelings” or “hunches.” It required Reasonable Articulable Suspicion (RAS). The officer has to be able to articulate, based on the totality of the circumstances, why he or she believes criminal activity is afoot.

An explanation for RAS I was taught in my first police academy is: facts and circumstances that would lead a reasonable police officer to believe a crime has been, is being, or is about to be committed. This differs from Probable Cause (PC) which is the standard necessary for a criminal arrest or the issuance of a search warrant. This was explained in my first police academy as: facts and circumstances that would lead a reasonable person to believe that a crime has been or is being committed. It’s a “more likely than not” standard that is lower than the beyond a reasonable doubt standard required for a criminal conviction and also lower than the preponderance of the evidence standard necessary for a civil court ruling. The distinction between “reasonable police officer” and “reasonable person” is that a reasonable police officer would have the training and experience one would gain in this job and be able to explain why certain factors that the lay person might find innocuous, when taken together actually indicate criminal activity. The factors to find PC are generally more obvious to a person without the training or experience of a police officer.

You can’t just say you had a hunch when justifying a Terry Stop and/or frisk. You have to be able to point to factors such as training and experience you’ve had, specific things the suspect did or said, observations you made about behaviors, the environment, the time of day, etc. It’s kind of like a defensive shooting in that you can only cite information you had at the time you made the decision to act, not information you learned after the fact as well. You don’t get to detain or frisk someone on a mere hunch, and then use what you found as part of your articulation for why you detained or frisked that person.

[TC215]

There’s nothing vague about a Terry stop.

I didn't have time to expand on this earlier.

The biggest issue I continually see isn't Terry stops, but Terry frisks. Court opinions are clear-- You must have reasonable suspicion that the subject is both armed and dangerous to conduct a Terry frisk. A lot of guys do terrible jobs articulating their RS in their reports (if they articulate it at all), and a lot of times RS just doesn't exist. This is a huge pet peeve of mine, and a good way to get charges thrown out and create bad case law.

As far as officers messing up-- good faith and honest mistakes are a thing. So are dumbass cops and shitty training. It's hard to know without specific examples.

[Bolt_Overide]

*IF* that's true, then it's nothing to do with Terry stops. That's failure to know the law, which is not a bright line "no" versus a mistake in fact which is ok if reasonable. Mistake in fact are things like shooting someone holding an airsoft gun like a real gun.

I'm not really sure I understand the question. Reasonable suspicion can't be as simply legislated/judiciated as "if X than Y" because there's a nearly infinite amount of variables. I can develop reasonable suspicion for a stop where another officer may not, and vice versa, based on training and experience. If Officer DopeHound in Interdiction has multiple training classes and years of experience at interdiction, he's likely to be able to articulate reasonable suspicion on factors that Det. DeskRider in Financial Crimes would never notice. You can't legislate that specifically.

I guess thats the real problem is I don't even know how to articulate what I'm asking.

[Bolt_Overide]

So this incident was the latest one I saw. If the citizens side of the story is accurate, local LEO were looking for two men, and these two young teen boys were stopped and held at gun point during the search. I get the stopping and checking them out part, what I didn't understand was why it continued after it was clear they were just kids and the suspects they were looking for were adults.

I can't find the youtube vid on it at the moment, I will try to find it when I get back from errands.

[jd950]

I am not clear if the OP was asking about RS and PC issues or something else. But FWIW, I will add this:

1. You can rarely rely on information in news articles, TV reports, social media or internet forums for accurate information about a situation. Forming an opinion about some situation from those sources is unwise. I frequently have firsthand knowledge about things reported in local and national news, and therefore the subject of discussions on social media and elsewhere. Those sources are wrong about important details far more often then they are right. As the simplest and most blatant example, of this, I commonly see reports about "unarmed" persons being shot by police when I KNOW a weapon was recovered at the scene and/or visible in BWC video and in some cases those weapons were fired at officers. I have also seen reports stating police searched without a warrant, which is true, but failing to mention the signed written consent form. Those erroneous reports seldom get retracted. But when people and the press lack facts, they will sometimes make up or assume what fits their need.

2. As to terry stops, warrantless searches and arrests; the appellate courts, including the Supreme Court, have constantly told us that reasonable suspicion and probable cause cannot be defined. They can only be assessed and identified as existing or not at the time of the situation. The determination of such things is based on a variety of factors. Some of these situations are simple and straightforward, but many are not. Cops have to interpret what they see and hear based experience, training and common sense. I teach this stuff and I can tell you that for many cops it is very confusing, due to the lack of "bright line" rules. Do they sometimes get it wrong? Yes. Just like the trial courts do and the appellate courts do. If lawyers and judges and their law clerks, with hours, days and weeks to research and brief and decide an issue cannot always get it right, then why do we expect some cop will get it right every time on some vehicle stop in the middle of the night or at some call in a crime-ridden neighborhood when he or she has seconds or minutes to decide what to do? The difference is that everything cops do is looked at under a microscope and shouted form the mountainside. How many non-lawyers ever read appellate decisions to see when a trial court screws up? As stated by someone already, it also often comes down to the ability of a cop to articulate what they relied on in taking action. That can be challenging for cops. I have seen plenty of what should have been good searches, stops or arrests get dumped because of a failure by someone to effectively explain the basis for their actions. I have also seen evidence get excluded not because of a bad search but because the cop was not lawfully in the place where he developed his suspicion, due to sometimes complicated issues of curtilage vs open fields, or third-party consent or whether a vehicle search met the requirements of Az v. Gant, etc. But when that happens, all we hear about from the media is that there was an "illegal arrest" or "bad search," and people draw conclusions that there was some sort of misconduct or bad motive on the part of the cops.

Some cops do ignore the law, or policies, procedures, etc. Some cops are smart, some dumb, some honest, some not. But you can take each of these sentences and replace "cops" with any other occupational or professional group and the sentences would still be accurate. Somehow we seem to expect that despite the hiring standards, rates of pay, limited training budgets, staffing shortages and difficult working conditions that apply to law enforcement, we are going to get people who have the wisdom of Solomon, the patience of Job and who are experts in psychology, the law, interpersonal communications, emergency medicine, anatomy, marksmanship and a dozen other disciplines.

Bottom line; there are between a half and three quarters of a million cops in the U.S. They make millions and millions of stops and arrests and searches. They do this every day, 24 hours a day, and sometimes in places and circumstances most folks be would be unwilling to enter. In a fairly small percentage of those millions of contacts, some cops screw up or it looks that way in the media. Simply due to the huge numbers numbers, mistakes or what looks like a mistake, happens numerous times in any given year. When they do, it is headline news and seems like it must be common or an epidemic, or whatever.