Can You Detain Non-Suspects with No Reasonable Suspicion to Believe They Are Involved in a Crime?

• Detaining people without reasonable suspicion to believe they are involved in criminal activity 
• Temporary detention of a material witness 
• Use of force and civil liability 
• Video recording a police-citizen contact per P.C. § 148(g) 
• Qualified immunity 

Generally, detaining an individual without reasonable suspicion violates the Fourth Amendment. There’s an exception, however, when the person detained is a material witness to a pending possible crime. To justify such a suspicionless detention there must be an exigency requiring immediate action, the gravity of the public interest must be great and the detention must be minimally intrusive, both in length of time and amount of force used. A threat of an imminent school shooting justifies a temporary detention of people who might know the whereabouts of the alleged shooter. Excessive force used during such a detention, however, may lead to civil liability for which there is no qualified immunity. 

On March 5, 2018, Ryan Bernal, a student at the Vista Del Lago High School in Folsom, California, sent a text to a friend stating that he intended to “shoot up the school, and today was the day.” This message was apparently passed onto the Folsom Police Department. After officers determined that Ryan did not show up at school that morning, Folsom asked for help from the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department. Seven uniformed deputies responded to Ryan’s home address. They completed a “premises history check” of the Bernal residence before arriving, allowing the deputies to determine that William and Celia Bernal (presumed to be Ryan’s parents) lived there. It was also determined that no firearms were registered at the address or in any of the Bernals’ names.  

One of the deputies called the house and spoke with Celia. Identifying himself as a Sacramento County sheriff’s deputy, he informed Celia about the threats Ryan had made and asked to speak with him. Celia told the deputy that Ryan was at his grandmother’s house, but refused to tell the deputy where that was because she couldn’t verify who she was talking to. The deputies therefore drove to the Bernal residence en masse just as Celia and William ....