Detentions, Consensual Encounters, and Patdowns for Weapons

• Terry Stops; Detentions for Investigation
• Consensual Encounters
• Patdown Searches for Weapons

A police officer who observes unusual conduct leading him reasonably to conclude in light of his training and experience that criminal activity may be afoot, may temporarily detain the suspicious person for the purpose of making reasonable inquiries aimed at confirming or dispelling his suspicions.  A person is not detained (but rather “consensually encountered”) unless and until a reasonable person under the circumstances would not have felt free to leave.  A patdown for weapons is limited to feeling a detained person’s outer clothing.  Reaching into a person’s pockets exceeds the limits of a patdown, and is illegal unless a possible weapon is felt thus causing a police officer to reasonably believe the person may be armed.

Uniformed El Cajon Police Department Officers Robert Wining and Robert Nasland responded to a radio call at around 11:00 a.m. on November 15, 2017, directing them to check two “transients” in a motel parking lot.  The dispatcher directed the officers to look for a white male who had a bike and who was urinating in the bushes.  The other person was described only as a female.  Upon arrival in their marked patrol car, they found the parking lot to be pretty much empty. But around behind a parked U-Haul van, along a cinderblock retaining wall, the officers found two men, later identified as Jon Barlett and defendant James Brown.  As the officers approached (turning on their bodycams as they did so), the subjects both had what Officer Wining later described as a surprised “deer-in-the-headlights look.”   Barlett—a white male with a bicycle—fit the description of one of the two subjects described in the radio call.  Defendant—a black male and without a ....