Illegal Detentions and Observations

• Consensual Encounters
• Detentions
• Observations Made During an Illegal Detention

Observations made by a law enforcement officer, indicating that a person may be armed, when those observations occur during an illegal detention, are illegal in themselves.  A firearm found as a result of an illegal observation is to be suppressed as a product of that illegal observation.

In early June, 2020, Los Angeles and other surrounding cities had been experiencing wide-spread looting and rioting following a “Black Lives Matter” protest.  As noted in the dissenting opinion, “there was great unrest throughout (Los Angeles) county. . . . National Guard troops and police officers guarded the barricaded steps of Los Angeles City Hall and tried to restore order in Santa Monica and Long Beach. For two days, looters spent hours vandalizing and breaking into stores, stealing items and setting fires in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Long Beach. Hundreds were arrested on suspicion of burglary, looting, vandalism, failure to disperse, and firearms and curfew violations. Five Los Angeles Police Department officers were injured, with two of them hospitalized.”  As a result, a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew had been imposed. At 2:15 a.m. on June 3, Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputy Xavier Zeas and his partner—while patrolling the City of Commerce area in a marked patrol car—observed defendant Oscar Cuadra standing next to a parked car in a motel parking lot.  The parking lot was no more than a narrow strip of asphalt, with five parking stalls, sandwiched in between the motel and a fence fronting on Triggs Ave.  Acknowledging in later testimony that the curfew did not apply to private property, Deputy Zeas drove up to defendant anyway and, while still sitting in his patrol car, asked him if he was aware of the ....