Reasonable Suspicion to Detain: It’s the Sum of the Parts, Not the Individual Circumstances

Case Alert
By Robert Phillips 
Deputy District Attorney (ret.) 

Legal Concepts

• Reasonable suspicion sufficient to detain
• The totality of the circumstances
• Flight as it relates to a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity

Rule: The driver of a motor vehicle suddenly attempting to drive away at 2 o’clock in the morning upon the approach of a marked police vehicle, after two occupants of the car had already fled and left the back door open, and the driver then not stopping to close the door, constitutes a reasonable suspicion sufficient to justify the officer’s belief that the driver was involved in criminal activity.

Summary: A police officer received a call concerning a suspicious vehicle in an apartment complex parking lot at about 2 a.m. When the officer arrived, two subjects fled from a vehicle, leaving the back door open. A third subject, later determined to be a juvenile referred to as R.W., attempted to drive away while his vehicle’s back door remained open. The court held that under these circumstances, the officer clearly had a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity under the Fourth Amendment, sufficient to detain R.W. That’s because already being on alert from the early-morning dispatch to check a suspicious vehicle, the officer observed all three occupants of the defendant’s car respond suspiciously to an approaching police car. In evaluating the totality of the circumstances, the court noted that the defendant’s actions, when combined with the flight of his companions, strongly suggested that he was engaged in unlawful conduct, thus justifying his detention. The court further held that when evaluating whether a reasonable suspicion exists, a court is not to segregate all the individual events and evaluate each of the suspicious factors individually, but consider them altogether.

Facts: Around 2 a.m. one day, Washington, D. C., District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Officer Clifford Vanterpool received a radio call directing him to check a suspicious vehicle at a specific address. Upon arriving at that address, an apartment complex, Officer Vanterpool observed two people immediately bail out of the back seat of a car in the parking lot, leaving the rear door ....