From the Classroom: What is the “flight, plus” rule and what does it mean to a detention or arrest?

From the Classroom   
By Raymond Hill   
Professor Emeritus, Santa Rosa Junior College  

The “Flight, Plus Rule”  

It’s 0130 hours. You are on patrol in a residential neighborhood. You see a subject looking into a parked vehicle in a private driveway. He sees your unit and takes off running. Ten minutes later, after backup and a canine are summoned, the subject is found hiding underneath a parked vehicle two blocks away. He is detained and handcuffed pending further investigation.  

Are you good to go with this detention? How does flight tie into your reasonable suspicion to detain? Does flight, standing alone, justify a detention? Is there a rule prohibiting an “attempted unlawful detention ” At what point during a foot pursuit is a person actually detained? Does “flight, plus” with a police order to stop constitute a separate crime for detention   

Rule  

In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court established the “flight, plus” rule for detentions (Illinois v. Wardlow (2000) 528 U.S. 119). The court ruled that flight, plus an additional factor indicative of criminal activity, provides the reasonable suspicion to detain. In the Wardlow case, the defendant was present in a known narcotics trafficking area in Chicago, Ill. He was holding an opaque bag. Upon sighting a caravan of four approaching police cars containing eight officers, he took off running. Officers pursued, detained, and found a .38-caliber handgun inside the bag. The court ruled that a person’s presence in a “sufficiently localized and identifiable high-crime area” coupled with unprovoked flight, justifies a detention.  

Notable facts: “It was not merely the respondent’s presence in an area of heavy narcotics activity that aroused the officer’s suspicion, but his unprovoked flight upon noticing the police...(n)ervous, evasive behavior is another pertinent factor in determining reasonable suspicion.,,and headlong flight is the consummate act of evasion,” the court said.  

In a 5-4 ruling, the majority noted that “We conclude that the officer was justified in suspecting that (Wardlow) was involved in criminal activity and, therefore, justified in investigating ....

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