where an informant directed police to the location of a crime and the defendant and those accompanying her were the only people in the area at the time, the police were justified in an investigative stop
How later courts described this case
- where an informant directed police to the location of a crime and the defendant and those accompanying her were the only people in the area at the time, the police were justified in an investigative stop
- where 1 a.m. phone call that armed persons at certain intersection, police could detain those in car there, as they [were] the only persons in the area
- when police responded to call concerning "a woman screaming and parties armed," defendant and her two companions were "the only people in the area"
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
WELLIVER, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
I do not believe that the initial detention of appellant was lawful. 1 After an anonymous distrubance call, reporting a female screaming with “parties armed” and the use of “ball-bats,” the police were mistakenly dispatched to the wrong intersection, where appellant and the two other individuals with her were the only persons in the area. Nothing whatever gave the three officers any indication that appellant was in any way involved in the events which prompted the police investigation. Once the police determined that appellant was not involved in the incident with the “ball-bats,” and without any additional particularized basis for suspecting appellant of wrongdoing, the officers’ inquiry should have ceased. The inquiry, however, did not end but rather appellant was ordered out of the car and directed toward the rear of the vehicle where she was questioned by one officer while another conducted a visual inspection of the car. It is this detention of appellant that was unlawful and any evidence subsequently obtained was the “fruit of a poisonous tree.”
The officers had the right to approach appellant in order to determine whether she had either seen or been engaged in the disturbance. Such an action would not have constituted a “Terry” stop. Once her involvement in the disturbance was dispelled, the officers should have concluded their inquiry, unless other specific and ar-ticulable facts suggested to the officers that appellant was engaged in another sort of wrongdoing. The evidence in the record belies the claim that the officers had specific and articulable facts that appellant was engaged in any other wrongdoing or that her purse contained a handgun which could have been used to harm the officers.
I would reverse the judgment of the trial court.
. I draw liberally from Judge Clark’s dissenting opinion when this case was before the court of appeals.