Commonwealth v. Ford
| Decision Date | 18 February 2022 |
| Docket Number | 20-P-1334 |
| Citation | 182 N.E.3d 1013,100 Mass.App.Ct. 712 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. Lincoln FORD. |
| Court | Appeals Court of Massachusetts |
Elisabeth Martino, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.
Matthew Spurlock, Committee for Public Counsel Services, for the defendant.
Alexa Van Brunt, of Illinois, Jonathan Manes & Tania Brief, of New York, & Christopher T. Bavitz, for Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center & another, amici curiae, submitted a brief.
Present: Green, C.J., Singh, & Grant, JJ.
The defendant was charged with various firearm offenses after an investigatory stop and patfrisk revealed that he was unlawfully carrying a loaded firearm. Following an evidentiary hearing, a District Court judge allowed the defendant's motion to suppress on the ground that the stop was not supported by reasonable suspicion. A single justice of the Supreme Judicial Court granted the Commonwealth leave to file an interlocutory appeal and reported the matter to this court. See Mass. R. Crim. P. 15 (a) (2), as amended, 476 Mass. 1501 (2017). We conclude that, in the circumstances presented by this case, it was reasonable for the officer to conduct an investigatory stop of the defendant. We also conclude that the record contains sufficient evidence to support the patfrisk. Accordingly, we reverse the order allowing the motion.1
Background.2 On May 5, 2019, at approximately 2:20 A.M. , a Chelsea police officer was on uniformed patrol duty, traveling along Central Avenue, when he received a radio dispatch informing him of a ShotSpotter3 alert in the area of 185 Shurtleff Street.4 As he was directed to respond, the officer activated his cruiser's blue lights as he drove down Central Avenue. Turning right onto Shurtleff Street, he received two more reports of ShotSpotter alerts, one at 30 Bellingham Street and then another at 70 Bellingham Street. He turned onto Bellingham Street, and as he approached the address where the third ShotSpotter had alerted, he heard "what appear[ed] to be gunshots" himself. Almost simultaneously, dispatch reported a fourth ShotSpotter alert at 92 Bellingham Street. The officer began to "scan" the area for "shooters or victims." The only person that he saw was the defendant, who was standing at the top of the landing at the doorway of 86 Bellingham Street, the building next to and attached to 92 Bellingham Street.5
The officer stopped in the middle of the street and got out of his cruiser. For his safety, because he was investigating possible gunshots, he unholstered his firearm but kept it in the "low, ready position," pointed at the ground. The defendant began to come toward the officer, "stumbling down the steps" from the front door to the street. He appeared to be intoxicated. The officer ordered the defendant to the ground "so [he] could control the scene" until another officer arrived, at which point the defendant was placed in handcuffs. A patfrisk of the defendant uncovered a firearm in his right pocket.
Discussion. "When reviewing a ruling on a motion to suppress, we accept the motion judge's findings of fact absent clear error," Commonwealth v. Evelyn, 485 Mass. 691, 696, 152 N.E.3d 108 (2020), but we "conduct an independent review of his ultimate findings and conclusions of law,"6 Commonwealth v. Jimenez, 438 Mass. 213, 218, 780 N.E.2d 2 (2002). "Our duty is to make an independent determination of the correctness of the judge's application of constitutional principles to the facts as found." Commonwealth v. Scott, 440 Mass. 642, 646, 801 N.E.2d 233 (2004), quoting Commonwealth v. Mercado, 422 Mass. 367, 369, 663 N.E.2d 243 (1996).
1. The stop. The parties agree with the judge's finding that the moment of seizure occurred when the officer ordered the defendant to the ground. Accordingly, our analysis begins with the validity of the stop. See Commonwealth v. Warren, 475 Mass. 530, 534, 58 N.E.3d 333 (2016).
"To justify a police investigatory stop under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution or art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, ‘the police must have "reasonable suspicion" that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime.’ " Commonwealth v. Vick, 90 Mass. App. Ct. 622, 625, 62 N.E.3d 105 (2016), quoting Commonwealth v. Costa, 448 Mass. 510, 514, 862 N.E.2d 371 (2007). Reasonable "suspicion must be grounded in ‘specific, articulable facts and reasonable inferences [drawn] therefrom’ rather than on a ‘hunch.’ " Commonwealth v. Meneus, 476 Mass. 231, 235, 66 N.E.3d 1019 (2017), quoting Commonwealth v. DePeiza, 449 Mass. 367, 371, 868 N.E.2d 90 (2007). It "is measured by an objective standard, and the totality of the facts on which the seizure is based must establish ‘an individualized suspicion that the person seized by the police is the perpetrator’ of the crime under investigation" (citation omitted). Meneus, supra, quoting Warren, 475 Mass. at 534, 58 N.E.3d 333.
The judge concluded that the officer did not have reasonable suspicion to stop the defendant, reasoning:
Consequently, the judge, in his reasonable suspicion calculus, considered only the information known to the officer beginning from the time at which the officer first encountered the defendant. Because the officer did not testify as to conduct that suggested that the defendant was "involved in the shots fired incident," and because the officer had not received a witness description of the perpetrator, the judge determined that the officer did not have "reasonable suspicion" to believe the defendant was committing, had committed, or was about to commit a crime.
The defendant maintains that the judge "properly discounted the ShotSpotter alerts" because the officer's testimony did not prove that a ShotSpotter alert is "reliable";7 that is, that a single ShotSpotter alert is conclusive as to the presence of gunfire.8 The defendant's argument fails to recognize that although a fact known to an officer might not suggest criminal activity standing alone, multiple innocuous facts may in the aggregate give rise to reasonable suspicion. Cf. Commonwealth v. Watson, 430 Mass. 725, 729, 723 N.E.2d 501 (2000) (). The defendant's position -- that reports of a series of ShotSpotter alerts should carry equal weight in the reasonable suspicion calculus as the report of a single alert -- is inconsistent with the basic principle that a court considers the totality of the circumstances when assessing reasonable suspicion.
See Meneus, 476 Mass. at 236, 66 N.E.3d 1019.
Here, the officer began driving toward 185 Shurtleff Street following an alert from a ShotSpotter device located at or near that address. The officer understood that even though the ShotSpotter device may have been activated by something harmless, he had a responsibility to investigate the possibility that someone was discharging a firearm in a residential neighborhood. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Dasilva, 66 Mass. App. Ct. 556, 559, 849 N.E.2d 249 (2006) (). It may well be, as the judge stated, that when the officer first initiated his investigation, the initial ShotSpotter "alert [did] little more than point the police in the right direction to investigate the possibility of a shot being fired."
The timing and location of the alerts that followed, however, also should have been considered in evaluating the lawfulness of the officer's conduct. The ShotSpotter alerted in the early hours of the morning in a residential area. Each successive report of a ShotSpotter alert, combined with the officer's own hearing of apparent gunshots, made it increasingly reasonable for the officer to infer that the ShotSpotter devices were activating in response to consecutive gunshots. These factors, taken together, supported a reasonable inference that a crime was being committed, namely the discharge of a firearm within 500 feet of a dwelling. See G. L. c. 269, § 12E. Most significantly, the reports of the second, third, and fourth ShotSpotter alerts indicated a specific linear trajectory that began at the intersection of Shurtleff and Bellingham Streets and continued along Bellingham Street. Contrast Commonwealth v. Torres, 424 Mass. 153, 161, 674 N.E.2d 638 (1997), quoting Commonwealth v. Bartlett, 41 Mass. App. Ct. 468, 472, 671 N.E.2d 515 (1996) (). The ShotSpotter alerts created an acoustic trail of breadcrumbs, from which it was reasonable to infer that the person responsible for the potential gunshots would be at or near the location where the ShotSpotter had last activated.
Once the information reasonably inferred from the sequence of ShotSpotter alerts is considered in the holistic analysis, the remainder of the judge's factual findings take on greater significance. "The seizure of a suspect in geographical and temporal proximity to the scene of the crime appropriately may be considered as a factor in the reasonable suspicion analysis." Meneus, 476 Mass. at 240, 66 N.E.3d 1019....
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