What is a Terry Stop
- Steven Topazio wrote this August 28, 2023 at 3:52 pm
In general, a “Terry stop” refers to a stop and frisk encounter between a law enforcement officer and an individual, based on the U.S. Supreme Court case Terry v. Ohio (1968). In this case, the Court established that police officers can stop and briefly detain a person if they have reasonable suspicion that the person may be involved in criminal activity, even if they don’t have probable cause for an arrest. This allows officers to perform a limited “pat-down” or frisk of the person’s outer clothing if they reasonably believe the person may be armed and dangerous.
Reasonable suspicion must be “based on specific, articulable facts and reasonable inferences therefrom.” Reasonable suspicion cannot be based on a hunch or on good faith, but the inferences can follow in light of the officer’s experience.
In a 2010 example of a Terry Stop case, the appeal’s court ruled that a Boston Municipal Court judge did not err in granting a criminal defendant’s motion to suppress evidence seized as a result of a police officer’s actions. In that case, a police officer stopped the defendant, and noticed a bulge in his shirt at his waistline. Instead of conducting a patfrisk, the police officer lifted the defendant’s shirt in order to ascertain the source of a bulge at the defendant’s waistband, and found a gun. On appeal, the court assumed that the police had reasonable suspicion of the defendant’s involvement in criminal activity sufficient to justify the stop, based on a belief that the defendant had been involved in a reported incident of shots fired in a residential neighborhood, including a belief that he may have fired some of the shots. The court noted that the circumstances of the police encounter with the defendant (who was cooperative, had made no threatening movements, and had his hands in the air) furnished no grounds to justify a departure from the usual and preferred method of beginning such a search with an exterior patfrisk, and affirmed that the allowance of motion to suppress the gun as a violation of the Terry Stop standard.
COMMONWEALTH vs. ROBERT FLEMMING, 76 Mass. App. Ct. 632 (2010)
Background Photo Courtesy of Max Fleischmann