After a police officer received a radio message that a middle-aged black male was burglarizing vehicles in a parking lot, he saw defendant, who met the description, carrying two duffle bags and hurriedly walking away from the lot. The officer immediately stopped defendant and explained the reasons for the stop. As the officer was speaking with defendant, he noticed several bulges in defendant's pockets. During a patdown search, and upon determining that the bulge in defendant's rear pocket was hard, he asked what was in the pocket. Defendant responded that it was a knife, and the officer removed it. The officer then placed defendant under arrest for carrying a concealed weapon. The appellate court found, inter alia, that while the radio message was insufficient by itself to provide reasonable suspicion, defendant's observable conduct in the parking lot provided the necessary reasonable suspicion to initially detain him. Accordingly, the trial court did not err in denying defendant's motion to suppress.
“Reasonable suspicion ... is dependent upon both the content of information possessed by police and its degree of reliability. Both factors—quantity and quality—are considered in the totality of the circumstances—the whole picture[ ] that must be taken into account when evaluating whether there is reasonablesuspicion. Hudson v. State, 41 So. 3d 948 (Fla. 2d DCA 2010)
Holding: Reasonable Suspicion must exist prior to a pat down search. The Court developed a two prong test for Reasonable Suspicion: Quantity, and Quality. The totality of the circumstances and the degree of reliability.
