Frisking Detained Juvenile for Gun May Be Constitutional Even When Juvenile is Detained as Reported Missing (Rather than on Suspicion of Crime)
From Friday’s decision in Commonwealth v. Demos D., by Massachusetts Appeals Court Justice Joseph Ditkoff, joined by Justices Sookyoung Shin and Robert Brennan:
A police officer encountering a sixteen year old juvenile who had been reported missing by his legal guardian {the Department of Children and Families} decided to transport the missing juvenile to a police station and then contact his guardian to pick him up. Prior to doing so, he pat frisked the juvenile and discovered a handgun. The juvenile was charged in the Juvenile Court with unlawfully carrying a loaded firearm, unlawful possession of a large capacity weapon, unlawful possession of ammunition, and, as a youthful offender, unlawfully carrying a firearm.
After an evidentiary hearing, a judge suppressed all physical evidence arising from this encounter. We conclude that transporting the missing juvenile to a police station to be picked up by his legal guardian was a proper act of community caretaking, and that any argument regarding the child requiring assistance statute, was not raised or adequately developed at the suppression hearing. Further following the majority view that it is generally reasonable for a police officer transporting a person in a police cruiser pursuant to a valid act of community caretaking to pat frisk that person before transport, we reverse the suppression order….
At roll call at the Lawrence Police Department on the morning of December 9, 2022, officers were shown a photograph of the sixteen year old juvenile and informed that he had been reported as a missing juvenile by (DCF).
Later that morning, a Lawrence police officer observed an individual he had previously encountered and knew to be a gang member traveling as a passenger in a motor vehicle near the Essex Street public housing development. The officer immediately called a detective in the gang unit to determine if there were any open investigations into the individual. Although the detective stated there were none, he did inform the officer that he had recently seen the individual possessing a firearm in a social media post. {The motion judge reasonably found that this report about a firearm was of no consequence, as “[t]he officer did not have specific, temporally proximate information to suggest that [the individual] was in possession of a firearm. He did not know the date of the post, the platform it was posted on, how long it had been posted, or what was depicted in the post.”} The officer chose not to stop the vehicle.
Around 1 p.m. that day, again near the Essex Street public housing development, the officer stopped the motor vehicle he previously had seen after witnessing it roll through a stop sign. The officer testified that the back seat passengers were “excessively moving,” “ducking out of sight,” and turning to look back at him. Upon approaching the vehicle, the officer “immediately recognized” a back seat passenger as the missing juvenile identified at that day’s morning roll ca
Article from Reason.com
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