☢ test - Í

the Cadillac over.” No indication of time lapse between tip and sighting of vehicle. 4. BOLO – DESCRIPTION INADEQUATE

Allen v. State, 325 Ga.App. 156, 751 S.E.2d 915 (November 22, 2013). Physical precedent only. Interlocutory appeal in prosecution for possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. Trial court erred by denying motion to suppress; vague BOLO description didn’t give officer articulable suspicion for traffic stop. “[T]he officer who stopped the car in which Allen was a passenger … testified that he ‘was given a lookout from a previous case, and basically the BOLO was a silver or dark colored Dodge Charger, and in a certain area of Flat Shoals in unincorporated Fulton County.’” The look-out was based on a series of armed robberies in a subdivision about three miles from the pull-over location, “a couple of days up until the actual time that [he] actually pulled the vehicle over.” “[T]he last armed robbery had occurred ‘more than three’ hours before the stop. … [Corporal] Anderson testified that the BOLO did not give the car's direction of travel or the number of occupants; the only description of the occupants was ‘black males.’” Based on Vansant v. State, 264 Ga. 319, 443 S.E.2d 474 (1994) and State v. Dias, 284 Ga.App. 10, 642 S.E.2d 925 (2007). “The only specific piece of information was the make and model of the car – Dodge Charger. The other information was so general as to be essentially useless. The color was described as ‘silver or dark,’ a description that excludes very little. There was no information about the approximate year of manufacture or the condition of the car. The only facts known about the occupants were their race and gender; not even the number of occupants was known. No particular street or direction of travel was communicated, and the vehicle was said to have been associated with a crime at least three hours old, much longer than the period of time between the BOLOs and stops in Vansant and Dias. And the vehicle carrying Allen was stopped approximately three miles from the crime scene, a greater distance from the crime scene than the stops in Vansant (one mile) and Dias (two miles). Under these circumstances, the BOLO was too generalized to justify the stop.” State v. Wolf, 317 Ga.App. 706, 732 S.E.2d 782 (September 28, 2012). Physical precedent only. In prosecution for marijuana possession and burglary, trial court properly granted motion to suppress; officer lacked reasonable articulable suspicion for stop. Mail carrier reported seeing “a gray Nissan pickup truck and several black men who entered the truck and left the residence [at Vickers Circle and Coffee Road], apparently after they had seen the mail carrier. The mail carrier suspected that the men were about to break into the residence. The next day, around noon, a police officer on patrol in the area observed a ‘gray Nissan four-door pickup truck coming off of Vickers Circle onto Coffee Road.’ The officer, driving an unmarked police vehicle, followed the truck, which drove away and then circled back to Vickers Circle. … The officer testified that the truck stopped on Vickers Circle and picked up a ‘black male [who had] come out of a yard.’ The truck drove away, but before it reached Coffee Road again, the officer activated the blue lights on his vehicle and initiated a stop of the truck.” Both citings occurred during the day, when the neighborhood was largely deserted. “It is clear from the evidence adduced at the suppression hearing that the officers did not have the requisite particularized basis for suspecting the occupants of this particular vehicle of criminal activity. … There was no testimony that any law enforcement officers had, in response to the mail carrier's report, investigated whether the vehicle was properly at the residence the day before. The fact that the first officer had no details about the occupants of that vehicle other than their race and gender and that their vehicle was the same make and color as the one he observed the next day in an area where prior burglaries had reportedly been committed did not provide the requisite particularized basis for suspecting Wolf or the other occupants of the vehicle of criminal activity, justifying a stop of the vehicle. [Cits.] And there was no evidence that there was anything unlawful about the circumstances under which an individual was picked up. [Cits.] Nor was there testimony about the alleged recent burglaries in the area. [Cits.]” State v. Dias, 284 Ga.App. 10, 642 S.E.2d 925 (March 7, 2007). Trial court properly held that stop was not justified by vague description in BOLO. “The record shows that Dias was stopped as a result of a BOLO call for a maroon or brown Mercury Topaz or Ford Taurus or Ford Tempo driven by a white male wearing a baseball cap traveling east on Oakridge Drive. Dias was stopped while driving on Moultrie Road about two miles from the burglary.” “No year or body style, information about the condition, or number of doors was provided about the suspect car and no details were provided about the driver or his dress other than his skin color and gender and perhaps he was wearing a white baseball cap. The effect of the description was that the officers should look for some sort of brown or maroon automobile manufactured by the Ford Motor Company driven by a white male who might be wearing a baseball cap. This description would cover a staggering number of vehicles and drivers in the State of Georgia.” “In his treatise on Search and Seizure, Professor LaFave identified six factors to be considered when courts determine whether reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigatory detention existed: ‘(1) the particularity of the description of the offender or the vehicle in which he fled; (2) the size of the area in which the offender might be found, as indicated by such facts as the elapsed time since the crime occurred; (3) the number of persons about in that area; (4) the known or probable direction of the offender's flight; (5) observed activity by the particular person stopped; and (6) knowledge or suspicion that the person or vehicle stopped has