VA adopts collective knowledge doctrine

Virginia finally adopts the collective knowledge doctrine. (Somehow it hadn’t had to before.) Edmond v. Commonwealth, 2016 Va. App. LEXIS 212 (Aug. 2, 2016):

Although this Court has not previously adopted the collective knowledge doctrine, we find that the principle derived from Whiteley, Hensley, and Massenburg—that an officer is justified in acting upon an instruction from another officer if the instructing officer had sufficient information to justify taking such action himself—is applicable in this case. We find that this principle both protects the Fourth Amendment privacy interest and recognizes important modern-day law enforcement realities.”The Fourth Amendment rights of the defendant are adequately protected by the requirement that the officers issuing the order or request have an adequate basis for doing so, such that if they were present at the scene, they could justifiably stop or arrest the suspect.” United States v. Nafzger, 974 F.2d 906, 911 (7th Cir. 1992). Thus, “[b]y imputing the investigating officer’s suspicions onto the responding officer, without requiring the responding officer to independently weigh the reasonable suspicion analysis, the collective knowledge doctrine ‘preserves the propriety of the stop’ and avoids crippling restrictions on our law enforcement.” United States v. Lyons, 687 F.3d 754, 766 (6th Cir. 2012) (quoting United States v. Ibarra-Sanchez, 199 F.3d 753, 760 (5th Cir. 1999)).