CA10: Having defendant drive 8 more miles for a dog sniff with RS was not unreasonable

Once the officer had reasonable suspicion for further detention, it was not unreasonable to have the defendant drive eight more miles on down the highway, the direction defendant was going, to where a drug dog was located to have a dog sniff. It was significant it was a state DOT parking lot and not a police station, and, on the totality, it was not an arrest. United States v. White, 584 F.3d 935 (10th Cir. 2009):

Defendants rely on United States v. Arango, 912 F.2d 441 (10th Cir. 1990), to argue that their investigative detention became an arrest when Trooper Dean directed them to the KDOT office. Arango, however, is distinguishable. In that case, a Utah highway patrol trooper stopped a truck for speeding. See 912 F.2d at 443. During the stop, the trooper became suspicious because, among other reasons, it appeared that the truck’s bed had been modified or altered. See id. The trooper never returned the driver’s license and the truck’s registration. See id. Instead, as a pretext for continuing to search the truck, the trooper “told Arango that he had to follow [the trooper] seven miles to the sheriff’s office in Richfield to post bail for the traffic citation.” Id. Arango, with a state patrol vehicle both in front and behind him, drove to the sheriff’s office. See id. Under those circumstances, this court held that “[o]nce the police told Arango to come with them to the sheriff’s office, the line between [investigative] detention and de facto arrest was crossed.” Id. at 447. Because the court concluded that the officer had probable cause to arrest Arango at that point, however, the court did not delve further into the factual intricacies that transformed that situation from an investigative detention into an arrest. See id.

There are at least three significant reasons why the case at issue here is distinguishable from Arango, as well as the cases on which Arango relies. First, here, Trooper Dean did not retain White’s paperwork. While this may seem like a minor detail, it bolsters the conclusion that White would be free to go on his way after the canine investigation, if the dog sniff dispelled the officer’s reasonable suspicions. Second, Dean saw the trip to the Alma KDOT as a means to expedite the drug dog sniff — and explained that to White.

Third, Dean asked White to go to a KDOT parking lot, and not a police station. While there are admittedly no bright lines in this area of jurisprudence, courts have reiterated that transporting a suspect to a police station weighs heavily in the reasonableness analysis. See Kaupp v. Texas, 538 U.S. 626, 630, 123 S. Ct. 1843, 155 L. Ed. 2d 814 (2003) (per curiam) (noting Supreme Court has “never sustained against Fourth Amendment challenge the involuntary removal of a suspect from his home to a police station and his detention there for investigative purposes absent probable cause or judicial authorization”) (quotation, alterations omitted); Shareef, 100 F.3d at 1508 (noting that “[t]ransportation of a defendant to the police station can not be justified absent probable cause to believe the defendant committed a crime”). For these reasons, we conclude Arango and the cases on which it relies do not control here.