D.C.Cir.: Police stopping nearest vehicle after hearing shots fired lacked RS

On de novo review of reasonable suspicion, the court finds defendant was stopped by being blocked in by a police car parked three feet away with takedown lights on. They are designed to obscure vision and disorient the motorist looking at the police car. The officers were responding to nearby shots fired they heard, and defendant’s vehicle was the first one they saw. Still, presence in a high crime area alone is not reasonable suspicion (Wardlow), and there was nothing connecting defendant’s vehicle to the shots. The motion to suppress should have been granted. “True, the district court found that the officers saw Delaney before they saw anyone else. But absent findings substantiating the officers’ estimation of where the shots came from, that fact does little to change the reasonable suspicion calculus because the corresponding inference—that Delaney might be the source of those shots—no longer follows.” United States v. Delaney, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 12317 (D.C. Cir. Apr. 17, 2020).