NY: Parole absconder detention lacked RS

“On a cold, late December morning, New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision parole officers were attempting to locate a parole absconder for whom they had an arrest warrant.” People v. Jones, 236 A.D.3d 1410, 229 N.Y.S.3d 287 (4th Dept. 2025) (dissenting opinion). For descriptors they had height and weight and a potential location. Near that location came defendant, not the absconder, wearing a ski mask on a cold day, and he fled when the POs came after him. In flight, he tossed a gun and some drugs. There was no reasonable suspicion for them to pursue and detain him. People v. Jones, 2026 NY Slip Op 01447, 2026 N.Y. LEXIS 320 (Mar. 17, 2026) (5-2):

Whether framed in terms of reasonable suspicion of criminal activity or reasonable mistaken belief that the defendant was the target of an arrest warrant, the record here does not justify the pursuit and subsequent arrest of the defendant. Two reasons yield this conclusion. First, the pursuing investigators’ testimony does not reveal a sufficiently close match between the defendant’s appearance and the identifying details they were given about the parole absconder. Second, the defendant’s flight from the investigators, on which the Appellate Division majority relied, cannot support an inference that he was the target of the warrant because the record is devoid of any suggestion that he could have known he was fleeing from law enforcement.

A.

The pursuing investigators’ testimony establishes only that the defendant matched the absconder’s description in a broad, generic sense, which is to say that he barely matched the description at all. From a distance of 20 to 30 yards away, the investigators saw a male walking from the direction of the city block that the absconder’s girlfriend had identified. He was around 5′ 11″, weighed 185 to 200 pounds, and was wearing a black ski mask. The investigators could not identify the defendant’s race or say whether he resembled the photo that they were provided.