AR: Suspicionless stop of a boat for safety inspection was unreasonable

A Sheriff’s deputy stopped defendant’s boat for a safety check at 11 pm on an otherwise busy recreational lake. There was nothing remarkable about defendant’s operation of the boat to call attention to it. During the stop, the deputy determined defendant was under the influence. The stop was without reasonable suspicion and unreasonable. State v. Allen, 2013 Ark. 35, 2013 Ark. LEXIS 54 (February 7, 2013) (4-3):

At issue is a brief stop by a law-enforcement officer to assure that a vessel complies with applicable safety requirements. It is a stop at the order of a law-enforcement officer and constitutes a seizure that is certainly less intrusive than a traditional arrest; however, it is a seizure and means that the law-enforcement officer is “lawfully present” and under a duty to act where the law enforcement officer reasonably suspects a crime has been or is about to be committed. See Ark. R. Crim. P. 3.1 (2012). A seizure under the Fourth Amendment must be based on specific, objective facts indicating that society’s legitimate interests require the seizure of the particular individual or that the seizure must be carried out under a plan embodying explicit, neutral limitations on the conduct of individual officers. See Brown, 443 U.S. at 51. Regardless of how brief or slight the intrusion, or how weighty the public interest, “an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy is not subject to arbitrary invasions solely at the unfettered discretion of officers in the field.” Id.

Sergeant Tucker testified that, while he tried to stop and perform a safety check on as many vessels as he could in a given day, there was no plan and nothing to determine which boats he stopped. There were no specific, objective facts about Allen’s vessel to indicate that society’s legitimate interests required the seizure of Allen and his particular vessel. As the circuit court found, Allen’s vessel was being legally operated in an unremarkable fashion. Sergeant Tucker testified that he did not believe that he had “the unfettered discretion to pull over any boat at any time for any reason that [he desired],” but only to perform a safety check. However, this means that whether the stop is proper depends only on the law enforcement officer’s subjective assertion of his or her purpose when the Fourth Amendment requires objective facts supporting the stop or a plan embodying explicit, neutral limitations. As the circuit court found, the practice of safety-check stops by law-enforcement officers in this case violates the Fourth Amendment.