{"id":8508,"date":"2013-07-31T09:05:23","date_gmt":"2013-03-20T10:03:35","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-20T10:03:35","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=8508","title":{"rendered":"GA: Small hard object in pocket, like candy, felt during patdown didn&#8217;t justify going into pocket"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Defendant was subjected to a patdown that revealed a hard round object that was the size of a piece of candy. There was no reasonable basis for concluding it was a weapon, so going into his pockets to retrieve it was unreasonable. <a href=\"https:\/\/efast.gaappeals.us\/download?filingId=adf2bae7-4363-49e4-a83c-82129c3205be\">Kelley v. State<\/a>, 320 Ga. App. 462, 740 S.E.2d 201 (2013).<\/p>\n<p>The officer had reasonable suspicion for a patdown because the passenger fled the scene, defendant looked like he was considering it himself (whatever that means), he seemed under the influence of meth, and he was known to associate with a known meth dealer. United States v. Fry, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 36645 (D. Ore. March 12, 2013).*<\/p>\n<p>Officers confronted with probable cause to believe an offense has been committed have qualified immunity to act to arrest. \u201c\u2018Once probable cause to arrest someone is established &#8230; a law enforcement officer is not required by the Constitution to investigate independently\u2019 a suspect\u2019s asserted defenses. Broam v. Bogan, 320 F.3d 1023, 1032 (9th Cir. 2003) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Because the officers reasonably believed they had probable cause to arrest Knotts for possessing an illegal weapon, they are entitled to qualified immunity.\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov\/datastore\/memoranda\/2013\/03\/18\/11-16870.pdf\">Knotts v. Carreira<\/a>, 511 Fed. Appx. 665 (9th Cir. 2013).*<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fourthamendment.com\/blog\">Back to blog<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>b2evALnk.b2WPAutP <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=8508\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}