GA: Stopping a white man leaving a black neighborhood was pretextual and suppressed

A white man coming from an African-American neighborhood, profiling him as a drug buyer, was a pretextual stop based on pattern of activity rather than particularized suspicion. His stop violated the Fourth Amendment. Williams v. State, 2014 Ga. App. LEXIS 307 (April 30, 2014):

In the present case, similarly to Hughes and Hopper, Williams’s conduct appeared to fit a pattern of behavior of individuals who were going quickly in and out of a location where police knew drugs were present and suspected drugs were being sold. The arresting officer testified that “basically … whoever is observed going into Apartment J and leaving” was being stopped, and that Williams was stopped solely for this reason. Further, although the officer testified that other “stops and/or arrests” had been made that day of individuals engaging in this conduct, the officer gave no indication that all, or indeed any, of those stops yielded arrests for contraband. Nor did the officer have any knowledge about Williams or any previous drug-related activity on his part. Thus, it was Williams’s conformity to a general pattern of behavior, and not a particularized suspicion, that led to the stop. “Georgia case law is clear that, absent some particularized suspicion of wrongdoing, merely [acting in a way] that fits a known ‘pattern’ of criminal activity — does not justify an investigatory stop.” State v. Holmes, ___ Ga. App. ___, n. 13, 2014 Ga. App. LEXIS 202 (2014). (Emphasis in original.) Hopper, 293 Ga. App. at 223. Accordingly, we find that the investigative stop in this case was not based on a particularized and objective suspicion that Williams was engaged in criminal activity and that the evidence found during the search of his backpack should have been suppressed. Dryer, 323 Ga. App. at 739 (2) officer’s subjective feeling that a person is ‘acting in a suspicious way does not amount to a particularized and objective basis for suspecting him of criminal activity.“) (citation and punctuation omitted); Adkinson v. State, 322 Ga. App. 1, 2 (743 SE2d 563) (2013) (evidence suppressed where officer saw defendant engage in behavior consistent with buying drugs by briefly visiting a hotel located in an area known for heavy drug activity); Pritchard v. State, 300 Ga. App. 14, 15-16 (684 SE2d 88) (2009) (evidence suppressed when only evidence to support the stop was that defendant’s car was seen in front of a residence that had recently been raided for drugs); Emery v. State, 249 Ga. App. 114 (548 SE2d 23) (2001) (stop not authorized where defendant drove away from house shortly before a search warrant was to be executed). Cf. Satterfield v. State, 289 Ga. App. 886, 889 (2) (658 SE2d 379) (2008) (stop justified when defendant spent five minutes in residence of known drug dealer where police had observed drug activity, and defendant left house in a vehicle with a known drug dealer and went to the dealer’s residence).