D.Mont.: Officer had something at least close to RS to investigate def as a probation violator and there was no bad faith or flagrantly unreasonable action

If the officer didn’t have reasonable suspicion defendant was a probation violator, he had something really close to it. Also, nothing about the officer’s investigation was flagrant or in bad faith. United States v. Galliher, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 140901 (D. Mont. Aug. 6, 2020)*:

Nothing in the record suggests that Holmlund executed the investigative stop in bad faith or in a flagrant, illegal way. Warrington and Sexton asked Holmlund for assistance investigating the man whom probation initially had discovered because the man had displayed suspicious behavior near a house known to police as a location of criminal activity. (Doc. 103 at 2.) Holmlund then decided to look around the immediate area for places where the man may have gone to hide. Once Holmlund noticed a single vehicle isolated at a public site located near a house known to be suspicious, Holmlund suspected that the vehicle was related to the potential criminal activity Warrington and Sexton described.

To the extent that Holmlund lacked reasonable suspicion to conduct a stop, he had something quite close to it. Holmlund exhibited no egregious conduct with the purpose to hope that some sort of illegal activity would show up. See Simpson, 439 F.3d at 496. And this was not the type of fishing expedition the Court explained would prove flagrant in Strieff. See 136 S. Ct. at 2064. Holmlund conducted a targeted search of the most logical area that the man whom probation initially encountered may have gone to hide. As such, Holmlund’s conduct does not rise to the level of conscious or flagrant misconduct requiring suppression of the evidence pursuant to Galliher’s lawful arrest based on the terms of his probation.