Cal.2: Conduct didn’t suggest drug activity, but it justified a stop. “Common sense takes context into account.”

Defendant’s conduct that aroused police suspicion didn’t suggest drug activity, but “Common sense takes context into account.” It was suspicious enough on the totality to permit a Terry stop. People v. Flores, 2021 Cal. App. LEXIS 130 (2d Dist. Feb. 16, 2021):

The combination of these facts did not establish Flores was engaged in illegal drug activity, but the trial court was right that together the facts justified this Terry stop.

Flores asks, how do you know if a person is pretending to tie his shoe? The answer is you would have valid suspicions if the person picked an unlikely moment for the task—in the dark, just after seeing police, and just after ducking once already—and if the person took an unusually long time at it. The trial court found Flores kept crouching for a suspiciously long time. Common sense takes context into account.

Certainly there are innocent possibilities. But, in combination with the other factors, a reasonable officer had a reasonable basis for investigating further to resolve this ambiguity, because nervous and evasive behavior is a pertinent factor in determining whether suspicion is reasonable. (Wardlow, supra, 528 U.S. at p. 124.) Courts must permit police to make commonsense judgments and inferences about human behavior. (Glover, supra, _ U.S. at p. _ [140 S.Ct. at p. 1188].)