The officer had three traffic offenses to stop defendant for, and circumstances gave reasonable suspicion of drug activity too. \u201cWhile Captain Pendergrass had reasonable suspicion to perform a pat down frisk for weapons on Defendant based on the presence of what he believed to be cocaine around Defendant’s mouth, Captain Pendergrass exceeded the scope of the pat down frisk by looking inside Defendant’s mouth and removing the hotel key card from Defendant’s pocket.\u201d A search warrant was obtained. Removing any tainted information from the search warrant affidavit still left probable cause for the warrant. United States v. Winstead, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 175846 (E.D.N.C. Dec. 3, 2015), adopted 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13860 (E.D.N.C. Feb. 4, 2016).<\/p>\n
Defendant was a known \u201cmajor drug player\u201d in the community, and, although local, he rented a motel room for cash, \u201creupped\u201d it daily, but didn\u2019t stay there, visited the room, told the hotel he wanted no service, and left the \u201cdo not disturb\u201d sign on the door. The officer concluded that he was using the room as a stash location. When he drove away, he went in circles seemingly insuring he wasn\u2019t being followed. All this added up to reasonable suspicion for a stop. State v. Arafat<\/a>, 2016-Ohio-385, 2016 Ohio App. LEXIS 327 (8th Dist. Feb. 4, 2016).*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The officer had three traffic offenses to stop defendant for, and circumstances gave reasonable suspicion of drug activity too. \u201cWhile Captain Pendergrass had reasonable suspicion to perform a pat down frisk for weapons on Defendant based on the presence of … Continue reading