United States v. John Broomfield

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• noting that importance of eye contact is purely subjective and easily skewed by police officers to support their view of a situation
• explaining that there was reasonable suspicion when the person stopped matched a highly generalized description of the suspect and was less than a mile from the scene of a robbery when the streets were nearly deserted
• stating that police were justified in stopping defendant based on dispatch stating that a store in the vicinity had just recently been held up by “a black man wearing dark clothing and brandishing a silver-colored pistol” who fled on foot
• deeming encounter consensual where police told man to stop and take his hands out of his pockets
• discussing how a police officer could appropriately “bring [a] pedestrian to a halt,” and not seize the person, by asking the pedestrian, “Excuse me, we’re investigating a robbery, and we’d like to know whether you’ve seen a black man wearing dark clothing.”
• “Whether you stand still or move, drive above, below, or at the speed limit, you will be described by the police as acting suspiciously should they wish to stop or arrest you.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).