Ray v. State(4th District Court of Appeals: July 14th, 2010)

An officer was monitoring a neighborhood in response to resident complaints of drug dealing. The officer observed the Defedant drive up and stop in the middle of the road. While he remained inside the vehicle, an unknown adult male approached the passenger side of the vehicle. The officer observed some sort of hand-to-hand exchange between Ray and the unidentified male. Although the officer could not identify the objects exchanged between the two, she perceived the exchange to be a drug transaction.

The officer then followed the defendant as they drove away. The officer turned on the overhead lights in an attempt to make a traffic stop. The defendant drove through a stop sign without stopping and the officer pulled her over. As the officer approached, the defendant dropped a small amount of a white substance out of her vehicle's window. The substance was recovered and tested positive for cocaine.

This Court has stated, though, that an “officer's observation of hand-to-hand movements between persons in an area known for narcotics transactions, without more, does not provide a founded suspicion of criminal activity.” Belsky, 831 So.2d at 804 (emphasis added); see also Messer v. State,609 So.2d 164, 165 (Fla. 2d DCA 1992) (“In those instances where no contraband was observed, the officer was deemed to have had only a ‘bare’ rather than a ‘reasonable’ suspicion that the defendant was engaged in criminal activity.”); Waddell v. State,652 So.2d 917, 917-19 (Fla. 4th DCA 1995) (holding that the observance of two unknown African-American males approaching a truck driven by a white male, without witnessing the exchange of drugs or money, did not amount to a reasonable suspicion).

Also, courts have routinely held that the use of emergency lights “ ‘evidences an investigatory stop rather than a consensual encounter because the use of emergency lights leads the citizen to believe that he or she is no longer free to leave.’ “ Errickson v. State,855 So.2d 700, 702 (Fla. 4th DCA 2003) (quoting Young v. State,803 So.2d 880, 882 (Fla. 5th DCA 2002)). When the arresting officer activated her emergency lights to pull over Ray, she commenced an investigatory stop without reasonable suspicion. Ray's traffic infraction occurred after the officer turned on her lights.

The Court threw out the evidence.