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MO: After furtive movement led to search for gun and none was found, officer could not ask passenger for ID

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Officer conducting a driver’s license roadblock saw defendant making furtive movements, and they looked for a weapon, not finding one. Asking for ID had to be related to the purposes of the stop, and here it wasn’t. Reversed. State v. Waldrup, 2010 Mo. App. LEXIS 529 (April 27, 2010): To allow the grounds for reasonable suspicion that Mr. Waldrup had a weapon to also support reasonable suspicion that he was a "threat" to public safety after no weapon was found, as the sole justification for requesting his identification, would erode Fourth Amendment protections. The police are not entitled to a suspect's identification during a Terry stop unless it is related to the circumstances justifying the stop. Thus, different grounds for reasonable suspicion were needed to justify the identification request from Mr...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on May 02, 2010 (boomark / email).