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Police Justified in Detaining Man in Red Shirt Based on Suspect Being So Described—C.A.
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Court of Appeal for this district has declared that after Los Angeles police were alerted by a man that a pair of his motorcycles had been stolen from him at Exposition Boulevard and Barrington Avenue by three persons—one a bald white man wearing a red shirt—officers were justified in detaining a Hispanic male clad in a red shirt who was spotted from a helicopter near that intersection standing by a motorcycle.
Officers in a patrol car in the vicinity were notified. They stopped the man who had been spotted from the sky, Daniel Joshua Najera, after he tried to evade them on foot.
Officer Aaron C Gland found a gun in his waistband. He was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm and possessing a firearm with an outstanding misdemeanor warrant.
Najera made a suppression motion which was denied and he was convicted. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Christopher W. Dybwad sentenced him to 16 months in prison.
Wiley’s Opinion
The conviction was affirmed Tuesday in an unpublished opinion by Justice John Shepard Wiley Jr.
Wiley said that Najera “makes much of the fact that he is Hispanic” while the victim, Johnny Assmann, described the culprit as “white.” Wiley wrote:
“While a factor in whether the detention was reasonable, this is not determinative. If there had been two men in red shirts and officers detained Najera while ignoring a white man, certainly the detention would have been unreasonable. That is not the situation. Najera was the only man in the area who partially matched the description. It was reasonable for officers to attempt to question him….This is especially true where the part of the description that matched was an objective measure like a red shirt and the part that did not match was race. Race can be an ambiguous characteristic.”
Helicopter Officers Description
Although Assmann, in reporting the crime, described the thief as “white,” officers in the helicopter related to Gland and his partner that the suspect was Hispanic. Wiley noted that “[i]t is unclear where the Hispanic descriptor came from.”
Najera argued on appeal that the description of a “Hispanic man in a red shirt” was too broad for the detention of him to have been warranted.
Wiley responded:
“[D]escriptions that would otherwise be too general can justify a detention when combined with other factors such as close temporal and geographical proximity, as was the case here….Although Najera argues it is of little significance that he was in the general area in the middle of the day, the fact that he was close to the crime scene at nearly the same time is significant.”
The jurist added:
“Najera also argues he was wearing a hat and not near a bicycle or motorcycle. Bucket hats, however, fit in a pocket. One can swiftly move away from a bicycle or motorcycle.”
Although Assmann also described the thief as bald and toothless, these facts were not related to the patrol officers.
The case is People v. Najera, B328877.
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