United States v. Reedy, No. 20-2444 (7th Cir. 2021)
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Police responded to a call that a homeless person was sleeping in a car behind a store and found Reedy wearing a bulletproof vest in the front passenger seat of a Kia. They saw an open knife, crowbar, and walkie-talkie on the car’s floorboard. Reedy said that his friend, Jason, was visiting someone nearby. Telling Reedy to stay put with one officer, another officer looked for Jason and found him in a backyard wearing dress clothes yet claiming to be doing lawn work. Searching Jason’s backpack, officers found methamphetamine, credit cards in others’ names, latex gloves, rocks, knives, bolt cutters, shotgun ammo, and a walkie-talkie tuned to the same channel as Reedy’s. A search of the Kia turned up a shotgun. Reedy faced a federal gun possession charge.
The Seventh Circuit affirmed the denial of Reedy’s motion to suppress. Officers had ample authority to direct Reedy to step out of his car and to subject him to further questioning and investigation consistent with Terry; there was no unreasonable delay in the execution of the Terry stop. This same sequence of events supplied the probable cause necessary to arrest Reedy. Once the police returned Jason to the car, the initial Terry stop of Reedy effectively turned into an arrest supported by probable cause for, at minimum, possession of burglarious tools.
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