Page 28 - May June 2020 TPA Journal

committed on separate occasions within a 12- driver of a car is its registered owner does not
month period,” “is incom petent to drive a motor require any specialized training; rather, it is a
vehicle,” or “has been convicted of a moving reasonable inference made by ordinary people on
traffic violation, committed at a time when the a daily basis.
per son’s driving privileges were restricted,
suspended[,] or re voked.” Other reasons include The dissent reads our cases differently, contending
violat ing license restrictions, and being a habitual that they permit an officer to use only the common
violator, which Kansas defines as a resident or sense derived from his “experiences in law
nonresident who has been convicted three or more enforcement.” Such a standard defies the
times within the past five years of certain “common sense” understanding of common sense,
enumerated driving offenses. The concerns i.e., information that is accessible to people
motivating the State’s various grounds for revoca - generally, not just some special ized subset of
tion lend further credence to the inference that a society. More importantly, this standard ap pears
registered owner with a revoked Kansas driver’s nowhere in our precedent. In fact, we have stated
license might be the one driving the vehicle. that reasonable suspicion is an “abstract” concept
that can not be reduced to “a neat set of legal
Glover and the dissent respond with two rules,” and we have repeatedly rejected courts’
arguments as to why Deputy Mehrer lacked efforts to impose a rigid structure on the concept
reasonable suspicion. Neither is persuasive. of reasonableness. This is precisely what the
dissent’s rule would do by insisting that officers
First, Glover and the dissent argue that Deputy must be treated as bifur cated persons, completely
Mehrer’s inference was unreasonable because it precluded from drawing factual inferences based
was not grounded in his law enforcement training on the commonly held knowledge they have
or experience. Nothing in our Fourth Amendment acquired in their everyday lives.
precedent supports the notion that, in determining
whether reasonable suspicion exists, an officer can The dissent’s rule would also impose on police the
draw inferences based on knowledge gained only burden of pointing to specific training materials or
through law enforcement training and experience. field experiences justifying reasonable suspicion
We have repeatedly recognized the opposite. In for the myriad infractions in municipal criminal
Navarette, we noted a number of behaviors— codes. And by removing common sense as a
including driving in the median, crossing the source of evidence, the dissent would
center line on a highway, and swerving—that as a considerably nar row the daylight between the
matter of common sense provide “sound indicia of showing required for probable cause and the “less
drunk driving.” In Wardlow, we made the stringent” showing required for reason able
unremarkable observation that “[h]eadlong suspicion. Finally, it would impermissibly tie a
flight—wherever it occurs—is the consummate traffic stop’s validity to the officer’s length of
act of evasion” and therefore could factor into a service. Such re quirements are inconsistent with
police officer’s reasonable suspicion our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, and we
determination. And in Sokolow, we recognized decline to adopt them here.
that the defendant’s method of payment for an
airplane ticket contributed to the agents’ In reaching this conclusion, we in no way
reasonable sus picion of drug trafficking because minimize the significant role that specialized
we “fe[lt] confident” that “[m]ost business training and experience routinely play in law
travelers . . . purchase airline tickets by credit card enforcement investigations. We simply hold that
or check” rather than cash. The inference that the such experience is not required in every instance.

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