Baltimore riots

[JoeRedskin]

Originally Posted by over the mountain

[T]he charging document and Mosby's own words repeatedly stress that he was unlawfully detained with no PC as grounds to state any touching was illegal and therefore any consequence thereafter was illegal.

Well, they had reasonable suspicion to do a Terry stop/"stop and frisk". There is a Supreme Court case which states that an individual's presence in an area known for heavy narcotics trafficking, combined with his unprovoked flight after seeing and being seen by an officer, justified a stop and search.

So, during the pursuit, if an officer shouts "Halt" and person keeps running, has the person now violated a lawful order of the police providing the necessary probable cause for an arrest? I don't know the answer. If it does, it sets the probable cause bar pretty low.

Good synopsis of the case: Person's Flight Can Justify Police Stop and Search, Supreme Court Rules

The incident that led to the decision today occurred at mid-day on a Chicago street in 1995. As four police cars on narcotics patrol approached the sidewalk where he was standing, Sam Wardlow turned and ran down an alley. An officer caught him and, in a pat-down search, felt a gun in a bag he was carrying under his arm. Justice Stevens said the police officer's testimony about what actually happened was too vague to support a finding of reasonable suspicion. The decision was an application of the court's 1968 decision in Terry v. Ohio, which for the first time authorized a warrantless, brief detention and search of a person acting suspiciously but under circumstances less conclusive than probable cause to believe that a crime had been committed.