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State v. Williams4/5/2005
ling. State v. Johnson, 980 S.W.2d 414 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1998).
Here, the trial court implicitly found that the car was stopped but concluded that no traffic was being blocked at the time the officer arrived at the scene. Otherwise, there were no findings. Although there was some dispute as to whether the officer approached the defendant's vehicle from behind or from the front, that was apparently not a factor considered by the trial judge. In its decision, the trial court ruled that under "either scenario" (whether the officer arrived from the front or the rear), its conclusion would have been the same. It appears that the trial court suppressed the evidence because the defendant was on a two-lane road and was not blocking any traffic; therefore, the trial court concluded that the officer had no reasonable or articulable suspicion that a crime had occurred or was occurring.
As indicated, however, an officer need not suspect a crime in order to approach a citizen and ask questions. Further, it is well settled that an officer, as a part of his community caretaking or public safety function, may approach a citizen in a parked car. Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433 (1973); State v. Hawkins, 969 S.W.2d 936 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1997); State v. James Dewey Jensen, Jr., No. E2002-00712-CCA-R3-CD (Tenn. Crim. App., at Knoxville, Nov. 15, 2002). In Cady, the United States Supreme Court made the following observation:
Because of the extensive regulation of motor vehicles and traffic, and also because of the frequency with which a vehicle can become disabled or involved in an accident on public highways, the extent of police-citizen contact involving automobiles will be substantially greater than police-citizen contact in a home or office. Some such contacts will occur because the officer may believe the operator has violated a criminal statute, but many more will not be of that nature. Local police officers . . . frequently investigate vehicle accidents in which there is no claim of criminal liability and engage in what, for want of a better term, may be described as community caretaking functions, totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute.
413 U.S. at 441.
In this instance, Officer Sims testified that he approached the vehicle in order to find out why it was stopped along the city residential street. The trial court appears to have found that the vehicle was stopped. Even if the car had been moving "very slowly," however, as testified to by the defendant, the same rationale would apply. In our view, the trial court erred by reaching the conclusion that the officer was required to have had a reasonable suspicion in order to approach the idling vehicle. From the limited findings made by the trial judge, this court cannot conclude that this was a seizure of the defendant requiring reasonable suspicion. Instead, the proof suggests that the officer's approach of the defendant was more likely a part of his community caretaking and public safety function to investigate a car stopped or appearing to be stopped in a lane on a city street.
In Jensen, a panel of this court pointed out that while the activation of blue lights ordinarily signals a stop or arrest, citing State v. Randolph, 74 S.W.3d 330, 338 (Tenn. 2002), "it is not unusual for a police officer to activate the blue lights on his or her patrol car for safety purposes." Jensen, slip op. at 3. In this instance, Officer Sims explained that he did so to identify himself because the defendant's vehicle was already stopped in the street. Typically, community caretaking functions qualify as neither full scale arrests nor inves
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