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<blockquote data-quote="Dave70968" data-source="post: 1796850" data-attributes="member: 13624">Correct.This scenario is not really a &quot;Federal right&quot; question.&nbsp; Officers do not have a right to make a stop, they have authority to make a stop, subject to the rights of the subject.&nbsp; In Terry, the court held that an officer performing a brief frisk does not violate the suspect&#039;s rights so long as there is some reasonable suspicion to believe he has done something nefarious.&nbsp; If a state wants to put a restriction on the officer&#039;s authority to do so, such restriction in no way steps on anybody&#039;s rights, nor would it offend the Court&#039;s ruling: it&#039;s the state saying &quot;even though the feds say your authority may extend this far, we&#039;re not going to give you that much power.&quot;&nbsp; (Note that such a state rule would only apply to state and local agents; Federal authorities would not be subject to such restrictions.)As to your scenario, it skips right over reasonable suspicion and hits probable cause pretty cleanly: torn clothes and blood suggest an altercation, and matching the description puts him in a specific altercation.&nbsp; The gun is almost irrelevant at that point, and if the officer is using the gun as the primary reason, instead of the torn, bloody clothes, well, he needs to go back to school on criminal procedure.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dave70968, post: 1796850, member: 13624"] Correct. This scenario is not really a "Federal right" question. Officers do not have a [I]right[/I] to make a stop, they have [I]authority[/I] to make a stop, subject to the [I]rights[/I] of the subject. In [I]Terry[/I], the court held that an officer performing a brief frisk does not violate the suspect's [I]rights[/I] so long as there is some reasonable suspicion to believe he has done something nefarious. If a state wants to put a restriction on the officer's [I]authority[/I] to do so, such restriction in no way steps on anybody's [I]rights[/I], nor would it offend the Court's ruling: it's the state saying "even though the feds say your authority [I]may[/I] extend this far, we're not going to give you that much power." (Note that such a state rule would only apply to state and local agents; Federal authorities would not be subject to such restrictions.) As to your scenario, it skips right over reasonable suspicion and hits probable cause pretty cleanly: torn clothes and blood suggest an altercation, and matching the description puts him in a specific altercation. The gun is almost irrelevant at that point, and if the officer is using the gun as the primary reason, instead of the torn, bloody clothes, well, he needs to go back to school on criminal procedure. [/QUOTE]

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