United States v. Collins

          OPINION AND ORDER DENYING MOTION TO SUPPRESS (DOC. 20)

          AVERN COHN, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE.

         1.

         This is a felon in possession case. Defendant has filed a Motion to Suppress Physical Evidence and for An Evidentiary Hearing (Doc. 20), the government has responded (Doc. 24), the parties filed supplemental briefs (Doc. 34 and Doc. 36), and hearings were held on December 14, 2017 and February 23, 2018. For the reasons that follow, defendant's motion is DENIED.

         2.

         Two (2) Detroit police officers (Officer No. 1 and Officer No. 2) walked into a Detroit gas station around 10:00 p.m. one night in a high crime area. They encountered four (4) men talking to each other. Three of the men, including defendant, were smoking cigarettes, a civil ordinance offense.

         As established by the testimony at the evidentiary hearings on the motion, and as described in the government's brief, the facts follow:

. The two (2) officers entered the lobby of the gas station. When they entered, defendant and his companions immediately stopped laughing and joking with each other and became silent and serious;

. The two (2) officers saw defendant move off the ice cream freezer he was sitting on and blade the right side of his body away from them as he did so;

. Officer No. 2 saw an L-shaped bulge on defendant's right side that appeared to be a hand gun;

. Officer No. 1 began talking to defendant. Defendant had a panicked look on his face, locked eyes with his friend, and did not respond to the officer;

. Officer No. 1 became concerned about defendant's lack of response. As a result, Officer No. 1 went to grab defendant's hand to detain him;

. As Officer No. 1 attempted to detain defendant, defendant clenched his fist and stiffened his body;

. Defendant pushed off of Officer No. 1 and started toward the door of the gas ...