FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL STATE OF FLORIDA _____________________________ No. 1D17-2727 _____________________________ JERRY WEAKLEY, Appellant, v. STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee. _____________________________ On appeal from the Circuit Court for Leon County. Angela C. Dempsey, Judge. June 7, 2019 WINOKUR, J. A nighttime 911 call from a small, five-mobile-home area at the end of a dirt road reported a suspicious person on a motorcycle walking around a foreclosed home nearby. The caller believed the person might be committing a burglary, but, in the dark of the night, could not provide any additional details and then refused to disclose his or her identity. Two officers responded within minutes, driving down the empty road to the group of mobile homes. Before they got there, Jerry Weakley approached heading in the opposite direction on a motorcycle before aggressively accelerating and veering into the shoulder of the road in an attempt to flee past the officers. Based on the motorcyclist’s behavior and the nature of the report, the officers stopped Weakley, discovered the motorcycle to be stolen, and found various articles of contraband. Weakley moved to suppress the contraband, but the trial court found the officers had reasonable suspicion to stop him. Weakley entered a plea to four charges, reserving the right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress, which he now does. Because we find that Weakley has not met his burden of proving the trial court’s ruling incorrect, we affirm. 1 A stop is justified when an officer observes facts giving rise to a reasonable and well-founded suspicion that criminal activity has occurred or is about to occur. In turn, whether an officer’s well-founded suspicion is reasonable is determined by the totality of the circumstances that existed at the time of the investigatory stop and is based solely on facts known to the officer before the stop. C.E.L. v. State, 24 So. 3d 1181, 1186-89 (Fla. 2009) (citations omitted) (holding that flight from the police in a high-crime area satisfied reasonable suspicion). In Baptiste v. State, 995 So. 2d 285, 288, 293 (Fla. 2008), an anonymous caller reported a man’s alleged criminal activity and responding officers detained the man without observing “any illegal activity, unusual conduct, or suspicious behavior.” The supreme court found that the officers lacked reasonable suspicion. While the Court acknowledged that an anonymous tip alone generally does not provide reasonable suspicion for a stop, it made sure to note that anonymous tips could “provide reasonable suspicion under a totality-of-the-circumstances analysis” in certain cases, such as when an officer makes “subsequent observations of a suspect who matches the description given.” Id. at 296-97 (citing United States v. Gooden, 273 F.3d 1100, 1100 (5th Cir. 2001) (unpublished opinion), as holding that “even where the anonymous tip alone failed to establish reasonable suspicion, the 1 “The ruling of the trial court on a motion to suppress comes to us clothed with a presumption of correctness and we must interpret the evidence and reasonable inference and deductions in a manner most favorable to ...
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