PERRUSQUIA

In the trial court, defendant Oscar Humberto Perrusquia filed a motion to suppress under Penal Code section 1538.5. 1 He argued the police officer did not have reasonable suspicion to detain him and conduct a patdown search. After granting the motion, the trial court dismissed the case. The Orange County District Attorney (district attorney) appeals, arguing the police officer lawfully detained defendant. We agree with the trial court that the officer lacked specific, articulable facts justifying the detention and affirm the judgment and subsequent dismissal:

I

.FACTS

On January 13, 2006, Anaheim Police Officer Ryan Tisdale was on patrol near the comer of Harbor and La Palma. A 7-Eleven convenience store was located near that intersection, and Tisdale intended to stop there for a cup of coffee. Earlier that day at roll call, Tisdale and fellow officers had been briefed by detectives about a series of six armed robberies at 7-Eleven stores in Anaheim. The description provided was of a Black or Hispanic male in his *231 late 20’s. The detectives wanted the patrol officers to do patrol checks and keep their eyes on 7-Eleven stores because they had been hit so…

I join in the majority opinion because I agree with both its reasoning and its result. Our dissenting colleague places some reliance on People v. Souza (1994) 9 Cal.4th 224 [ 36 Cal.Rptr.2d 569 , 885 P.2d 982 ]. I write separately to distinguish Souza from the facts before us and to query how an individual should properly decline a “consensual encounter” with the police.

I agree with our dissenting colleague regarding the general criteria under which we evaluate the propriety of a detention, but I find his reliance on Souza to be misplaced. In Souza an officer was on patrol at approximately 3:00 a.m., in a “high-crime” residential area when he observed two people standing in almost complete darkness near a parked car. He described seeing one of the two individuals leaning toward the car as if talking to someone inside. When the officer directed his patrol car’s spotlight into the car’s interior, the two people in the front seat immediately bent down toward the floorboard, and the individual standing outside the car took off running. The Supreme Court concluded that from these circumstances, the area’s reputation for criminal activity, the presence of two people near a parked car…

In the trial court, defendant Oscar Humberto Perrusquia filed a motion to suppress under Penal Code section 1538.5. [1] He argued the police officer did not have reasonable suspicion to detain him and conduct a patdown search. After granting the motion, the trial court dismissed the case. The Orange County District Attorney (district attorney) appeals, arguing the police officer lawfully detained defendant. We agree with the trial court that the officer lacked specific, articulable facts justifying the detention and affirm the judgment and subsequent dismissal.

On January 13, 2006, Anaheim Police Officer Ryan Tisdale was on patrol near the corner of Harbor and La Palma. A 7-Eleven convenience store was located near that intersection, and Tisdale intended to stop there for a cup of coffee. Earlier that day at roll call, Tisdale and fellow officers had been briefed by detectives about a series of six armed robberies at 7-Eleven stores in Anaheim. The description provided was of a black or Hispanic male in his late twenties. The detectives wanted the patrol officers to do patrol checks and keep their eyes on 7-Eleven stores because they had been hit so often.

Further,…

This is the compact we make with our police; They agree to take on the darkest and dirtiest, most difficult job in our society, in return for which we agree to judge them not by their results, but by the reasonableness of their actions. We do this in recognition of the fact their decisions must often be made with very little reflection, on the basis of rapidly changing circumstances,' rife with danger to them and to us.'(See Graham v. Connor (1989) 490 U.S. 386, 396-397 [ 104 L.Ed.2d 443 , 109 S.Ct. 1865 ].)

So it is that we evaluate the propriety of their searches and seizures not by what they turn up, but by whether it was probable at the search’s inception that it would develop evidence of a crime. (People v. Hill (1974) 12 Cal.3d 731, 748, fn. 16 [ 117 Cal.Rptr. 393 , 528 P.2d 1 ], overruled on other grounds in People v. DeVaughn (1977) 18 Cal.3d 889, 896, fn. 5 [ 135 Cal.Rptr. 786 , 558 P.2d 872 ].) We judge their arrests not by a standard of certitude, but of “probable cause,” which we define as an “ ‘honest and strong suspicion.’ ” (People v. Harris (1975) 15 Cal.3d 384, 388, 389 [ 124 Cal.Rptr. 536 , 540 P.2d 632 ].) And we require not even a probable cause level of…