In re Victor C. CA1/5

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

On December 25, 2013, around 3:00 a.m., Fort Bragg Police Officer Jeremy Mason was patrolling, in uniform and a marked police car, in an area that had recently reported multiple mail thefts. Specifically, Mason testified that on the previous day approximately 47 thefts had been reported of “gifts, money, gift cards all that kind of stuff sent during the holiday season.” It was raining intermittently and several street lights were out, “so it was very dark.” Mason noticed someone wearing dark clothes walking eastbound on the sidewalk of East Pine Street: “[W]hen I first saw the person, I was quite a distance away and the only thing I noted was that it was early morning hours and the person was in dark clothing on Christmas, it seemed suspicious to me.” Mason maneuvered his car to get closer and drove very slowly. Mason didn’t see anyone, “which seemed odd.” Once past the area where he had seen the person, Mason looked in his rearview mirror and noticed “something underneath a SUV . . . in the area I had seen the person in the first place.” Mason turned his car around and returned to the location “to try to figure out what that object was. [¶] .…