Murdock

Opinion by Judge BEEZER; dissent by Judge NOONAN.

We consider whether exigent circumstances justified the warrantless entry and search of a house along with the brief seizure of an occupant by police officers investigating a suspected burglary.

Clyde Murdock, Linda Murdock, and Jeffrey Murdock (collectively “Murdock”) appeal the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Ed Stout, the City of Fonta-na, California, and Fontana Police Officers Mark Jacobson, Dave Walby and Darren Robins (collectively “Fontana”) in Murdock’s 42 U.S.C. § 1988 action alleging a violation of his rights under the Fourth Amendment. The district court concluded that the police officers acted reasonably when they entered Murdock’s house without a warrant and briefly detained him while investigating a possible burglary. We have jurisdiction, 28 U.S.C. § 1291 , and we affirm.

I

The facts are undisputed. On March 23, 1992, Robert Keck called the Fontana Police Department to report what he believed was suspicious activity in his neighborhood. Keck informed the Fontana police dispatcher that a passerby had told him that he saw a young person run from a neighbor’s house across the street, enter an…

dissenting:

In United States v. Erickson, 991 F.2d 529 (9th Cir.1993), police officers were informed of a suspected burglary, arrived at the scene and spoke to two neighbors who told them they had seen two men dragging a large brown plastic bag, apparently full of heavy items, across the backyard of the residence adjacent to the scene of the suspected burglary. One of the officers found an open basement window at the scene of the suspected crime and pulled back a plastic sheet to investigate the basement. On doing so, the officer saw numerous marijuana plants and smelled marijuana. This court upheld the order of the district court suppressing the *1445 evidence that was obtained by the policeman’s look. In the hearing before the district court the government had maintained that the police had acted in exigent circumstances. When District Court Judge Robert Bryan found there were no such circumstances, the government abandoned this ground on appeal and sought to justify the search in terms of the community caretaking functions of the police — a justification that we treated as equally unavailing. In other words, even where two neighbors, interviewed by the police, had seen strong…