UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Antonio ROBLES-ALVAREZ, Defendant-Appellant

Antonio Robles-AIvarez (“Robles”) appeals the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress statements made by him after a traffic stop of a car in which he was a passenger. Following a written plea agreement in which Robles expressly reserved his right to appeal the denial of the motion to suppress, Robles entered a conditional plea of guilty to one count of illegal reentry after deportation in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326 (b)(1). On April 3,1995, Robles was sentenced to fifteen months in custody and a two-year term of supervised release. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 . We affirm.

I.

For more than two years prior to November of 1994, Officer Dennis O’Sullivan had been assigned to the “CRASH” (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department (“LAPD”), which gathers information on gang members and gang organizations in the Rampart area of Los Angeles. In early November of 1994, he received information from a confidential informant, who had given him truthful information in the past, and was known by him to be a member of the “18th Street Gang,” that another member of the gang, nicknamed “Skipper,” “had a gun with him…