PUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES oF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v. No. 09-4511
EDITH HERNANDEZ-MENDEZ,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Maryland, at Greenbelt.
Deborah K. Chasanow, District Judge.
(8:08-cr-00481-DKC-1)
Argued: September 24, 2010
Decided: November 29, 2010
Before WILKINSON, AGEE, and DAVIS, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Davis wrote the opin-
ion, in which Judge Wilkinson and Judge Agee joined.
COUNSEL
ARGUED: Joanna Beth Silver, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL
PUBLIC DEFENDER, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellant.
Adam Kenneth Ake, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES
ATTORNEY, Greenbelt, Maryland, for Appellee. ON
BRIEF: James Wyda, Federal Public Defender, Baltimore,
2 UNITED STATES v. HERNANDEZ-MENDEZ
Maryland, Lauren E. Case, Staff Attorney, Rebecca Haciski,
OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Green-
belt, Maryland, for Appellant. Rod J. Rosenstein, United
States Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, Stuart A. Berman,
Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED
STATES ATTORNEY, Greenbelt, Maryland, for Appellee.
OPINION
DAVIS, Circuit Judge:
Edith Hernandez-Mendez was indicted for possession of a
firearm by an alien in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5)(A)
and possession of a firearm in a school zone in violation of
18 U.S.C. § 922(q). Following the district court’s denial of
her motions to suppress, Hernandez-Mendez submitted to a
bench trial on stipulated facts in order to preserve for appel-
late review the constitutional issues raised in her suppression
motions. After finding Hernandez-Mendez guilty on both
counts, the district court imposed a sentence of time served.
On appeal, Hernandez-Mendez contends that the district court
erred in (1) finding that police officers had reasonable suspi-
cion to detain her and (2) failing to suppress the fruits of the
police search of her purse given the officer’s intent to search
for identification documents. We reject Hernandez-Mendez’s
contentions and affirm.
I
This court reviews the legal conclusions of a district court’s
ruling on a motion to suppress de novo and the underlying
findings of fact for clear error. United States v. Banks, 482
F.3d 733, 738 (4th Cir. 2007); United States v. Sprinkle, 106
F.3d 613, 616-17 (4th Cir. 1998). Where the district court
denied defendant’s motion to suppress, we construe the evi-
dence in the light most favorable to the Government, the pre-
UNITED STATES v. HERNANDEZ-MENDEZ 3
vailing party below. United States v. Branch, 537 F.3d 328,
337 (4th Cir. 2008).
On September 18, 2008, members of the Montgomery
County Police Department ("MCPD") gang unit, including
Officer Richard Webster and Officer Casey Doherty, set up
surveillance of the area around Montgomery Blair High
School ("BHS") on University Boulevard in Silver Spring,
Maryland. The gang unit chose to deploy near the school in
response to a stabbing incident that had taken place the previ-
ous day in a Giant Food parking lot located approximately
two miles from the high school. Officer Webster knew that
the stabbing victim was a member of the Vatos Locos, a
Latino gang. Additionally, witnesses told police that members
of other Latino gangs, including the Little Vatos Locos
("LVL") and the Latin Locos, had been present at the alterca-
tion. One witness to the incident came to the police station
and reported that she had seen a leader of the Latin Locos
waving a gun around. Because BHS had a history of gang-
related incidents and because some LVL and Latin Locos
members were students at BHS, the MCPD gang unit decided
to set up surveillance in the school’s vicinity the following
day in the hope of forestalling any attempt at retaliation for
the stabbing.
While stationed outside the school, the officers observed
four Hispanic youths standing under a tree across the street
from the school. Another group of three Hispanic males and
one Hispanic female, later identified as Hernandez-Mendez,
soon joined the group under the tree, arriving from the direc-
tion of the Woodmoor neighborhood north of the high school.
Police observed that the males stood in a group around a
young male with a red shirt and pony tail, who appeared to
be conducting a discussion or meeting. Occasionally, one of
the males would turn to look toward the front of the school.
Though Hernandez-Mendez stood somewhat apart from the
rest of the group, one of the males soon went over and spoke
4 UNITED STATES v. HERNANDEZ-MENDEZ
to her, after which Hernandez-Mendez began walking back
toward the Woodmoor neighborhood from where she had
recently come. Officer Casey Doherty was directed to locate
her and keep her in view. Doherty located Hernandez-Mendez
sitting under a tree, out of sight of the males.
Just before the school day ended, Officer Webster called
for uniformed officers in marked cars to make contact with
the group of males. When the marked car arrived, the males
split up, three walking toward BHS and three walking north
toward Woodmoor. The male in the red shirt took off "at a
dead sprint." J.A. 89. Consequently, Officer Webster decided
to stop everyone in the group. The males were detained,
frisked for weapons, and told to sit on the curb.
Officer Webster requested that Officer Doherty detain
Hernandez-Mendez; Doherty approached her, showed his
badge, and requested that she sit on the curb. She complied.
Officer Doherty then escorted Hernandez-Mendez back to
where the other officers had detained the males, advising
Officer Webster that he had checked neither Hernandez-
Mendez’s person nor her purse.
Officer Webster asked Hernandez-Mendez for her name,
which she provided. In response to Officer Webster’s asking
whether she knew the male in the red shirt who had run off,
Hernandez-Mendez replied that she did not know "anybody."
J.A. 95. Officer Webster then asked Hernandez-Mendez for
identification. In addition to her purse, Hernandez-Mendez
was holding a wallet in her hand, from which she removed a
credit card in the name of Hernandez. Officer Webster
requested further identification and asked to look in the wal-
let. Hernandez-Mendez handed Officer Webster the wallet, in
which he found several other credit cards in the same name
and a checkbook, but no photo identification.
Officer Webster then asked Hernandez-Mendez if she had
photo identification in her purse. As he asked the question, he
UNITED STATES v. HERNANDEZ-MENDEZ 5
reached out to take possession of the purse; Hernandez-
Mendez simultaneously said "no" and pulled away. Immedi-
ately upon touching the exterior of the purse, Officer Webster
felt a solid, heavy object that he recognized to be the barrel
of a semiautomatic pistol. At this point, Officer Webster
retrieved and opened the purse and found a Smith & Wesson
9mm semiautomatic pistol with unchambered ammunition.
He then handcuffed and arrested Hernandez-Mendez and per-
formed a full search of the purse, recovering her Montgomery
County public school photo ID and her passport.
In a careful and thorough memorandum opinion issued
after the evidentiary hearing (followed by further briefing),
the district court found that the police officers had reasonable
suspicion to stop and frisk Hernandez-Mendez and denied her
motion to suppress the weapon seized from her purse. Follow-
ing a bench trial, the district court found Hernandez-Mendez
guilty of possession of a firearm by an alien in violation of 18
U.S.C. § 922(g)(5)(A) and guilty of possession of a firearm in
a school zone in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(q). This timely
appeal followed.
II
For more than forty years, the law has sanctioned a brief,
investigatory stop of a person "where a police officer observes
unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude in
light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot."
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 30 (1968). An "inchoate and unpar-
ticularized suspicion or ‘hunch’" is not a permissible basis for
a Terry stop. Id. at 27; Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 124
(2000). Though the facts need not give rise to probable cause,
the officer must be able to articulate an objectively reasonable
suspicion of criminal activity. See, e.g., United States v.
Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 274 (2002); United States v. McCoy,
513 F.3d 405, 411 (4th Cir. 2008); United States v. Sprinkle,
106 F.3d 613, 617 (4th Cir. 1997).
6 UNITED STATES v. HERNANDEZ-MENDEZ
Courts assess reasonable suspicion by examining the total-
ity of the circumstances in order to determine whether officers
had a "particularized and objective basis for suspecting the
person stopped of criminal activity." United States v. Cortez,
449 U.S. 411, 417-18 (1981); see also Arvizu, 534 U.S. at
273; Sprinkle, 106 F.3d at 618. The reasonable suspicion
inquiry is fact-intensive, but individual facts and observations
cannot be evaluated in isolation from each other. See Arvizu,
534 U.S. at 274-75 (finding that, even if the individual facts
of a case may be susceptible to innocent explanation, they
may be considered collectively to warrant a Terry stop).
Moreover, the Supreme Court has recognized that this inquiry
"allows officers to draw on their own experience and special-
ized training to make inferences from and deductions about
the cumulative information available to them that ‘might well
elude an untrained person.’" Id. at 273 (quoting Cortez, 449
U.S. at 418). In light of this emphasis on officer experience,
this court has stressed the importance of giving "‘due weight’
to the factual inferences drawn by police officers as they
investigate crime." McCoy, 513 F.3d at 411 (internal citations
omitted); see also United States v. Perkins, 363 F.3d 317, 323
(4th Cir. 2004).
Here, the parties agree that Hernandez-Mendez was seized
when Officer Doherty asked her to sit on the curb at the direc-
tion of Officer Webster. Officer Webster relied on his knowl-
edge of Hispanic gangs in the area, his experience responding
to gang-related incidents at BHS, and his observations during
the surveillance to find reasonable suspicion to stop the group
of eight young Hispanic people gathered across from the
school that afternoon.
Hernandez-Mendez contends that the objective facts known
to the officers, which she does not dispute, are too tenuous to
support a finding of reasonable suspicion. She attempts to dis-
tinguish this case from others where courts have upheld the
reasonableness of a Terry detention, relying on two primary
arguments. First, she contends that here, unlike many of those
UNITED STATES v. HERNANDEZ-MENDEZ 7
cases in which courts have upheld the reasonableness of a
Terry stop, her detention did not take place in a high-crime
area or among known criminals. Her argument mistakenly
relies on these factors, however, and fails to account for the
broader context, which includes officer knowledge and expe-
rience. Second, Hernandez-Mendez contends that reasonable
suspicion was not sufficiently individualized with respect to
her. This argument also fails in light of her actions connecting
her to the group of males.
A
First, Hernandez-Mendez argues that there was not reason-
able suspicion to support her detention because she neither
associated with known criminals nor lingered in a high-crime
area. Though we have emphasized that neither of these factors
is dispositive, in some cases, we have examined both as part
of the totality of the circumstances. See, e.g., Sprinkle, 106
F.3d at 617 (finding that officer knowledge of prior criminal
activity may be coupled with other factors to create reason-
able suspicion); United States v. Lender, 985 F.2d 151, 154
(4th Cir. 1993) (noting that an area’s propensity toward crimi-
nal activity may be considered as one factor); United States
v. Moore, 817 F.2d 1105, 1107 (4th Cir. 1987) (same).
Hernandez-Mendez presses us to compare the facts in her
case with those in Sprinkle, where the court found reasonable
suspicion lacking when the defendant was stopped after hud-
dling in a car with a known drug offender in a high drug-
crime area. 106 F.3d at 617-19. Hernandez-Mendez argues
that her actions were even less suspicious, as she was merely
observed in the company of suspected gang members. More-
over, she contends that the area around BHS had a crime rate
below the national average in nearly every category.1 She
urges us to find significance in the weakness of these factors
1
Whether the vicinity of BHS constitutes a "high-crime area" is con-
tested by the parties.
8 UNITED STATES v. HERNANDEZ-MENDEZ
in her case. However, Hernandez-Mendez’s emphasis on
these factors is misplaced.2 Instead, reasonable suspicion in
this case is justified by the officer’s articulation of objective
facts which provided information probative of a likelihood of
criminal activity. Moreover, he obtained much of the informa-
tion through his own observations, which, when coupled with
his accumulated experience and relevant background knowl-
edge, formed the basis for a reasonable suspicion that
Hernandez-Mendez was engaged in (or was about to become
engaged in) criminal activity.
In McCoy, we credited an officer’s finding of reasonable
suspicion based on his experience and familiarity with habits
and patterns of local drug traffickers. 513 F.3d at 414-15. In
that case, the officer, who had years of experience on the vice
narcotics unit, knew from experience that a large number of
drug transactions in the county took place in grocery store
parking lots and followed a fairly similar pattern. Id. at 407.
Thus, he found it suspicious when he observed the defendant
in a Safeway parking lot, sitting in his car, then driving to a
Food Lion parking lot, where he got into a truck cab. Id. at
408. Similarly, in Cortez, the Supreme Court found it was rea-
sonable for officers to infer that criminal activity might be
afoot based on observations that demonstrated a "particular
pattern of operations." 449 U.S. at 419 ("By piecing together
2
Indeed, the Government’s reliance on the presence of these factors is
also largely misplaced. To be sure, the "high-crime-area" factor has
become increasingly prominent in this court’s stop-and-frisk jurispru-
dence. See, e.g., United States v. Black, 525 F.3d 359, 367 (4th Cir. 2008)
(Gregory, J., dissenting) ("the majority is left with a de facto rule that
allows police to search and seize anyone who finds himself in a ‘high-
crime area’"); Mayo, 361 F.3d at 805-06 (noting that whether the stop
occurred in a high-crime area is a factor traditionally used in assessing the
totality of the circumstances). Just as the criminal propensity of residents
does not, in and of itself, establish reasonable suspicion, this propensity
is not, nor should it be, a prerequisite for finding reasonable suspicion.
Here, the district court did not rely on these factors in denying the motion
to suppress, and we find the totality of the circumstances do not require
us to address them.
UNITED STATES v. HERNANDEZ-MENDEZ 9
the information at their disposal, the officers tentatively con-
cluded that there was a reasonable likelihood" that a vehicle
would attempt to pick up a group of unlawful aliens on a par-
ticular night.).
Here, Officer Webster knew that several Hispanic gangs
were represented at BHS, had responded to a half dozen gang-
related incidents at the school personally, and was aware that
a stabbing incident involving some of the gangs active at BHS
had taken place the night before. His concern that the previ-
ous night’s stabbing might result in retaliation near the school
led him to set up a surveillance team the following afternoon.
The gathering of seven Hispanic males and one Hispanic
female across the street from the high school, shortly before
the end of the school day, the day following a gang-related
stabbing, alerted him to the possibility that the group might be
planning some sort of retaliatory action.3 Officer Webster
noted that, while some in the group looked to be school-age,
several looked to be older. The males, who were gathered
around a male wearing a red shirt, appeared to be having a
meeting or discussion, while occasionally looking toward the
school’s entrance.
Hernandez-Mendez stood apart from the group of males
and did not appear to participate in their discussion. After sev-
eral minutes, however, Officer Webster observed that a male
in a blue shirt went over and spoke to her, after which she
began to walk back in the direction from which she had come.
Officer Webster directed Officer Doherty to follow
Hernandez-Mendez, who located her at rest part way up the
3
At oral argument, counsel for Hernandez-Mendez seemed to suggest
that the officers’ identification of the group outside the high school as per-
sons of Hispanic origin constituted impermissible racial or ethnic profil-
ing. The district court found no such indication, and we can discern no
support in the record for such a contention. Instead, our decision here rests
firmly on the reasonable inferences drawn by trained officers based on
their actual knowledge, experience, and observations.
10 UNITED STATES v. HERNANDEZ-MENDEZ
block. Officer Webster ordered Hernandez-Mendez to be fol-
lowed in part because of her connection with the males. In
addition to his observations of Hernandez-Mendez, he was
motivated by his knowledge that female gang members were
often responsible for holding weapons or other contraband in
order to minimize the potential for discovery by police, who
were perceived to be more likely to frisk male gang members.
The district court credited this expertise, noting that
Hernandez-Mendez’s case, where the males were frisked far
sooner than she was, supported the perception.
Close to the end of the school day, Officer Webster called
in marked police cars and uniformed officers to approach the
group. On seeing the marked cars, the group of males split up,
moving in several directions, with the male in the red shirt
running off quickly and escaping detention. It was at this
point that Officer Webster decided to stop everyone in the
group and directed Officer Doherty to detain Hernandez-
Mendez.4 Officer Webster’s observations that afternoon, in
addition to his knowledge of and experience in responding to
gang incidents in the immediate area, provided reasonable
suspicion that the group was involved in (or was about to
become involved in) criminal activity, and he acted reason-
ably in drawing the inference that the group was planning to
retaliate against rival gang members leaving BHS. In light of
these reasonable inferences, Hernandez-Mendez’s arguments
regarding the absence of known criminals and lack of crimi-
nal propensity of the area are not persuasive.
B
Hernandez-Mendez also argues that, even if we credit Offi-
cer Webster’s experience and knowledge, he lacked individu-
4
The knowledge of the officer who ordered the stop may be imputed to
the officer who conducted the stop. See, e.g., United States v. Hensley, 469
U.S. 221, 232-33 (1985); United States v. Wells, 98 F.3d 808, 810 (4th
Cir. 1996).
UNITED STATES v. HERNANDEZ-MENDEZ 11
alized suspicion with respect to her. In particular, she seems
to contend that the Government relies solely on the actions
and behavior of the males in the group to justify stopping her.
Manifestly, this is not so.
Hernandez-Mendez urges us to find the facts here similar
to those in United States v. Patterson, 340 F.3d 368 (6th Cir.
2003). In that case, police stopped a group of males gathered
near a street corner several hours after receiving an anony-
mous tip about drug activity on that corner. Id. at 370. Police
had seen one of the group (not Patterson) throw something in
the bushes as police approached. Id. Police attempted to jus-
tify the stop of Patterson in part on that act, but the court
rejected that evidence as inapplicable to Patterson. Id. at 372
("In order to search Patterson, the officers only could factor
in Patterson’s actions and the circumstances surrounding him
alone in order to constitute reasonable suspicion.").
Hernandez-Mendez argues that here the police attempt to jus-
tify stopping her by relying on the acts of the males in the
group and the evasive behavior of the male in the red shirt,
in particular. Reliance on the acts of others, Hernandez-
Mendez argues, cannot contribute to a finding of individual-
ized suspicion. This argument misses the mark.
Here, the course of the law enforcement investigation, cou-
pled with the telling background knowledge of the police who
were present at the scene, yielded factual information rising
to the level of reasonable suspicion to detain all of the mem-
bers of the group: the seven males as well as Hernandez-
Mendez. In light of this collective stop, the relevant question
is whether the officers reasonably inferred that Hernandez-
Mendez was potentially a knowing and willing participant in
whatever incipient criminal activity the group of males gath-
ered across from the school might have been contemplating.
If such an inference was reasonable, then the police were jus-
tified in detaining her when they stopped the others. As the
district court found, the facts (which Hernandez-Mendez does
not dispute) suggest that she was such a likely participant.
12 UNITED STATES v. HERNANDEZ-MENDEZ
Along with three Hispanic males, Hernandez-Mendez
joined the group of four Hispanic males gathered across the
street from the school near the end of the school day. Though
she stood slightly apart from the rest of the group, she spoke
briefly with one of the males with whom she had arrived.
Immediately following that conversation, Hernandez-Mendez
walked back in the direction from which she had just come.
Notably, she did not leave the area; rather, she stopped to sit
under a tree further up the street.
It is true, as she emphasizes, Hernandez-Mendez had
walked away from the group and was out of their sight at the
time of the stop. However, she had arrived in the area with
some of the males in the group, she spoke to one of them, and,
when she walked away, she remained in the vicinity. Based
on his knowledge and experience, Officer Webster had reason
to be suspicious of the group of Hispanic youths gathered
across from the high school near the end of the school day on
the day after a Hispanic gang-related stabbing. In light of her
actions, he reasonably concluded that Hernandez-Mendez was
more than casually connected to the group of males that he
reasonably suspected was preparing for retaliation, and the
decision to stop her was justified based on that reasonable
suspicion.
III
Hernandez-Mendez further contends that, even if there was
reasonable suspicion for her detention, we should nonetheless
conclude that the frisk of her purse was not supported by
objective facts because the officer’s purpose exceeded the
bounds of a permissible Terry frisk. This argument fails, how-
ever, because, as the district court correctly concluded, courts
assess the reasonableness of a frisk using an objective stan-
dard and not an officer’s subjective intent. Here, the objective
circumstances justified a frisk of Hernandez-Mendez for
weapons.
UNITED STATES v. HERNANDEZ-MENDEZ 13
A frisk for weapons is permissible when an officer reason-
ably believes that the person being stopped "may be armed
and presently dangerous." Terry, 392 U.S. at 24; Mayo, 361
F.3d at 805. If a Terry frisk exceeds the bounds of a protective
pat down for weapons, it is no longer permissible, and its
fruits should be suppressed. Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S.
366, 373 (1993); Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 146
(1972) ("The purpose of this limited search is not to discover
evidence of crime, but to allow the officer to pursue his inves-
tigation without fear of violence.").
Officer Webster asked to look inside Hernandez-Mendez’s
purse and then reached for it with the intent of locating photo-
graphic identification. Terry does not permit this kind of
search for evidence as part of a protective pat down. See
Adams, 407 U.S. at 146. However, the subjective intent of the
officer is not the standard by which courts have judged the
reasonableness of a frisk.
Rather, courts have relied on a standard of objective rea-
sonableness for assessing whether a frisk is justified. This
objective standard is applied "without regard to the underly-
ing intent or motivation of the officers involved." Scott v.
United States, 436 U.S. 128, 138 (1978) (finding officer’s
subjective intent did not invalidate objectively reasonable
action); see also Branch, 537 F.3d at 337 ("if sufficient objec-
tive evidence exists to demonstrate reasonable suspicion, a
Terry stop is justified regardless of a police officer’s subjec-
tive intent"); United States v. Swann, 149 F.3d 271, 275 (4th
Cir. 1998) ("Subjectively bad intentions on the part of the
individual officer will not make a constitutional violation out
of an otherwise reasonable seizure.") (internal citations omit-
ted); 4 WAYNE R. LAFAVE, SEARCH AND SEIZURE § 9.6(a) (4th
ed. 2004) (noting that, if the facts were sufficient to warrant
a protective pat down, then an officer’s thoughts or motiva-
tions do not invalidate the frisk).
In the instant case, the objective facts justifying Hernandez-
Mendez’s detention and those that emerged after she had been
14 UNITED STATES v. HERNANDEZ-MENDEZ
detained provide reasonable suspicion justifying a frisk. The
officers were aware of the potential for some sort of gang
retaliation near BHS on the afternoon of September 18, 2008.
The previous day, a known Hispanic gang member was
stabbed with a knife in an incident that reportedly involved
Hispanic gangs that were active at BHS. One witness reported
seeing a gang leader waving a gun around during the stabbing
incident. In light of these reports, Officer Webster had reason
to suspect the presence of weapons among the group of
young, Hispanic individuals that he reasonably believed were
organizing a retaliatory attack across the street from the
school that afternoon.
Hernandez-Mendez’s conversation with one of the males in
the group and the fact that she stood nearby during their dis-
cussion led Officer Webster to believe that she was part of
their group, and he ordered her detained with the others. All
seven males were frisked immediately, though Officer
Doherty did not immediately frisk Hernandez-Mendez when
he stopped her.
Officer Doherty escorted Hernandez-Mendez back to the
area where other officers had detained the males and informed
Officer Webster that neither Hernandez-Mendez nor her purse
had been checked. Hernandez-Mendez’s conduct after the ini-
tial stop served to heighten rather than mitigate Officer Web-
ster’s suspicions.
When Officer Webster asked Hernandez-Mendez if she
knew the male in the red shirt who ran off, she responded that
she did not know "anybody," despite the fact that Officer
Webster had observed her in the company of three of the
males as they approached the location of the incident and later
speaking separately to one of the males in the group.
Hernandez-Mendez also told Officer Webster that she had just
come from the doctor, pointing to the band-aid on her arm,
when, in fact, Officer Webster had observed her standing near
the group of males prior to her detention.
UNITED STATES v. HERNANDEZ-MENDEZ 15
Officer Webster sought identification from Hernandez-
Mendez. She had her wallet in her lap, outside her purse, and
she first removed a credit card with her name on it. When
pressed for a photo identification, Hernandez-Mendez handed
over her wallet, in which Officer Webster found several other
credit cards, but no photo identification. Although the facts
surrounding the stop itself may well have been sufficient on
their own to justify a frisk of Hernandez-Mendez, these facts
demonstrating her subsequent evasiveness contribute to the
objective reasonableness of a frisk for weapons. See, e.g.,
Mayo, 361 F.3d at 807-08.
It should be noted that the distinction between a pat down
of Hernandez-Mendez’s clothing and a pat down of her purse
is not meaningful in this particular context. At the time she
was detained, Hernandez-Mendez was wearing a tank top
shirt and shorts and was carrying a purse. Given her clothing,
there were few places that she could conceal a weapon other
than in her purse, making it objectively reasonable to frisk her
purse in addition to her person. See, e.g., United States v. Wil-
liams, 962 F.2d 1218, 1223-24 (6th Cir. 1992) (finding frisk
of purse "a reasonable self-protective measure");4 WAYNE R.
LAFAVE, SEARCH AND SEIZURE § 9.6(e) (4th ed. 2004) (noting
that many courts have upheld the reasonableness of police
protective searches of items carried by suspect at the time of
a Terry stop).
During a permissible frisk, if a police officer "feels an
object whose contour or mass makes its identity immediately
apparent" as contraband, it may be lawfully seized. Minnesota
v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. at 375-76 ("plain feel" doctrine); see
also Swann, 149 F.3d at 276 (finding seizure of several credit
cards hidden in suspect’s sock justified when reasonable offi-
cer could have believed item was a weapon, e.g., a box cut-
ter).
After failing to find photo identification in Hernandez-
Mendez’s wallet, Officer Webster asked if she had photo
16 UNITED STATES v. HERNANDEZ-MENDEZ
identification in the purse she was still carrying, while reach-
ing out to grab it. Hernandez-Mendez said "no" and pulled
away at the same time that Officer Webster felt what he rec-
ognized as the barrel of a pistol. Officer Webster immediately
felt the weapon when he touched the purse, meaning that the
impermissible search for evidence (photo identification)
occurred at the same time as what both we and the district
court find was a proper frisk of her purse. As the district court
correctly stated:
Fortuitously, Officer Webster’s effort to "search" the
purse for identification began with the equivalent of
a pat down of the purse when he reached for it. He
immediately felt an object that he recognized to be
a firearm, which then justified looking inside and
seizing the weapon. J.A. 215.
In light of the facts supporting reasonable suspicion to detain
Hernandez-Mendez and her evasive answers after she had
been stopped, a reasonable officer generally, and Officer
Webster in particular, would have had reasonable suspicion
that she possessed a weapon, thus justifying a frisk of her
purse. Because the objective circumstances would have justi-
fied a frisk, Officer Webster’s impermissible subjective intent
does not require suppression of the seized items.
IV
The district court did not err when it concluded that Officer
Webster’s stop and frisk of Hernandez-Mendez was objec-
tively reasonable and in denying the motion to suppress the
fruits of the search. Accordingly, the judgment is
AFFIRMED.