In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
No. 10-2904
U NITED S TATES OF A MERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
R ONNIE L. R ICHMOND,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of Illinois.
No. 09-CR-10135—Michael M. Mihm, Judge.
A RGUED M ARCH 28, 2011—D ECIDED M AY 25, 2011
Before K ANNE, S YKES, and H AMILTON, Circuit Judges.
K ANNE, Circuit Judge. When Peoria Police Officer
Richard Linthicum frisked Ronnie Richmond in the
early hours of October 9, 2009, he found Richmond was
carrying a revolver. Having been previously convicted in
Illinois of a crime punishable by imprisonment for more
than a year, Richmond was subsequently charged with
violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) for carrying the firearm.
Richmond conditionally pled guilty to the charge, re-
2 No. 10-2904
serving his right to appeal the denial of his motion to
suppress evidence from the allegedly unlawful search.
Because the district court did not err in concluding that
the search was constitutional, we affirm.
I. B ACKGROUND
Officer Linthicum, a nine-year veteran of the Peoria
Police Department, was patrolling downtown Peoria
around 3:30 a.m. on October 9, 2009. He observed five
men walking near the federal courthouse at Monroe and
Main Streets and stopped his squad car to watch them.
One of the men, later identified as Richmond, stopped
on the sidewalk and faced away from the squad car.
While his friends continued on, Richmond remained
there for approximately fifteen seconds with his hands
and arms in front of him, thus blocked from the officer’s
sight. When Richmond turned and resumed walking,
Officer Linthicum noticed a large bulge in Richmond’s
shirt that resembled a handgun handle hanging over his
waistband.
Officer Linthicum turned a corner so that Richmond
was walking toward the squad car. He rolled down the
passenger window and called out to Richmond to come
over and speak with him. Richmond walked toward the
squad car, passing behind a row of newspaper boxes
that obscured Officer Linthicum’s line of sight. When
Richmond reached the squad car, Officer Linthicum
noticed that the waistline bulge was gone. After Rich-
mond denied having any identification on him, Officer
Linthicum asked Richmond his name. Perhaps because
No. 10-2904 3
of his outstanding warrant and parolee status, Richmond
lied. A database search through the squad car’s mobile
computer reported “no record on file,” which Officer
Linthicum knew to be particularly unusual and
potentially indicative of a false name.
Officer Linthicum got out of the squad car and ap-
proached Richmond, asking him to place his hands
behind his back. During a cursory pat-down, Officer
Linthicum felt a handgun in Richmond’s left rear pants
pocket. He handcuffed Richmond, removed the snub-
nose .38-caliber revolver and a black ski mask, and
secured Richmond in the backseat of the squad car.
Richmond then gave Officer Linthicum his correct name
and date of birth. The subsequent database search
revealed Richmond’s outstanding warrant.
Richmond moved in limine to suppress the introduction
of the revolver as the fruit of an unlawful search. At the
suppression hearing, the district court noted that the
police report had omitted some significant and material
details, but it found Officer Linthicum to be a credible
witness. The court described Richmond’s conduct as “very
suspicious under the circumstances” and found that
Officer Linthicum had the requisite reasonable suspicion
to make the frisk “reasonable under the circumstances
and, therefore, lawful.” The district court denied Rich-
mond’s motion to suppress, and he conditionally pled
guilty to violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). He reserved the
right to appeal the district court’s ruling on his motion.
4 No. 10-2904
II. A NALYSIS
On appeal, Richmond contests neither the facts found
by the district court nor the lawfulness of Officer
Linthicum’s initial investigatory stop. Richmond chal-
lenges only the district court’s conclusion that the facts
known to Officer Linthicum could support the reason-
able suspicion necessary to justify a pat-down frisk. In a
case like this, “when ‘what happened?’ is not at issue, the
ultimate resolution of whether . . . reasonable suspicion
existed is a question of law which we review de novo.”
United States v. Carlisle, 614 F.3d 750, 754 (7th Cir. 2010).
An officer may constitutionally stop and frisk an in-
dividual if two conditions are met. Arizona v. Johnson, 555
U.S. 323, ___, 129 S. Ct. 781, 784 (2009). “First, the inves-
tigatory stop must be lawful.” Id. Richmond has not
challenged the lawfulness of the initial stop in his case.
Second, and germane to this appeal, “to proceed from a
stop to a frisk, the police officer must reasonably suspect
that the person stopped is armed and dangerous.” Id. See
also United States v. McKoy, 428 F.3d 38, 39 (1st Cir. 2005)
(“It is insufficient that the stop itself is valid; there must
be a separate analysis of whether the standard for
pat-frisks has been met.”). Reasonable suspicion requires
less information than probable cause, but an officer still
must rely on specific, articulable facts instead of a mere
hunch. United States v. Booker, 579 F.3d 835, 838 (7th Cir.
2009). “Whether an officer has a reasonable suspicion . . . is
a fact-specific inquiry that looks at the totality of the
circumstances in light of common sense and practicality.”
United States v. Tinnie, 629 F.3d 749, 751 (7th Cir. 2011)
(quotation marks omitted).
No. 10-2904 5
During the evidentiary hearing on Richmond’s motion
to suppress, Judge Mihm stated, “I do believe that the
officer told the truth under oath.” Richmond wisely
doesn’t challenge this credibility finding, see United States
v. Fiasche, 520 F.3d 694, 697 (7th Cir. 2008) (special defer-
ence is given to district courts’ credibility determinations
in the motion to suppress context), and he accepts the
court’s findings of fact. Richmond argues, however, that
these facts show that Officer Linthicum had only a
hunch that he was carrying a firearm. We have little
trouble finding that these uncontested facts support the
conclusion that Officer Linthicum had “some articulable
suspicion that the subject [was] concealing a weapon or
pose[d] a danger to [him] or others,” United States v.
Oglesby, 597 F.3d 891, 894 (7th Cir. 2010) (quoting United
States v. Pedroza, 269 F.3d 821, 827 (7th Cir. 2001)).
Officer Linthicum observed a conspicuous bulge
above Richmond’s waistband that was consistent with
a revolver handle; both the shape and location of
the bulge contributed to Officer Linthicum’s concern
that Richmond was armed. The disappearance of that
bulge when the newspaper boxes obstructed Officer
Linthicum’s line of sight further suggested that he or a
bystander could be endangered by a weapon that had
been better hidden or even made ready. The “no record
on file” report generated by the pseudonym indicated
that Richmond might have been trying to hide informa-
tion. See United States v. Sholola, 124 F.3d 803, 812-14
(7th Cir. 1997) (a “no record on file” report, while not
conclusively incriminating, could contribute to an offi-
6 No. 10-2904
cer’s reasonable suspicions). In such a circumstance,
an officer might naturally be apprehensive of the poten-
tial for dangerous reaction to confrontation—especially
if he already suspects the individual might be armed.
That any of these circumstances may have been inde-
pendently susceptible to innocent explanation does not
negate their collective contribution to Officer Linthicum’s
reasonable suspicion under the totality of the circum-
stances. See Fiasche, 520 F.3d at 697. Richmond also sug-
gests that, because he was beckoned to the squad car’s
window, the officer could not have reasonably suspected
him to be dangerous. We reject that argument. An officer
may reasonably suspect that an individual would be
dangerous to him or the public, especially if confronted
by a more aggressive investigative stop, without ex-
pecting that the individual would react to the officer’s
initial low-key questioning by publicly murdering or
maiming him in his squad car.
Richmond does not challenge the legality of Officer
Linthicum’s investigatory stop itself, but rather alleges
that the pat-down was an unreasonable search. We con-
clude that, under the totality of the circumstances,
Officer Linthicum had the requisite reasonable suspi-
cion to conduct his minimally invasive pat-down of Rich-
mond’s clothing around his waist and hips. See Oglesby,
597 F.3d at 895. Accordingly, the district court did not
err by denying Richmond’s motion to suppress.
No. 10-2904 7
III. C ONCLUSION
Because the district court did not err in its determina-
tion that Officer Linthicum’s pat-down was constitu-
tional, we A FFIRM its denial of Richmond’s motion to
suppress.
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