Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
Appeal from a judgment of the Superior Court of Orange County No. DL025089. Donna L. Crandall, Judge.
Stephen M. Hinkle, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Gary W. Schons, Assistant Attorney General, and Jeffrey J. Koch, Deputy Attorney General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
OPINION
RYLAARSDAM, P. J.
H. R. (minor) appeals from a judgment declaring him a ward of the juvenile court based on his admission that he committed an act of vandalism. The minor admitted the petition’s vandalism allegation after the court denied his motion to suppress evidence. (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 700.1.) He contends the court erred in denying the motion because the police detained him without reasonable cause. Since his argument lacks merit, we affirm the judgment.
FACTS
Police officers Luis Garcia and Sean Whitely, along with probation officer Arturo Lopez, were on duty and in uniform, sitting in a marked police vehicle stopped at a red light. The officers saw the minor and another juvenile next to a newspaper stand at a corner of the intersection.
Whitley described the location as a “heavily graffitied” area where the police make “a lot of contacts.” He testified the minor appeared to be “flipping through . . . a magazine” resting on top of the newspaper stand and thought the two juveniles “might have been engaged in some sort of activity, possibly tagging.”
Garcia testified the minor “had his right hand over the newspaper stand” and “it appeared he was holding a writing utensil.” In addition, the minor’s “left hand was on some papers,” and “it appeared that he was concealing whatever he was doing at the time.” Garcia described the second juvenile as “acting as a lookout.”
According to Whitley, when the two juveniles saw the police officers “they . . . had a panicked look on their face[s]” and began to leave the area. Garcia claimed they moved “rapidly,” as if they were “[t]rying to get away from whatever was at the newspaper stand.” Lopez described their departure as “brisk.”
Garcia, the police vehicle’s driver, pulled over to the curb. Whitley got out and contacted the minor while Garcia contacted the other juvenile. Lopez went to the newspaper stand. As Whitley spoke with the minor, Garcia apprised him that the backpack the minor was carrying had the word “‘clown’ written” “in graffiti or tagging style” on it. Whitley asked if he could search the backpack and the minor handed it to him. Inside Whitley found a notebook containing “several pages that had the name ‘clown’ written on them” “in tagger style.” Meanwhile, Lopez found a marking pen and fresh graffiti that included the word “clown” underneath a magazine sitting on top of the newspaper stand.
The juvenile court denied the minor’s motion to suppress. It agreed the juveniles had been detained, but found it “happened very quickly” and, citing both “Whitely’s observations” and “Officer Garcia[’s] descri[ption]” of the minor’s behavior, concluded the police had sufficient cause to do so.
DISCUSSION
The minor challenges the suppression ruling. He argues “[t]he evidence shows . . . Whitely relied on a ‘hunch,’” and although the juvenile court also cited Garcia’s testimony, “Whitely did not make the same observation[s]” and “[t]here is no indication Garcia communicated his observation[s] to Whitely.” This analysis lacks merit.
While the Fourth Amendment’s proscription against unreasonable searches and seizures applies to temporary investigative detentions, “the ‘balance between the public interest and the individual’s right to personal security,’ [citation], tilts in favor of a standard less than probable cause in such cases . . . . [Citations.]” (United States v. Arvizu (2002) 534 U.S. 266, 273 [122 S.Ct. 744, 151 L.Ed.2d 740].) Thus, “[a] detention is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment when the detaining officer can point to specific articulable facts that, considered in light of the totality of the circumstances, provide some objective manifestation that the person detained may be involved in criminal activity.” (People v. Souza (1994) 9 Cal.4th 224, 231; see also People v. Wells (2006) 38 Cal.4th 1078, 1083.)
The evidence reflects the officers saw the minor in a “heavily graffitied” area camouflaging his apparent attempt to write something atop a newspaper stand while a second nearby juvenile appeared to be acting as a lookout. When the juveniles saw the police, their facial expressions turned to panic or concern and they immediately began to depart the area. This evidence supported the police officers’ decision to detain the juveniles.
The minor disputes this analysis by focusing solely on Whitely’s relatively innocuous observations of his behavior. His approach is unavailing because it incorrectly assumes only Whitley conducted the detention. Contrary to this argument, the three police officers jointly participated in detaining both juveniles. After making his observations, Garcia, as vehicle’s driver, parked it, and then stopped and questioned the second juvenile while Whitely confronted the minor. Garcia informed Whitely of the graffiti on the minor’s backpack, and Lopez found both fresh graffiti and the marker apparently used to draw it on the newspaper stand. Thus, the mere fact Whitely was the first officer to confront the minor does not preclude consideration of the police officers’ collective knowledge in determining whether the initial detention was lawful.
The minor also relies on the Harvey/Madden rule. To ensure a source is not merely the imagination of a nontestifying officer, when the police arrest or detain a person solely because of information received through official channels, the state must present evidence the officer who originally furnished the information possessed facts justifying the suspect’s seizure. (People v. Madden (1970) 2 Cal.3d 1017, 1021; People v. Harvey (1958) 156 Cal.App.2d 516, 523.) But “‘Harvey/Madden’ [is] . . . an evidentiary rule . . . that ‘govern[s] the manner in which the prosecution may prove the underlying grounds for arrest when the authority to arrest has been transmitted to the arresting officer through police channels. [Citation.]’ [Citation.]” (People v. Gomez (2004) 117 Cal.App.4th 531, 540.) The minor’s detention resulted from observations by the police officers who stopped him. Thus, “contrary to those cases, the witnesses who testified here had personally observed the conduct that justified [the minor’s] detention and arrest . . . .” (People v. Coston (1990) 221 Cal.App.3d 898, 907.)
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
WE CONCUR: O’LEARY, J., FYBEL, J.