Opinion
December 5, 1995
Appeal from the Supreme Court, New York County, Bernard Fried, J., Charles Tejada, J.
We agree with the suppression court that defendant's apparent flight from a second-floor window up the fire escape to the third-floor landing, as police responded to a call of a dispute in a second-floor apartment, enhanced the officer's suspicions about that apartment ( see, People v Crapo, 103 A.D.2d 943, affd 65 N.Y.2d 663; People v Farenga, 42 N.Y.2d 1092), and was a sufficient predicate for the minimal intrusion of coming onto the second-floor landing of the fire escape to look through the window. Defendant enjoyed only a minimal expectation of privacy in the fire escape landing outside his window, which was neither part of his apartment nor a curtilage thereof ( see, e.g., People v Hailstock, 54 Misc.2d 952). Moreover, consent given by an upstairs tenant to enter the fire escape from his apartment, by which access was afforded to the landing outside of defendant's window, also provided a sufficient predicate to enter the subject landing. There is no reason to distinguish between a consenting tenant whose apartment shares a fire escape landing with the searched apartment ( see, People v Church, 217 A.D.2d 444), and one whose apartment shares a stairway. Once the officer was lawfully on the landing, his plain view observation of the contraband a few feet inside of the open window provided the predicate for the warrantless entry of the apartment.
Concur — Sullivan, J.P., Ellerin, Wallach, Rubin and Mazzarelli, JJ.