Opinion
May 18, 1987
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Queens County (Pitaro, J.).
Ordered that the judgment is affirmed.
After receiving a radio transmission advising of a robbery committed in the vicinity of 217th Street and Hollis Avenue by a black man wearing leather pants and a dark jacket, Police Officers Martino and Whitfield, on route to that location, observed an individual at Hollis Avenue and 205th Street whose appearance matched that of the radio description. The officers detained the individual, the defendant herein, and radioed their fellow officers, who were with the complainants, to transport the complainants to the scene. The complainants arrived within minutes, and while seated in a police car, identified the defendant as the robber. At the time the identification took place, the defendant was standing on a crowded street without handcuffs, between two plain-clothes officers whose identity as policemen had not been revealed to the complainants. The hearing court denied, in part, those branches of the defendant's motion which were to suppress physical evidence and identification testimony, concluding that the officers' actions had been supported by reasonable suspicion and that the subsequent identification procedure was permissible under the circumstances.
Contrary to the defendant's contentions on appeal, the police conduct was justified in its inception and reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which rendered its initiation permissible (see, e.g., People v. De Bour, 40 N.Y.2d 210, 215; People v. Cantor, 36 N.Y.2d 106). After receiving a radio description of a robber who had recently committed a robbery in the area, the officers were justified in briefly detaining defendant — whose appearance matched the description — so as to permit a prompt, on-the-scene viewing by the complainants who were nearby, and who could either identify the defendant as the robber or confirm that he had not been the perpetrator of the robbery (see, e.g., People v. Hicks, 68 N.Y.2d 234; People v Love, 57 N.Y.2d 1023). Accordingly, "[a] speedy on-the-scene viewing thus was of value both to law enforcement authorities and to defendant, and [thus] was appropriate here" (People v. Hicks, supra, at 242). The defendant's contention that the showup subsequently employed was unduly suggestive is without merit. Here, the identification procedure was conducted promptly after the crime had been committed, and was neither unnecessarily suggestive nor conducive to irreparable mistaken identification (see, People v. Hicks, supra, at 234, 242; People v. Domond, 123 A.D.2d 880, 881). In any event, the record supports the hearing court's conclusion that there was an independent source for the in-court identification by the complainant Elmendorf, who viewed the defendant at close range, in a well-lighted building for a period of some five minutes during the commission of the robbery (see, People v. Lewis, 123 A.D.2d 716; People v. Lloyd, 108 A.D.2d 873, affd 66 N.Y.2d 964; People v. Smalls, 112 A.D.2d 173).
Moreover, the court's Sandoval ruling, which permitted inquiry only as to whether the defendant had ever been convicted of a felony did not represent an abuse of discretion (see, People v. Sandoval, 34 N.Y.2d 371; People v. Edwards, 118 A.D.2d 581; People v. Torres, 110 A.D.2d 794). Finally, viewed in a light most favorable to the People, the evidence was sufficient to establish the defendant's guilt of the crime of robbery in the first degree (see, People v. Malizia, 62 N.Y.2d 755, cert denied 469 U.S. 932; People v. Price, 118 A.D.2d 603), and his conviction was not against the weight of the evidence (see, CPL 470.15). Bracken, J.P., Niehoff, Kooper and Sullivan, JJ., concur.