Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
Super. Ct. No. 05F03945
BUTZ, J.After his motion to suppress evidence (Pen. Code, § 1538.5) was denied, defendant Ricky Anthony Villegas pleaded guilty to conspiring to sell cocaine and transportation of cocaine (Pen. Code, § 182, subd. (a)(1); Health & Saf. Code, § 11352), and admitted a sentencing enhancement for firearm possession (Pen. Code, § 12022, subd. (a)(1)). He was sentenced to six years in state prison, which was suspended, provided he complete four years of formal probation and a one-year jail term.
Defendant appeals, challenging the trial court’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence seized during a vehicle stop. For reasons that follow, we shall affirm the judgment.
Evidence adduced at the suppression hearing
On April 24, 2005 (all further calendar references are to that year), a confidential informant whose reliability had not been verified told Sacramento City Police Narcotics Detective Henry Jason that defendant (1) “was dealing large quantities of [E]cstasy and powder cocaine”; (2) “resided in the south area”; (3) “drove a green Toyota Forerunner [sic]”; (4) was 30 years old; and (5) “owned a business called In the Mix or In Da Mix” near 23rd and I Streets in Sacramento.
Detective Jason verified that there was a business called “In Da Mix” at 23rd and I Streets. Computer records indicated that defendant resided at 6004 43rd Street in south Sacramento and that a green Toyota 4Runner (“4Runner”) was registered to defendant’s mother, Placita Villegas, at that address. A Department of Motor Vehicle’s check of defendant showed that he had a suspended driver’s license. Surveillance of his residence indicated that defendant had driven the 4Runner on May 2.
Through a series of monitored phone conversations on May 1 and 2, Detective Jason, posing as the buyer, negotiated a transaction, using the informant as an intermediary, for the purchase of five kilograms of powder cocaine for a price of $16,500 per kilogram. On May 3, defendant stated he was having trouble getting all of the product, and the sale was modified so that Jason would purchase only one kilogram at a house near 35th Street and Folsom Boulevard, where defendant said he was located.
Detective Jason sent a surveillance team to the area, where they located the 4Runner, and began surveillance. He had earlier instructed Patrol Officers Vance Chandler and Brian Alonso that they would need to make a traffic stop that night and that they should find their own probable cause for the stop.
During a subsequent telephone conversation between the informant and defendant, it was agreed that the cocaine sale would take place at defendant’s downtown business. Five minutes after the conversation ended, four unidentified men carrying an unidentified object entered the 4Runner on 35th Street and began driving towards downtown.
Through police radio, Officers Chandler and Alonso were directed to the location of the 4Runner and began pursuit. Just as they pulled behind the 4Runner, a member of the surveillance team told them to stop the vehicle because the driver had a suspended license.
Officers Chandler and Alonso stopped the 4Runner at 25th and K Streets in downtown Sacramento. They immediately discovered that one of the passengers was armed. The officers from the narcotics investigation unit arrived, removed the passengers from the vehicle, and found a backpack filled with cocaine on the back seat of the vehicle.
At the suppression hearing, defendant claimed that Officers Chandler and Alonso did not have reasonable suspicion to make the stop because they had not identified defendant as the driver of the 4Runner and had no other knowledge of his participation in criminal activity. Applying the “collective knowledge” doctrine (see People v. Ramirez (1997) 59 Cal.App.4th 1548, 1553-1556 (Ramirez), the trial court ruled that the officers had reasonable suspicion to stop the 4Runner based on the totality of the circumstances, which included dealings with defendant to set up a drug transaction, surveillance of defendant, and the corroborated information obtained by narcotics officers working with the informant.
DISCUSSION
Defendant challenges the trial court’s denial of his suppression motion on the ground that Officers Chandler and Alonso lacked reasonable suspicion to justify the traffic stop because they were “walled off” from the drug investigation and did not have sufficient information to conclude that he was driving the 4Runner with a suspended license.
In reviewing a trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress “[w]e defer to the trial court’s factual findings, express or implied, where supported by substantial evidence. In determining whether, on the facts so found, the search or seizure was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, we exercise our independent judgment.” (People v. Glaser (1995) 11 Cal.4th 354, 362; see People v. Weaver (2001) 26 Cal.4th 876, 924.)
For an officer to conduct a valid traffic stop, it must be “based on at least reasonable suspicion that the driver has violated the Vehicle Code or some other law.” (People v. Bell (1996) 43 Cal.App.4th 754, 761.) Reasonable suspicion means that “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; United States v. Arvizu (2002) 534 U.S. 266, 277-278 [151 L.Ed.2d 740, 752]; United States v. Cortez (1981) 449 U.S. 411, 417-418 [66 L.Ed.2d 621, 628-629].) A police officer may reasonably “conclude in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot,” even in situations where a suspect’s actions are as consistent with lawful activity as with criminal activity. (Terry v. Ohio (1968) 392 U.S. 1, 30 [20 L.Ed.2d 889, 911].)
The fact that Officers Chandler and Alonso were not privy to the information obtained by the narcotics investigators does not limit our inquiry into the justification for the stop. Instead, “we must determine whether an investigatory stop, search, or arrest complied with the Fourth Amendment by ‘look[ing] to the collective knowledge of all the officers involved in the criminal investigation although all of the information known to the law enforcement officers involved in the investigation is not communicated to the officer who actually [undertakes the challenged action].’” (United States v. Ramirez (9th Cir. 2007) 473 F.3d 1026, 1032.) “[W]hen police officers work together to build ‘collective knowledge’ of probable cause, the important question is not what each officer knew about probable cause, but how valid and reasonable the probable cause was that developed in the officers’ collective knowledge.” (Ramirez, supra, 59 Cal.App.4th at p. 1555.)
Here, the narcotics investigation team knew defendant had driven the 4Runner the day before the stop, that he had a suspended license and the 4Runner was registered to his home address. In a monitored phone conversation, defendant indicated he was near 35th Street and Folsom Boulevard (where the surveillance team had located the 4Runner), offered to sell Detective Jason a large quantity of cocaine and told the informant he would conduct the transaction at his downtown business. Immediately after this conversation ended, four unidentified men carrying an unidentified package entered the 4Runner and headed downtown. Based on these facts, the officers collectively harbored a reasonable suspicion that defendant was driving the 4Runner with a suspended license and that the car was being used to transport cocaine for the purpose of conducting an unlawful drug transaction. (See People v. Carrillo (1995) 37 Cal.App.4th 1662, 1667; United States v. Cannon (9th Cir. 1994) 29 F.3d 472, 476; cf. Alabama v. White (1990) 496 U.S. 325, 331-332 [110 L.Ed.2d 301, 310].)
Defendant does not dispute that the collective knowledge of the officers involved was sufficient to constitute reasonable suspicion but argues that the trial court erred by applying the doctrine because Officers Chandler and Alonso were deliberately “walled off” from the information obtained by the narcotics investigators. He asserts that “[s]ince [Chandler and Alonso] had no knowledge of the circumstances of the larger drug investigation, it was error to rely on the ‘collective knowledge’ of the drug officers to justify the warrantless vehicle stop.”
Contrary to defendant’s argument, the collective knowledge doctrine has frequently been applied to a situation “where an officer (or team of officers), with direct personal knowledge of all the facts necessary to give rise to reasonable suspicion or probable cause directs or requests that another officer, not previously involved in the investigation, conduct a stop, search, or arrest.” (United States v. Ramirez, supra, 473 F.3d at p. 1033; see id. at pp. 1033-1035 [and cases cited therein: Whiteley v. Warden (1971) 401 U.S. 560 [28 L.Ed.2d 306]; United States v. Hensley (1985) 469 U.S. 221 [83 L.Ed.2d 604]; Illinois v. Andreas (1983) 463 U.S. 765 [77 L.Ed.2d 1003]; United States v. Sutton (9th Cir. 1986) 794 F.2d 1415; United States v. Mayo (9th Cir. 2005) 394 F.3d 1271]]; see also People v. Ramirez (1983) 34 Cal.3d 541, 547.)
The only cases defendant offers to support his argument are People v. Harvey (1958) 156 Cal.App.2d 516, People v. Madden (1970) 2 Cal.3d 1017 and Remers v. Superior Court (1970) 2 Cal.3d 659. The Remers-Harvey-Madden rule stipulates that “‘while it may be perfectly reasonable for officers in the field to make arrests on the basis of information furnished to them by other officers, “when it comes to justifying the total police activity in a court, the People must prove that the source of the information is something other than the imagination of an officer who does not become a witness.”’” (People v. Madden, supra, 2 Cal.3d at p. 1021.) A common scenario under which the rule comes into play is where the basis for the arrest comes from information obtained through a police dispatcher or from an anonymous tip. (See, e.g., People v. Armstrong (1991) 232 Cal.App.3d 228, 241; People v. Johnson (1987) 189 Cal.App.3d 1315, 1320.)
There was no Remers-Harvey-Madden problem in this case because Detective Jason, who was a source of the information that formed the basis for a reasonable suspicion that defendant was selling drugs, testified at the hearing and described how the information was obtained.
We conclude that, under the collective knowledge doctrine, reasonable cause for the detention could be found based on the information obtained by all of the officers involved in the drug investigation. Since the knowledge of the investigative team was imputed to Patrol Officers Chandler and Alonso, the stop of defendant’s vehicle was amply supported by a reasonable suspicion of criminal wrongdoing.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
We concur: MORRISON, Acting P. J., CANTIL-SAKAUYE, J.