Background
Kalamazoo police responded to a report of gunfire near an apartment building. About ten minutes later and roughly two blocks from the suspected shooting location, Officer Christian Harris encountered Car’Don Ozomaro and two other men who had reportedly walked away and avoided police contact. Harris recognized Ozomaro as someone identified in police intelligence as a member of a gang associated with local gun violence and as having prior involvement in shootings and firearms offenses.
During an initially consensual conversation, Harris observed Ozomaro keeping his right arm against his body and maintaining a “bladed” stance that concealed his right side. When Ozomaro bent forward, Harris saw a hard, angular bulge on that side that he recognized as a firearm. Harris reached toward the bulge to conduct a frisk, Ozomaro attempted to flee, and a firearm fell from his person during the ensuing struggle.
After being indicted for possessing a firearm as a felon, Ozomaro moved to suppress the gun, arguing that officers seized him without reasonable suspicion when they surrounded him and that the frisk was unlawful. The district court denied the motion. Ozomaro entered a conditional guilty plea preserving his right to appeal that ruling.
The Court’s Holding
The Sixth Circuit affirmed. It declined to decide exactly when the consensual encounter became a seizure because, even assuming Ozomaro was seized when the officers surrounded him and before Harris saw the bulge, reasonable suspicion already supported the stop. Ozomaro’s proximity to the recent shooting and his limited efforts to avoid police carried little or modest weight by themselves, but they could be considered as part of the totality of the circumstances.
Those facts, combined with Harris’s knowledge of Ozomaro’s gun-related history and gang association and his observation that Ozomaro guarded and concealed his right side, created a reasonable suspicion that Ozomaro was involved in criminal activity. The court declined to consider Ozomaro’s undeveloped argument that the police intelligence was stale.
The frisk was also lawful. The gun-related circumstances supported a reasonable belief that Ozomaro was armed and dangerous, and Harris’s observation of a hard, right-angled bulge that he recognized as a firearm independently justified a protective search. Because the armed-and-dangerous inquiry is objective, Harris’s tone and alleged subjective beliefs did not alter the analysis.
Key Takeaways
- Reasonable suspicion may arise from the combined force of several factors even when proximity to a crime scene and mild evasiveness would not independently justify a stop.
- A suspect’s relevant firearms history and known association with a gang involved in gun violence may contribute to reasonable suspicion when officers are investigating a recent shooting.
- Guarding one side of the body, maintaining a bladed stance, and displaying a hard, angular bulge recognizable as a firearm can support a Terry frisk for weapons.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates the Sixth Circuit’s totality-of-the-circumstances approach to investigative stops: courts must consider even individually weak or potentially innocent facts together with more probative observations and officers’ experience. It also confirms that a firearm-shaped bulge can independently establish reasonable suspicion that a person is armed and dangerous, permitting a protective frisk during a lawful Terry stop.