| People v Andrews |
| 2008 NY Slip Op 10303 [57 AD3d 1428] |
| December 31, 2008 |
| Appellate Division, Fourth Department |
| The People of the State of New York, Respondent, v Cedric B.Andrews, Also Known as Cedric B. Brown, Appellant. |
—[*1] Michael C. Green, District Attorney, Rochester (Elizabeth Clifford of counsel), forrespondent.
Appeal from a judgment of the Monroe County Court (Frank P. Geraci, Jr., J.), rendered June 8,2005. The judgment convicted defendant, upon his plea of guilty, of criminal possession of a controlledsubstance in the third degree.
It is hereby ordered that the judgment so appealed from is unanimously affirmed.
Memorandum: On appeal from a judgment convicting him upon his plea of guilty of criminalpossession of a controlled substance in the third degree (Penal Law § 220.16 [12]), defendantcontends that County Court erred in refusing to suppress the cocaine seized from his vehicle. We rejectthat contention. The police received an anonymous 911 call indicating that a person with a gun wasinside an apartment at a specified address, followed by a second 911 call minutes later indicating thatthere was a fight occurring between a man and a woman on the street corner in front of that address.After the responding officer parked on the street in question, neighbors pointed him to the corner wherehe observed defendant following two or three females as they walked toward the officer. Upon seeingthe officer, defendant turned around, ran to a truck parked around the corner, and drove away at a fastrate of speed. The officer then noticed that the windows of the apartment that was the subject of thefirst 911 call had been smashed, the door had been kicked open, the inside of the apartment had been"trashed," and a crowbar was on the ground outside. The officer dispatched a description ofdefendant's truck and direction of travel. Another officer stopped the truck driven by defendant a fewminutes later, and a plastic bag containing cocaine was thereafter found in his vehicle.
We conclude that the totality of the information known to the police at the time of the stop ofdefendant's truck "supported a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity . . . [, i.e.,] thatquantum of knowledge sufficient to induce an ordinarily prudent and cautious [person] under thecircumstances to believe criminal activity is at hand" (People v William II, 98 NY2d 93, 98[2002] [internal quotation marks omitted]). "[A] 'defendant's flight may be considered in conjunctionwith other attendant circumstances' in determining whether reasonable suspicion justifying a seizureexists" (People v Pines, [*2]99 NY2d 525, 526 [2002],quoting People v Martinez, 80 NY2d 444, 448 [1992]).
Defendant failed to preserve for our review his contention that the conduct of the police followingthe stop of his truck constituted a de facto arrest for which the police did not have probable cause(see CPL 470.05 [2]). In any event, that contention lacks merit. The People presentedtestimony at the suppression hearing supporting the conclusion that defendant was subjected to anonarrest detention preparatory to transporting him back to the location that was the subject of the 911calls for a showup identification procedure (see People v Hicks, 68 NY2d 234, 240 [1986];see also People v Allen, 73 NY2d 378, 380 [1989]). We thus reject the further contention ofdefendant that defense counsel's failure to preserve for our review defendant's present contentionconcerning the alleged de facto arrest denied defendant his right to effective assistance of counsel (see generally People v Turner, 5 NY3d476, 480-481 [2005]; People v Baldi, 54 NY2d 137, 147 [1981]).Present—Scudder, P.J., Hurlbutt, Peradotto, Green and Gorski, JJ.