context: The police, in short, were not obliged to take the risk that a person potentially subject to arrest for felony theft had on his person the means -- a weapon -- of preventing his apprehension for a serious crime.
citation_a.signal: see also
citation_a.identifier: 862 So.2d 225, 231-32
citation_a.parenthetical: concluding that police reasonably believed a suspect may be armed during a traffic stop for driving with an expired inspection sticker because the suspect "was pacing back and forth" and "failed to produce a driver's license or identification"
citation_a.sentence: See also State v. Cowart, 862 So.2d 225, 231-32 (La.Ct.App.2003) (concluding that police reasonably believed a suspect may be armed during a traffic stop for driving with an expired inspection sticker because the suspect “was pacing back and forth” and “failed to produce a driver’s license or identification”).
citation_b.signal: see
citation_b.parenthetical: distinguishing the lead opinion in Powell, where the police had observed only an "ambiguous movement" and nervousness on the part of a person stopped for a traffic violation, from a hypothetical case where the person was suspected of a more serious offense, in that his actions "bespoke someone, for example, engaged in possession of a stolen vehicle"
citation_b.sentence: See United States v. Murphy, 261 F.3d at 743 (finding frisk of driver permissible where police knew the driver was not the owner of an out-of-area car — he was a male, while the car registrant was a female — and he had no driver’s license, meaning that the officer “had no way to determine the identity of the person with whom he was dealing and whether [the person] was a criminal and might be dangerous.”); Powell, 649 A.2d at 1090-91 n. 5 (Farrell, J., concurring) (distinguishing the lead opinion in Powell, where the police had observed only an “ambiguous movement” and nervousness on the part of a person stopped for a traffic violation, from a hypothetical case where the person was suspected of a more serious offense, in that his actions “bespoke someone, for example, engaged in possession of a stolen vehicle”).