Can police officers stop and search a random group of people found near a location where the officers believe gunshots have been fired?

And even if the shooter is not among them, can they arrest an uninvolved person who turns out to be carrying a gun illegally as the result of a felony record?

Yes to both questions, a divided three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided last week in a precedent-setting Fourth Amendment case that grew out of an incident two years ago in Richmonds crime-ridden Creighton Court.

The majority decision overturned a lower courts decision to suppress evidence the gun that led to the arrest of Richmonder Billy Curry Jr., even though authorities confirmed he had not fired any of the gunshots.

In a vigorous dissent, Judge Henry F. Floyd of South Carolina wrote that the decision completely cripples a fundamental Fourth Amendment protection and creates a dangerous precedent.

In his view, the majority opinion means that the sounds of gunshots, or even something that police perceive as gunshots, ... creates an emergency situation and allows police to stop and frisk anyone in the area without individualized suspicion.

The case began Sept. 8, 2017, when four detectives from the Richmond Police Departments Focus Mission Team heard gunfire within Creighton Court and responded to Walcott Place where it was believed the shots originated no more than 35 seconds earlier.

According to a recital of the facts, the detectives spotted and stopped six to eight men who, though clearly not together, were walking away from the area. The detectives asked the men to lift their shirts. The detectives shined flashlights on the mens waists to determine if they had guns.

All complied and showed they did not have weapons, except Mr. Curry, who did not pull up his shirt. He turned out to have a weapon after he was wrestled to the ground and searched.

Writing for the appeals court majority, Judge Julius N. Richardson, also of South Carolina, found that the de- tectives were operating in an emergency circumstance affecting the public interest, thus triggering an exception to the U.S. Constitutions Fourth Amendmentprohibitionagainst unreasonable government searches.

The officers were not investigating a shooting that occurred days or even hours earlier, he stated. They were rushing to respond to shots fired just seconds earlier in a densely populated residential neighborhood where there had been two homicides and six other shootings in the previous 90 days.

While Judge Richardson acknowledged that the officers did not have any reasonable suspicion that the men they stopped were involved in the gunfire, he found the primary purpose of the stop and flashlight search was the need to protect the public and (themselves) from a shooter and the potential for retaliatory gunfire.

The officers reacted quickly ... with a measured response to address the very real threat of further violence, he wrote in an opinion supported by Judge Paul V. Niemeyer of Maryland.

An unobtrusive flashlight search of the waistbands of those stopped to determine if they had weapons represented an intrusion on the mens liberty (that) was minimal both in scope and duration, Judge Richardson concluded.

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Federal appeals court ruling sets precedent in 'unreasonable' search case - Richmond Free Press