Commonwealth v. J.B.

Police were on patrol when they observed a grey Lexus disregard several stop signs. Police claimed that after they initiated their lights, J.B. refused to pull over immediately and took a significant amount of time to do so. They further claimed that J.B. refused to obey numerous commands to turn the car off, attempted to “blade his body” from the police as they were speaking with him, and then slightly resisted getting out of the car when asked. Due to these observations, the officers claimed that they feared he had a weapon and conducted a “safety frisk’ of his person which resulted in the recovery of a firearm from a satchel J.B. was wearing across his chest. The defense filed a motion to suppress and presented video evidence contradicting every single claim made by the police in support of their right to frisk J.B. and recover the firearm. A Judge ruled that the police were not credible in their testimony and granted the motion, which forced the District Attorney to withdraw all charges.