Facts
The district court heard testimony from Charles Hoggard, a former officer for the Gautier Police Department. While on patrol in January 2024, Hoggard received an alert on his phone that an LPR located at a specific intersection captured the license plate of a vehicle that was associated with criminal activity. He contacted dispatch and was told that the vehicle was “associated with” Elijah Porter, who had a warrant for aggravated assault. Hoggard conducted a computer check for the license plate, which revealed the vehicle was associated with “James Stewart” or “E.L. Porter.” He located the vehicle and conducted a traffic stop.
After identifying Porter as the driver, Hoggard detained him and patted him down. Hoggard observed a firearm protruding from under the driver’s seat. He was able to see the slide and barrel of the firearm, and a “little silver switch on the back of it,” which he believed to be the switch of an automatic Glock. Hoggard asked Porter if there were any weapons in the car to see if he was going to be honest and later retrieved the firearm during an inventory search of the vehicle, at which point he had not yet confirmed that the warrant was valid and true. After Hoggard secured the firearm in his patrol car, the warrant was confirmed, and he took Porter to the police station.
Hoggard stated that the LPR system allowed him to see when a vehicle had passed an LPR camera at a particular location, and he estimated there were no more than ten LPR cameras stationed across Gautier. He did not know how long the location data was stored within the LPR system, but he could look and see how many times a vehicle passed within the general time period. Hoggard stated there had been other LPR “hits” on Porter’s vehicle earlier that day and the day before, but he was not able to locate the vehicle on those occasions because of heavy traffic. He acknowledged that he did not have a physical description of Porter when he initiated the traffic stop. Hoggard also noted that after seeing the firearm, he left it in Porter’s unlocked car, which was in a residential area, and did not immediately tell his colleague at the scene about the weapon.
The footage is consistent with Hoggard’s testimony. Hoggard patted Porter down next to the open driver’s side door and asked if he had any weapons, to which Porter said he did not. Hoggard then removed several personal items from Porter’s pockets and placed them on the driver’s seat. Just as Hoggard turned toward the driver’s seat, he asked Porter if there were any weapons in the car—Porter answered no. As Hoggard put Porter into his patrol unit, Hoggard removed an earbud from Porter’s ear and returned to Porter’s car to place it on the driver’s seat with his other belongings. Hoggard then locked Porter’s car and told his colleague that he had to confirm “the hit.” He returned to Porter’s vehicle, opened the center console, and looked underneath the driver’s seat. Immediately thereafter, he tried to flag down his colleague. Hoggard then reached under the driver’s seat, pulled out a firearm, and said, “Oh, s–t.” The firearm was not visible on the video until this point. Hoggard motioned again for his colleague to come over and told him there’s “a f–king switch on that [G]lock.” Hoggard then said, “it was basically in plain view,” and “the barrel [was] sticking out from under the seat, so I saw it in plain view.”
Porter asserts that the use of LPR cameras to detect his vehicle’s location constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and that the vehicle-location data should be suppressed. He posits that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his location and movements that were captured by the LPR cameras and that a warrant was required for police to obtain such data from the LPR system. Porter also urges that the traffic stop was invalid because it was not supported by reasonable suspicion and that the firearm should be suppressed. Porter theorizes that even if the stop were lawful, the firearm was not in plain view and was not discovered during a lawful inventory search.
The court denied his motion to suppress the vehicle-location data, reasoning that “an individual traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in their movements from one place to another” and “motorists do not have a privacy interest in their license plates,” since they are “constantly open to plain view of” passersby. The court concluded that the traffic stop was lawful for three reasons: First, Officer Hoggard, had reasonable suspicion to initiate the traffic stop based solely on the automatic license plate reader, or the ALPR, hit that revealed an outstanding arrest warrant for Mr. Porter; Number 2, the BOLO, or ALPR, hit does not need to include a physical description of the driver to provide an officer reasonable suspicion to initiate a traffic stop; and number 3, under the collective knowledge doctrine, the ALPR was reliable and provided Officer Hoggard with reasonable suspicion to initiate the traffic stop. Thereafter, Porter consented to a bench trial, where he was found guilty. On appeal, Porter argued that LPR was a search and that the gun was not in plain view. The 5th affirmed.
Analysis
A. Vehicle Location Data
Contrary to Porter’s assertion, the use of an LPR system did not invade any reasonable expectation of privacy and did not constitute a search, so no warrant was required. The LPR system provides periodic information about a vehicle’s location on public streets and highways. A scan occurs when a vehicle passes one of the locations where a camera is stationed. The LPR system is not capable of tracking the whole of an individual’s physical movements, much less for a very long period, to the extent that a cell phone can because the LPR system does not faithfully follow individuals beyond public thoroughfares. Indeed, Hoggard’s previous inability to locate Porter’s vehicle, notwithstanding the earlier “hits” and the LPR technology’s around-the-clock capabilities, illustrates the significant limitations of this technology relative to cell-site location information (“CSLI”), which can provide an intimate window into a person’s life, revealing not only his particular movements, but through them his familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.
The LPR technology in the instant case provides only periodic information about a vehicle’s location when a vehicle passes one of its ten locations where an LPR camera is stationed in Gautier and is much more limited than CSLI and geofence data, which is capable of capturing a greater volume of comprehensive information with a higher degree of quality and precision.
B. Vehicle Search
B1. The Stop
Officer Hoggard had reasonable suspicion to initiate the traffic stop based solely on the automatic license plate reader, or the ALPR, hit that revealed an outstanding arrest warrant for Mr. Porter; Number 2, the BOLO, or ALPR, hit does not need to include a physical description of the driver to provide an officer reasonable suspicion to initiate a traffic stop; and number 3, under the collective knowledge doctrine, the ALPR was reliable and provided Officer Hoggard with reasonable suspicion to initiate the traffic stop. After all, the BOLO report provided the reasonable suspicion necessary to justify an investigatory stop because the arrest warrant information from the other Mississippi jurisdiction was credible and reliable—it specified Porter’s vehicle information, allowed Hoggard to verify the match, and related to an active warrant, which turned out to be valid. Even though he didn’t need to do so because the reasonable suspicion inquiry falls considerably short of 51% accuracy, Hoggard carefully conducted a computer check for the license plate, which revealed the vehicle was associated with “James Stewart” or “E.L. Porter.
That the vehicle may have belonged to someone other than Porter or that Hoggard lacked a physical description of the driver does not change the calculus in Porter’s favor because Hoggard had sufficiently specific information to stop the car—he knew the make and model, its license plate number, its approximate location, and that Porter was wanted for arrest for aggravated assault.
B2. Plain View
Hoggard found the Glock pistol and machine gun conversion switch and testified in open court that the barrel was sticking out from under the seat in plain view. Not only was the incriminating nature of the automatic conversion switch immediately apparent, but the district judge, who had an opportunity to observe Hoggard’s demeanor, said in no uncertain terms, “I do find Officer Hoggard’s testimony to be credible.” There is no reason to depart from the district court’s sound determination. One may be inappropriately tempted to engage in a frame-by-frame, instant replay-type analysis of Hoggard’s behavior, based on the body camera footage. But the video evidence is ambiguous at best for Porter.
Although we first notice the gun at about the six-minute mark when Hoggard physically removes it from under the driver’s seat, his body camera may not have fully captured everything that he saw at eye-level with a dynamic field of vision because the camera was in a static position near his torso. There is nothing that plainly contradicts the district court’s finding that the officer saw the Glock and the switch in plain view.
Another reply is that the factual circumstances suggest that Hoggard did not see the Glock and its switch in plain view. True, Hoggard initially left the Glock in an unlocked car in a residential neighborhood and did not immediately tell his colleague at the scene about the weapon. But there was no traffic on the side street, where another patrol car was already present and blocking incoming traffic from the cross street. And during the three-and-a-half-minute stretch between Hoggard’s initial discovery of the Glock and the subsequent physical possession of it, Hoggard had other priorities— he escorted Porter to his patrol vehicle, put Porter’s personal items in his car, and rolled its windows up to prevent rain from coming in. Hoggard did not raise the immediate alarm bells because he wanted to see if Porter was going to be honest, something he testified to in open court, which the district court found credible.
The footage is not clear-cut in Porter’s favor. In fact, it shows that Hoggard seamlessly reached under the seat in a quick darting motion, suggesting that he knew precisely where the Glock and the switch were because he had previously seen them in plain view. Admittedly, the officer did exclaim, “Oh s–t,” but that can be explained by the fact that physically seizing a suspect’s gun that has an attached machine gun conversion device may not be an everyday occurrence even for experienced officers, who may be rightfully shocked. Far from being clear-cut in Porter’s favor, the footage confirms that Hoggard contemporaneously corroborated that the Glock was basically in plain view, and the barrel was sticking out from under the seat, so he saw it in plain view.
https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/25/25-60163-CR0.pdf