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Officers' meticulous work keeps car investigation on the road

By HOWARD TROXLER
Published January 27, 2005

There was this auto body shop on N Nebraska Avenue in Tampa that sure seemed to do a lot of work on Lincolns. There were Lincolns coming in and out of the joint all the time.

The body shop came to the attention of a Hillsborough County sheriff's deputy named Travis Valles, who specialized in auto theft. Deputy Valles "received information" (that is how cops talk) that the body shop was dealing in stolen Lincolns.

Valles set up surveillance. He and his squad saw a lot of Lincolns.

One day, a late-model gold Lincoln Town Car pulled out of the shop. Valles followed it to Waters Avenue, where it pulled into another body shop. (The names of these places are not in the court record, perhaps for some investigatory reason.)

He ran the license tag, and it came back registered to an 8-year-old Lincoln. That was odd, Valles thought, because the car he was following looked pretty new.

Here is what clinched it. Valles then found out that a secretary at the Nebraska Avenue body shop had recently rented a Lincoln Town Car - and reported it stolen. Could it be this car?

Valles went to an auto dealership to study the differences between the two models of Lincoln, eight years apart. He observed the older style was a little more boxy, with a larger grille and headlights. The newer was more aerodynamic.

Valles was certain that the Lincoln he had followed was the newer model. He told this to all the other members of his squad.

One of those deputies, Jose Sanchez, soon saw the suspect gold Lincoln in a fast-food drive-through lane. He pulled it over. Sure enough, the car was new and the license tag was old. The car's vehicle identification number had been changed.

The driver, Pedro Antonio Marrero, was not fluent in English, so the deputy spoke with him in Spanish. Marrero received his Miranda rights. He signed a written consent to be interviewed.

Marrero was talkative. He admitted the Lincoln had been stolen and its identification number changed. He also signed a written consent for the search of his body shop, the one on Waters Avenue.

"At the body shop," the court file notes dryly, "the deputies found additional stolen vehicles, 1,075.3 grams of cocaine, a scale, a grinder with cocaine residue, a supply of baggies, and a gun."

One of the deputies conducting the search picked up a bag and gestured to Marrero. "Cocaine?" he asked. ""Si," Marrero replied, according to the court record. ""Cocaina." He was arrested and charged with, well, lots of things.

These were the facts that came before Hillsborough Circuit Judge Debra K. Behnke. Marrero's lawyer argued that the deputies hadn't had a "well-founded suspicion" that justified stopping Marrero at all.

The judge peered at photographs of the two different model years of Lincolns, and she agreed. She threw out the evidence. The state appealed.

Our body of precedent says police are entitled to make an "investigatory stop." Crime is, after all, their expertise; they are allowed to rely upon their experience and judgment. But they must not rely on a hunch or a whim. They must have an "objective basis."

The 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled in the case of State vs Marrero last week. Judge Douglas A. Wallace wrote the court's opinion.

Wallace recounted all the steps taken by Valles - his training, the original tip about Lincolns, the surveillance, the stolen car report, the switched license plate.

"These facts - considered together - were more than sufficient to raise a well-founded suspicion," Wallace wrote. Valles communicated all this to his fellow officers; they also were entitled to act.

The appeals panel was unanimous. The evidence was reinstated. The case is on.

On balance, I am happy to have a judge who does not automatically swallow everything that police say. The police must be held to a strict standard in court. In this case, however, it is hard to see how the deputies could have had a stronger case unless Marrero had waved a banner out the window saying, "This Car Is Stolen." To sum up: Yay, appeals court.

[Last modified January 27, 2005, 00:40:21]