ABSTRACT
A court must consider the totality of the circumstances to determine whether the police exercised force or used their authority to conduct a stop or whether the police merely sought the voluntary cooperation of a citizen through a consensual encounter. Having determined that police may detain pedestrians under the Terry doctrine and may detain motorists using the same rationale, the Court had little difficulty applying the principles to the detention of luggage. The Court indicated that Terry principles permitted the officer to detain the luggage temporarily to investigate the circumstances that aroused the officer’s suspicion as long as the detention was reasonable as to both time and manner. The decision in Prouse made it clear that while the police practice of stopping vehicles for the sole purpose of checking operators’ licenses would not pass constitutional muster, a traffic violation does support an investigatory stop.
