Whether police officers' request for information from all passengers on a bus, initiated because the bus had arrived from New York City, was based on a sufficiently particularized reason.

No. General knowledge that a city is a source of drugs is not a sufficiently particularized reason to justify such a police encounter.

Police boarded Defendant's bus, announcing that they were conducting a drug interdiction, and asked to see the tickets and IDs of all passengers. One of the three officers noticed Defendant and his companion "push a black object between them." The officer obtained consent and searched Defendant's bag and, afterwards, his seat and jacket, finding cocaine. The County Court denied Defendant's motion to suppress the physical evidence seized by the police, and Defendant pleaded guilty. The Appellate Division affirmed. A Court of Appeals Judge granted Defendant's application for leave to appeal, and the Court reversed Defendant's conviction.

The Court agreed with Defendant's argument that police had violated the civilian encounter rules set forth in People v. De Bour, 40 N.Y.2d 210 (1976) and People v. Hollman, 79 N.Y.2d 181 (1992). De Bour articulated the four-tiered analytical framework for analyzing police-initiated encounters with civilians, and Hollman affirmed that articulation. The Court held that the first De Bour tier was implicated here because police requested information; therefore, the request must be based on "whether the police were aware of or observed conduct which provided a particularized reason to request information."

Examples of conduct providing a particularized reason include a tip that drugs were being transported on the bus, or a police officer's observation of defendant's behavior before boarding the bus. The fact that the bus originated from New York City is not sufficient to create a particularized reason. Nor can the police encounter be validated by the suspicion acquired during the interdiction. Thus the search of Defendant's bag and jacket was unlawful.