Police officers in Aurora who found a firearm and drugs in the backpack of a Black minor while trying to solve area burglaries lacked a reasonable basis to detain him, the Colorado Court of Appeals determined on Thursday.

“[T]he mere description of an area as ‘high-crime’ does not create reasonable suspicion of every young person of color in that neighborhood,” wrote Judge Gilbert M. Román for the three-member appellate panel.

Aurora police officers were investigating multiple burglaries when they noticed an individual speaking with the driver of a green van. The officers followed the van for a ways but later returned to the spot. They reportedly saw the same individual as earlier, a minor identified as K.D.W., although their specific description of his appearance differed slightly from the prior observation. He had a backpack and a trash bag at the time.

An officer approached the child and asked him to put down the possessions. K.D.W. did so, but did not consent to a pat down. When police attempted to put their hands on K.D.W., he fled. After a four-block pursuit, officers apprehended K.D.W. and found ammunition on him. Once in custody, a search of the minor’s backpack uncovered bullets, a semi-automatic pistol and a substance that police believed was marijuana.

A magistrate judge found K.D.W. guilty of charges including possession of a handgun, obstruction of a peace officer and drug possession.

The defense attempted to suppress the evidence from the backpack, arguing the officer lacked reasonable suspicion that criminal activity had taken or was about to take place to make the investigatory stop.

Román, in the court’s opinion, noted that the propriety of an investigatory stop depends upon the context. In the officers’ case, they felt there might be a connection between the green van, a related white vehicle that eluded them during an attempted traffic stop, and K.D.W., who was outside of school midday when they spotted him. The boy also walked away from the officer on first approach, left his possessions behind and fled through private property.

Although an Arapahoe County District Court judge ultimately sided with the officers, the appeals court reversed the decision.

“Analyzing these factual findings, we agree with K.D.W. that the fact that there had previously been criminal activity in the area and his action of walking away from police officers were not, by themselves or in combination, sufficient to create reasonable suspicion,” Román explained.

The court called the officers’ notion of the fleeing white car being connected to K.D.W. “an inchoate hunch” and stressed that the child was in a public park during a time when no burglary had recently occurred.

The panel did, however, uphold the search of K.D.W.’s pockets after his apprehension, citing the “attenuation doctrine” in which there is an intervening event between an unconstitutional search and the recovery of evidence. In this case, the event was the youth’s decision to flee. Even though the search of the backpack happened after K.D.W.’s arrest, the backpack was connected to the investigatory stop, rather than his evasive maneuver.

“K.D.W. did not abandon the backpack when he fled,” the court concluded. “The officers ordered K.D.W. to place the backpack on the ground during the illegal stop and maintained control over it when K.D.W. fled, effectively seizing it.”

The Court of Appeals reversed K.D.W.’s convictions for weapons and drug charges, but affirmed the convictions for obstructing a peace officer and trespass.