A Buffalo police officer who correctly guessed that a man was pulling a weapon out of his pocket had no right to pursue the suspect because he had neither seen the gun nor its outline in the man’s jacket, a divided appellate panel has ruled.
The Appellate Division, Fourth Department, holding in People v. Ingram,13-00437, is the latest in a spate of recent rulings in which courts have broadly interpreted a 1976 landmark opinion, People v. DeBour, 40 NY2d 210, which outlined four levels of police-citizen encounters and the standards for escalating levels of intrusion.
