Stop and frisk: what Terry v. Ohio allows and what it does not

Cleveland detective Martin McFadden watched two men, Terry and Richard Chilton, walk back and forth past the same store window again and again. He suspected they were planning a daylight robbery. He stopped them, patted the outside of their clothing, and found a gun on each of them.

In Terry v. Ohio, decided June 10, 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court held that an officer may briefly stop a person and pat down the outer clothing for weapons when the officer reasonably believes a crime may be happening and the person may be armed and dangerous. The Court said this is still a search under the Fourth Amendment (the part of the Constitution that protects you from unreasonable searches and seizures), so it has limits.

A 'stop' and a 'frisk' are different things. To stop you, the officer needs reasonable suspicion, meaning specific facts that point to a crime, not just a feeling. The Court said an officer's 'hunch' is not enough and that the officer must be able to point to 'specific and articulable facts.'

To frisk you, the officer needs a second reason: a reasonable belief that you are armed and dangerous. Being stopped does not automatically allow a pat-down.

The frisk is also limited in scope. It is a pat on the outside of your clothes to find weapons. It is not a full search of your pockets, backpack, or phone.

In Minnesota v. Dickerson (1993), the Supreme Court said that if an officer patting down outer clothing feels an object whose shape makes it immediately obvious that it is illegal, the officer may take it. In that case, though, the officer kept squeezing and sliding a small lump in a jacket pocket after he knew it was not a weapon, and the Court ruled that went beyond what Terry allows.

So the line is this: a pat-down looks for weapons. Digging, squeezing, or reaching into pockets to find something else needs a different legal reason, such as your consent or probable cause, which is a stronger level of proof than reasonable suspicion.