A Queens Criminal Possession of a Weapon Lawyer said that, appellant, and his codefendant, were indicted for robbery in the first degree for forcibly stealing a sum of money from a cashier in a restaurant in Queens on August 10, 1976, while displaying what appeared to be a pistol, rifle or other firearm. Both men pleaded guilty to robbery in the second degree after a motion to suppress evidence of the gun and confessions which each had made to the police were denied. Codefendant has taken no appeal from the judgment of criminal conviction against him.
On August 10, 1976, at about 10:30 or 11 P.M., appellant and codefendant walked into a Kansas Fried Chicken establishment on Northern Boulevard in Queens and robbed the cashier, of a sum of money. The appellant held a gun on the cashier while he took money from the cash register. An accomplice was waiting for them in an automobile parked outside the store. The accomplice’s mother owned the car. After the robbery appellant and the codefendant went into the accomplice vehicle and rode away. Several hours later, at about 1:45 A.M. on August 11, 1976, Police Officers both in uniform and patrolling in a marked police vehicle, observed codefendant, accomplice and appellant walking along Manhattan Avenue near 117 Street, in what was conceded to be a “high-crime drug area”.
At the suppression hearing the officer testified that among the things which aroused his suspicion was the fact that appellant, when the officers pulled up, “abruptly turned back like he wasn’t a member of the group”. He then saw appellant and his companions enter the Atkins’ automobile at 116 Street. The car proceeded south on Manhattan Avenue. The police vehicle followed it and caused it to stop at 113 Street. The Officer’s explanation was that from a point about a car-length away the officers saw “a lot of action inside the car which aroused their suspicions” and they “saw, I believe, appellant trying to put something under the seat. It appeared at our vantage point like he was trying to hide something.” He also noted that there was “a lot of jostling in the car, a lot of moving.” The driver of the police vehicle flashed the lights of the car at which point the Officer saw what he assumed to be “narcotics being thrown from the window”. These were two envelopes which “appeared to be white in nature, a glassine envelope, containing a white substance.” However, when asked by the criminal court whether he “could see the white substance in the envelope”, the officer answered, “They looked like two white pieces of paper. I took it for granted it was glassine envelopes with alleged heroin.” This ejection took place near 114 Street, but the Atkins’ vehicle did not respond to the flashing police lights until a block later. After it came to a halt, with the police car parked behind it, went up to the occupants “to cover them”, while Officer Quinn went back to the area in which the papers had been tossed. He recovered a glassine envelope filled with a white substance and waved it at, who understood that to mean that it was an envelope containing drugs.