Commonwealth v. Thomas, 179 A.3d 77

In early morning Feb. 21, 2016, police received a radio report of a black male with a gun near 6400 Greenway Ave; caller described clothing as blue hooded sweatshirt and blue pants.
Officers Schaeffer and Gresham, patrolling a high-crime area, located Kareem Thomas minutes later walking on Greenway Ave; Thomas wore all black (hooded sweatshirt, jacket, pants).
Officers circled the block 4–5 times; each time Thomas changed direction and looked back at the patrol car.
When officers pulled alongside Thomas and asked him to show his hands, he kept his hands in his pockets and refused to comply; Schaeffer removed his hands and conducted a pat-down, feeling and recovering a firearm.
Thomas was charged under the Uniform Firearms Act and moved to suppress the gun, arguing the stop/frisk lacked reasonable suspicion; the suppression court granted the motion.
The Commonwealth appealed; the Superior Court reversed, holding the initial encounter did not amount to a seizure and the officers had reasonable suspicion to conduct a protective frisk.

Issue	Commonwealth's Argument	Thomas's Argument	Held
Whether officers unlawfully seized Thomas when they pulled up beside him and asked questions	Approach was a mere encounter; no seizure occurred	Pulling up and repeated circling coerced Thomas and constituted a seizure	Not a seizure; officer approach and request to show hands were lawful (mere encounter)
Whether officers had reasonable suspicion to stop and frisk Thomas	Yes: radio report of man with a gun in high-crime area, Thomas’s evasive direction changes and looking back, and refusal to show hands justified frisk	No: conduct (walking up/down, looking back) was innocent and insufficient to show he was armed/dangerous	Yes: totality of circumstances (high-crime area, evasive movements, refusal to show hands) gave reasonable suspicion to frisk
Whether refusal to show hands alone justifies a frisk	Combined with other facts (area, evasive behavior) it did	Refusal alone insufficient; officers lacked articulable facts to believe he was armed	Refusal to remove hands supported reasonable inference he might be armed and dangerous, justifying pat-down
Whether suppression of firearm was required	Evidence lawfully obtained; frisk lawful so firearm admissible	Frisk unlawful; firearm must be suppressed	Suppression reversed; case remanded for further proceedings

Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (protective stop-and-frisk doctrine)
United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411 (totality-of-circumstances test for reasonable suspicion)
Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429 (police may approach and question in public without seizure)
Commonwealth v. Zhahir, 561 Pa. 545 (officer may infer risk from reaching toward pocket; frisk justified)
Commonwealth v. Carter, 105 A.3d 765 (Pa. Super. en banc) (mere-encounter vs. investigative detention analysis)
Commonwealth v. Smith, 575 Pa. 203 (police approach and questioning in public do not automatically constitute a seizure)