delivered the Opinion of the Court.
{1 We granted certiorari to determine whether the police possessed probable cause pursuant to the fellow officer rule to draw blood from an unconscious driver following a motor vehicle accident, even though the officer who actually ordered the blood draws lacked independent probable cause
I. Facts and Procedural History
[ 2 On September 4, 20083, Petitioner Ronald Brett Grassi was involved in a single-car accident at approximately 3:50 a.m. Grassi, the driver of the car, suffered serious injuries, and a passenger in the car was killed. Paramedics transported Grassi to a local hospital for treatment, where he remained unconscious for several hours.
138 At 4:17 am., Trooper Benavides arrived at the crash site. Because the accident had resulted in a fatality, Trooper Benavides contacted both his supervisor and an accident reconstruction team through the police department's dispatch unit. Trooper Bena-vides then "walked the crash site," searching for the potential cause of the accident. He discovered no evidence of skid marks, yaw marks,
T4 At 4:58 a.m., Trooper Waters, an accident reconstruction specialist, arrived on the scene. Over the next two hours, Trooper Waters examined the crash site and ultimately corroborated Trooper Benavides's initial suspicions, concluding that no "mechanical defects or failures occurred that could have contributed to or caused the crash." Moreover, Trooper Waters deduced at the scene that the driver of the vehicle had likely followed the fog line
{ 5 Meanwhile, shortly after 5:00 a.m., Corporal Riley directed Trooper Duncan to travel to the hospital where Grassi was being treated. Specifically, Corporal Riley assigned Trooper Duncan
T6 The People initially charged Grassi with vehicular homicide, manslaughter, and driving with excessive BAC, and they later amended the complaint to add a charge for DUI. At trial, Grassi moved to suppress the evidence of his BAC, arguing that the police lacked probable cause to order the blood draws and thus violated his Fourth Amendment right to privacy. The trial court denied his motion, finding that Colorado's express consent statute, § 42-4-1801.1(8), C.R.S. (2013), did not require the police to possess probable ecause in order to draw blood from an unconscious driver. As a result, the People introduced evidence of Grassi's BAC at trial, and a jury ultimately found him guilty of all charges.
T7 Grassi appealed, and the court of appeals reversed the trial court's finding regarding probable cause and remanded for further proceedings. People v. Grassi
T8 On remand, the trial court conducted an evidentiary hearing, at which it heard testimony from Troopers Benavides, Duncan, and Waters.
T9 Grassi again appealed, and the court of appeals affirmed. People v. Grassi, - P.3d ---, ---,
T10 We granted certiorari to consider whether the fellow officer rule provided the police with probable cause to order the blood draws.
II. Standard of Review
111 In reviewing a suppression order, we defer to the trial court's findings of fact as long as they are supported by competent evidence. People v. Gutierrez,
{12 Under Colorado's express consent statute, a person who drives a motor vehicle within the state must submit to a breath or blood test "when so requested and directed by a law enforcement officer having probable cause to believe that the person was driving a motor vehicle in violation of the prohibitions against DUI" or other alcohol-related offenses. § 42-4-1301.1(2)(a)(I) (emphasis added). The statute further provides that "[alny person who is dead or unconscious shall be tested to determine the alcohol or drug content of the person's blood ... as provided in this section." § 42-4-1801.1(8). Thus, the narrow issue here is whether Trooper Duncan possessed probable cause to order the phlebotomist to draw Grassi's blood. That issue, however, implicates a specific legal question: whether Trooper Bena-vides's and Trooper Waters's observations at the seene of the accident could be imputed to Trooper Duncan-and thus factor into the probable cause analysis-pursuant to the fellow officer rule.
{13 We have previously established that the fellow officer rule operates to impute information that the police possess as a whole to an individual officer. See People v. Arias,
A. Timing of the Fellow Officer Rule
114 It is well-established that law enforcement officers regularly engage in coordinated investigations when working a case. See United States v. Ventresca,
115 Specifically, we have previously held that the fellow officer rule imputes shared information to an individual officer if two conditions are met: First, the officer must act "at the direction [of] or as a result of communications with another officer," thus ensuring that he acted pursuant to a coordinated investigation. See id. at 189. Second, "the police as a whole" must possess the information. See id. The rationale supporting the rule is that law enforcement officers regularly work as a team, meaning each individual officer need not "possess the particularized information" that forms the basis for conducting a search or making an arrest. See id.
16 It is clear, then, that the fellow officer rule imputes information from one officer to another; it is less clear, however, precisely when that imputation occurs. More specifically, when an outside officer is assigned to join an ongoing coordinated investigation, we have never considered whether the fellow officer rule encompasses information discovered after the initial assignment but before the ultimate action (Le., the search or arrest).
117 Grassi contends that the rule only applies to information that the police possess at the time of the assignment. Thus, under Grassi's view of the doctrine, any information that the police gather subsequent to the assignment is not imputed under the fellow officer rule. We do not read the fellow officer rule so narrowly. The rule does impute information from officers who possess it to those who do not, but it does not require a linear chain of communication from one officer to the next. Rather, the rule pools the collective knowledge of officers engaged in a coordinated investigation. See Arias,
118 Furthermore, any contrary rule would preclude the police from considering any information that they discover subsequent to their assignment, even though their investigation may be ongoing. That is, a contrary holding would essentially force law enforcement officers to conduct their investigations in discrete, linear stages rather than working together as a cohesive unit. We do not wish to limit the fellow officer rule in this fashion, as doing so would both frustrate its purpose and ignore the collaborative process inherent to criminal investigation. Instead, the more appropriate reading of the fellow officer rule is that, as long as the police remain engaged in a coordinated investigation, the rule encompasses information that the police as a whole possess at the time of the relevant action (e., the search or arrest).
19 In reaching this conclusion, we distinguish our earlier holding in Arias. In that case, drug enforcement agents were surveil-ling a pickup truck, believing the driver to be "involved in drug activity."
1 20 We held that the trial court correctly suppressed the evidence of the search, concluding that the patrolman's independent observations did not provide him with reasonable suspicion that the driver had violated any traffic laws. Id. at 140. We further held that the fellow officer rule did not impute the drug agents' observations to the patrolman. See id. Specifically, we recognized that because the drug agents explicitly directed the patrolman to develop an independent basis to stop the truck, they affirmatively "chose not to rely on the existing information known to [them] at the time of the traffic stop." Id. (emphasis added). As such, we declared that "the People cannot later claim that, through the fellow officer rule, information is imputed to" the patrolman. Id. Thus, in Arias, the rule could not impute the drug agents' knowledge to the patrolman aft all; in that case, the precise timing of the agents' instruction relative to their development of reasonable suspicion
121 Accordingly, we hold that the fellow officer rule imputes information that the police possess as a whole to an individual officer who effects a search or arrest if (1) that officer acts pursuant to a coordinated investigation and (2) the police possess the information at the time of the search or arrest. Furthermore, the rule encompasses any information that the police gather between the initial assignment and the officer's ultimate action as part of a coordinated investigation.
122 Having established the proper seope of the fellow officer rule, we now turn to the case before us and determine whether the rule imputed sufficient information to Trooper Duncan to provide him with probable cause to order the blood draws.
B. Application of the Fellow Officer Rule to This Case
123 Drawing blood from an unconscious party is a search that is "subject to the protections of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution." People v. Schall,
4 24 In the instant case, Trooper Duncean-the officer who ultimately ordered the blood draws-need not himself have possessed information amounting to probable cause in order to justify the search. Rather, if (1) Duncan acted pursuant to a coordinated investigation and (2) the police as a whole possessed information that amounted to probable cause at the time of the search, then the fellow officer rule imputed that probable cause to Trooper Duncan.
125 Here, although Trooper Duncan performed his duties in a different location from Troopers Benavides and Waters, Corporal Riley assigned Trooper Duncan the task of traveling to the hospital where Grassi was being treated and obtaining a blood draw if he determined "that aleohol was involved." In performing this assignment, Trooper Duncan joined the police's ongoing coordinated investigation, thus satisfying the first prong of the fellow officer rule. The issue, then, is whether the police as a whole possessed probable cause to believe that Grassi had committed an alcohol-related offense when the phlebotomist drew Grassi's blood (on Trooper Duncan's orders) at 7:12 a.m.
126 Because Troopers Benavides, Waters, and Duncan were jointly engaged in a coordinated investigation, we must consider their observations collectively. Trooper Benavides testified that the weather was clear, that the vehicle had imprinted no skid or yaw marks, and that he could locate no external explanation for the crash, as "[i]t looked like the car just ran off the right side of the roadway." Trooper Waters similarly testified that, based on his preliminary observations of the crash site, no "mechanical defects or failures . could have contributed to or ... caused the crash." Moreover, shortly after arriving on the scene, Trooper Waters deduced that Grassi had simply followed the fog line off of the roadway, and he testified that "[iIntoxi-cated drivers have a propensity to follow the fog line." Crucially, both officers completed their observations prior to the first blood draw, meaning those findings are imputed to Trooper Duncan through the fellow officer rule
127 Grassi nevertheless argues that our decisions in People v. Roybal,
128 Reynolds featured similar circumstances. In that case, following a single-car accident, the driver admitted to a police officer that he had consumed three beers more than six hours before the accident.
129 Both Roybal and Reynolds are inap-posite to the present case. Together, they simply stand for the well-established proposition that an unexplained motor vehicle accident coupled with a single indicium of aleohol consumption (e.g., an odor of alcohol or an admission of having consumed aleohol well before the accident), absent additional evidence, does not constitute probable cause that a driver committed an alcohol-related offense. See Reynolds,
130 In this case, however, the police's collective observations went well beyond a "mere suspicion" that Grassi had been driving while intoxicated. Not only did Trooper Duncan detect a strong odor of alcohol on Grassi's breath, but Troopers Benavides and Waters both determined that Grassi's personal inability to safely operate his car and keep it on the road was the sole cause of the crash, having affirmatively ruled out any external factor such as mechanical failure or road obstruction. Indeed, Trooper Waters determined that Grassi behaved as intoxicated drivers typically do when he followed the fog line off of the roadway. CJ. id. ("There was no evidence offered that would rule out mechanical failure. In addition there were no facts to suggest that [the driver] was not forced off the road by circumstances beyond his control."). Thus, unlike in Roybal, where the record was "barren of evidence that the
{31 Accordingly, we hold that the fellow officer rule provided the police with probable cause to order the blood draws.
IV. Conclusion
€ 32 The fellow officer rule imputes information that the police possess as a whole to an individual officer who effects a search or arrest if (1) that officer acts pursuant to a coordinated investigation and (2) the police possess the information at the time of the search or arrest. In the instant case, the police as a whole, pursuant to a coordinated investigation, possessed probable cause to believe that Grassi had committed an aleohol-related offense at the time of the blood draws, and the fellow officer rule imputed that probable cause to Trooper Duncan, meaning no Fourth Amendment violation occurred. The judgment of the court of appeals is therefore affirmed.
Notes
. Specifically, we granted certiorari to consider the following issue:
Whether the court of appeals erred in holding that a police officer had probable cause to order an involuntary blood draw from a defendant by imputing the findings of an accident reconstruction analysis to the officer under the "fellow officer rule" even though (1) the findings were unknown to the officer at the time he ordered the blood draw and (2) the officer did not order the blood draw at the behest of anyone who knew the findings.
. A yaw mark is created when a vehicle's tires slide laterally. According to Trooper Bena-vides's testimony, the presence of yaw marks can suggest that "there was an input from the driver, whether it be a reaction or an overreaction."
. A fog line is a solid white line that runs along the right edge of a roadway.
. It is unclear from the record whether Corporal Riley spoke with Trooper Duncan directly or whether Corporal Riley contacted dispatch, which in turn contacted Trooper Duncan. It is undisputed, however, that Trooper Duncan traveled to the hospital at Corporal Riley's behest.
. A phlebotomist is a medical technician who is specifically certified to collect blood.
. Corporal Riley did not testify at the evidentiary hearing on remand.
. The majority of our case law surrounding the fellow officer rule involves the legality of an arrest rather than a search. See, e.g., People v. Hazelhurst,
. At the evidentiary hearing, Grassi's counsel argued to the trial court that Trooper Waters, who arrived on the scene at 4:58 a.m., could not possibly have developed his findings by 7:12 a.m. We disagree. Trooper Waters testified unequivocally that he developed his findings prior to the time of the blood draws, and Grassi's counsel did not challenge this testimony on cross-examina