OPINION
Michael Shank (“Shank”) was arrested after Dayton, Ohio police officers found a firearm and crack cocaine in a car he had been driving in a neighborhood well known for drug distribution and firearm violence. The car, which Shank did not own and for which he had no documents or other indication of lawful possession, had been stopped because it had illegally tinted windows; officers carried out a protective search after they became aware that Shank — increasingly nervous and able to identify himself only verbally — had been contacted at least twice previously by Dayton police, each contact apparently associated with significant “dealer quantities” of crack cocaine.
Shank entered a conditional plea of guilty to Count 2, Use of a Firearm During and in Relation to a Drug Trafficking Crime, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). He appeals the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence, including the subject firearm. On appeal, Shank alleges that: (1) the officers lacked probable cause to effectuate a traffic stop; (2) his detention in the back of the police cruiser continued too long and violated his Fourth Amendment rights; and (3) the search of the vehicle violated his Fourth Amendment rights because the officers lacked reasonable suspicion that he was armed. For the reasons stated below, we reject each argument and AFFIRM.
I.
Late in the afternoon on May 2, 2003, police officers James Mullins (“Mullins”) and Rodney Barrett (“Barrett”) were patrolling near the Desoto Bass housing complex in Dayton, Ohio. This complex, the officers knew, is a high-crime area well known for its drug distribution activity and shootings. The officers noticed a tan Cadillac with unusually darkened windows. Ohio law requires that tinted windows allow at least fifty percent of the light to pass through the window, and the officers estimated that the Cadillac’s tinted windows would permit only about a third of the light to pass through. Although they could see through the tint well enough to tell that the driver seemed to be male and was the only occupant, the tint was sufficiently dark to obscure whether furtive or *312 dangerous gestures were present. The officers activated the cruiser’s overhead lights. The driver of the Cadillac turned onto the one-way, horseshoe shaped drive serving the Desoto Bass complex, and stopped the car in the middle of the roadway rather than pulling over to a curb.
The two officers approached the vehicle, one from each side. As Barrett reached the driver’s side of the car, he could more positively identify the driver as a man and as the window was lowered he could also see that the driver was not wearing the seat belt. When Barrett asked the driver for his license and registration, he replied that he did not own the vehicle and that he did not have identification, but claimed that his name was Michael Shank. Intending to have the driver sit in the patrol car, the officers asked him to step out of the car and patted him down. They found a large lump in one pocket, but determined that it was a wad of cash and not a weapon. They replaced the cash and directed Shank to sit in the back of the police cruiser so that they could verify his identity. Shank had been relatively calm and cooperative until this point, but soon became argumentative and nervous. He did, nonetheless, eventually comply, and after he was seated Barrett entered Shank’s proffered information into the patrol car’s portable computer system. He found that there was a person named Michael Shank who had a valid driver’s license, but also found that this person had twice previously been in contact with Dayton police during which distribution-quantity cocaine had been found.
During this time, Mullins was using a “tint meter” to more specifically measure the vehicle’s windows in support of the ticket Barrett was writing, and found that the tint prevented sixty-eight percent of the light from passing through. Barrett was continuing to process written traffic citations for Shank’s seat belt, driver’s license and window tint violations when a resident of the Desoto Bass complex walked up and requested of Mullins that the two vehicles be moved because they were blocking vehicle access. Mullins then went back toward the cruiser to retrieve a camera to record the window tint measurements, and was met by Barrett who had alighted from the patrol car. Barrett informed Mullins of what he had learned about Shank’s previous contacts with Dayton police involving “large quantities of crack cocaine in his possession.” Mullins well knew that drug dealers often carry weapons, and now suspected that drugs, weapons or both might be involved in this encounter. After retrieving the camera from the police car, Mullins entered Shank’s ear to move it. While in the car, he checked the “lunge area,” which is “the space immediately accessible” to a person seated in the car. He first opened the glove box, and found a semi-automatic handgun shoved in as though someone had “reached across with the right hand and pushed into it, the glove box.” He also found a small quantity of crack cocaine in the front console. At this point, the officers placed Shank under arrest.
II.
When reviewing an order denying a motion to suppress evidence, we use a
de novo
standard for the district court’s legal determinations, but will not set aside the district court’s factual findings unless they are clearly erroneous.
United States v. Long,
III.
Shank first argues that there was no probable cause to order him to stop the car he was driving. Police officers “may briefly stop an individual for investigation if they have ‘reasonable suspicion’ that the person has committed a crime.”
Houston v. Clark County Sheriff Deputy John Does 1-5,
Reasonable suspicion is “more than an ill-defined hunch; it must be based upon a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person ... of criminal activity.” Houston,174 F.3d at 813 (alterations in original) (internal quotations and citation omitted). It requires “ ‘specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant’ an investigatory stop.” Id. (quoting Terry v. Ohio,392 U.S. 1 , 21,88 S.Ct. 1868 ,20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968)). Moreover, reasonable suspicion “can arise from evidence that is less reliable than what might be required to show probable cause.” Id.
Weaver v. Shadoan,
Here, the officers observed the dark tinting on the Cadillac and estimated that the tinting would permit only about thirty-three percent of the light to pass through the windows, despite applicable law requiring window tinting to allow at least fifty percent of the light to pass through. See Ohio Rev.Code § 4513.241; Ohio Admin. Code § 4501-41-03(A)(3). The officers were aware that the tinting was illegally dark based on their substantial prior experience enforcing this traffic regulation; indeed, the traffic stop that they just concluded before stopping Shank was for the same infraction. Due to the officers’ familiarity with window tinting and their estimate that the vehicle was tinted substantially darker than permitted by law, we agree with the district court’s determination that the officers had a proper basis to initiate the traffic stop.
Shank complains, in part, that his arrest may represent an example of “selective enforcement,” implying that he was improperly singled out for some ulterior, presumably improper purpose. First, there is no evidence here that even hints at an improper or invidious targeting of Shank. Second, the propriety of stopping Shank for this traffic violation is unaffected by the fact that officers admittedly do not ticket, or even pull over, every vehicle they suspect has violated the window tint regulation. The law does not require police officers to stop every person suspected of illegal activity, and the officers’ actual subjective motivations in effectuating the stop are irrelevant to the validity of the stop.
See Whren v. United States,
IY.
Even if an initial stop is constitutionally permissible, any subsequent detention must also comply with the Constitution and may not, therefore, “be excessively intrusive and must be reasonably related in time to the investigation.”
United States v. Wellman,
Shank does not contest, however, that Barrett was still writing up and issuing the seat belt, tinted window and no-license-in-possession citations by the time that the local resident approached the officers complaining about the Cadillac and the patrol car blocking the one-way drive. Nor does he contest that it was only after Shank’s previous association with drug trafficking incidents became known to Mullins that he entered, moved and briefly searched the Cadillac. It is clear that the purpose
of
the initial stop had
not yet
been completed when Mullins began the search. Because an officer may detain an individual in a police cruiser until the officer has finished issuing a citation, Shank’s detention did not exceed the scope of the stop and was therefore constitutionally permissible.
See id.
(quoting
United States v. Bradshaw,
y.
Shank’s third, and more substantial argument challenges the constitutionality of Mullins’s search of the Cadillac, arguing that the officers did not have a reasonable suspicion that their safety was in danger. In
Michigan v. Long,
We determine if officers had a “reasonable, articulable suspicion” of danger based upon an examination of “the individual factors, taken as a whole,” and whether they “give rise to reasonable suspicion, even if each individual factor is entirely consistent with innocent behavior when examined separately.”
United States v. Smith,
Police officers are permitted “to draw on their own experience and specialized training to make inferences from and deductions about the cumulative information available to them that might well elude an untrained person.”
United States v. Martin,
We examine here whether, based on articulable facts taken as a whole,
Smith,
Shank argues his mere presence in the high-crime area, as found by the district court, is insufficient to justify the officers’ attention being drawn to him because he “can not be held accountable for the nature of the neighborhood he was stopped in.” Indeed, the Supreme Court has explained, that an “individual’s presence in an area of expected criminal activity,
standing alone,
is not enough to support a reasonable, particularized suspicion that the person is committing a crime.” The Court stressed, however, that “officers are not required to ignore the relevant characteristics of a location in determining whether the circumstances are sufficiently suspicious to warrant further investigation.”
Illinois v. Wardlow,
Although the “high-crime area” observation stands as nothing more than one appropriate ingredient, there was, ultimately, a cascading series of additional factors that soon came to the awareness of the officers, as listed above, which together provide sufficient context. In addition to the dangerous nature of the area, and the illegal and potentially unsafe tinting on the car windows, Shank was not able to provide identification or vehicle registration, leaving the officers to search computer records based only on a proffered name and social security number.
Barrett’s database review showed that Shank had at least two previous contacts with Dayton police officers, each involving a quantity of crack cocaine indicative of distribution rather than mere possession for personal use. Based mainly upon the testimony of Barrett, the district court found that Shank was known to have “had two previous contacts with Dayton police officers, when crack cocaine had been discovered. On one occasion, slightly less than 30 grams had been discovered, while 40 grams had been found on the other.” Indeed, the indictment details Shank’s arrests and convictions for cocaine posses *317 sion or distribution, specifically a 1998 conviction for two separate counts of trafficking of crack cocaine in the vicinity of a school in 1997 and another 1998 conviction, carried on a different 1997 case number, for possession of crack cocaine. 4
Drug distribution, the officers knew, very often involves firearm possession and use and the obvious attendant danger. The district court credited the officers’ testimony that they knew “those involved in the drug trade often carry weapons.” Shank’s apparent prior association with crack cocaine distribution, and the known dangerous nature of that activity, constituted additional articulable facts contributing to the officers’ suspicion that Shank may have been similarly engaged in drug related activity when he was stopped.
See Joshua v. DeWitt,
In addition to the foregoing, Shank displayed increasing nervousness and agitation upon being asked to sit in the back of the officers’ vehicle. The Supreme Court has “recognized that nervous, evasive behavior is a pertinent factor in determining reasonable suspicion.”
Illinois v. Wardlow,
There is, to be sure, no magic numerosity of facts, a minimum of which must be gleaned in sifting the circumstances in order to “total up” and justify a court’s confidence that the officer had reasonable suspicion to frisk or search pursuant to
Terry.
Indeed, we have found reasonable suspicion — albeit often in unpublished cases — even where very few relevant facts existed.
See, e.g., United States v. Madison,
No. 96-3970,
By contrast, reasonable suspicion can been found lacking although quite a number of facts are pointed out when those facts are simply unconvincing either individually or collectively.
See, e.g., Karnes,
*318
The seminal question, taking all the facts and circumstances as a whole, examining the facts as needed “in [an] orderly fashion,”
Smith,
VI.
The judgment of the district court is
AFFIRMED.
Notes
. When officers are searching the
entire
vehicle for contraband — e.g., the trunk — they need "probable cause to believe that a vehicle they have stopped contains evidence of a crime.”
United States v. Hill,
. As noted above, the factual findings made by the district court are not clearly erroneous and must therefore be adopted.
See Long,
. The district court’s finding of fact that the Desoto Bass housing complex constituted a "high crime” area — based upon and limited to the facts present in these circumstances — is not contested on appeal. Further, there is neither an argument nor any indication in the record that the finding runs afoul of our caution in
Caruthers
that high-crime area designations not be permitted to "serve as a proxy for race or ethnicity.” Even so, we pause to point out the difficulties inherent in too broadly categorizing a locale as "high crime.”
See Caruthers,
. In an apparent attempt at the hearing to point out the staleness of the earlier cocaine contacts, Shank’s trial counsel marked as exhibits physical printouts of two field interview cards illustrating two occasions that Shank had been contacted by police in association with drugs about eight years earlier in 1995. One, in fact, appears to have been related not to cocaine, but to marijuana. It was, however, only the electronically stored information upon which Barrett relied in the field, not printed cards, and only Barrett’s oral statements related to Mullins that gave Mullins any information about the apparent nature of Shank's prior contacts related to distribution-quantities of crack cocaine. In the light of the specifications in the indictment listing 1997 and 1998 events, it is fairly obvious that the printed 1995 contact cards are neither the only nor the most recent records of Dayton police contact with Shank, and do not appear to refer to the same contacts relied upon by Barrett and Mullins.
. On occasion, a court’s unmistakable obligation to review the facts in their totality seems somehow dampened.
E.g., United States v. Wood,