Officers who lawfully detain a person for a minor infraction such as a bicycle light violation may pat him down for weapons if the totality of the circumstances gives them reasonable suspicion that he is armed and dangerous, even though carrying a gun is not itself a crime in Florida. A divided Fourth District Court of Appeal held that on November 4, 2026, in Johnson v. State, No. 4D2025-1162, and affirmed the denial of a motion to suppress. Judge Forst wrote the majority opinion, joined by Judge Conner. Judge Ciklin dissented with an opinion.
The bicycle light violation stop
About 11:00 p.m., “Deputy A” was dispatched to an apartment building in Belle Glade over a report that a man named “Kevin” was harassing a woman at her window. Deputy A testified the location was among “the most dangerous streets we have,” known for homicides and shootings, with dim lighting, and Deputy B described responding to several shootings and homicides there. Deputy A saw Alton Dontabutts Johnson riding a bicycle, towing a second one, with no bicycle light, which is a noncriminal infraction under section 316.2065(7). Neither deputy believed Mr. Johnson was “Kevin.” Deputy A activated his lights.
Mr. Johnson dropped the bicycles and walked to the deputy with his ID in one hand, then “immediately” pressed the left side of his body against the hood of the patrol car. The deputies described the posture as “awkwardly leaning” and “exaggerated.” Deputy B testified he believed Mr. Johnson was exposing the right side of his body to hide something on the left. While Deputy A ran the ID, Deputy B walked around, said he could see “the imprint of” a gun with an extended magazine under Mr. Johnson’s shirt, and said the deputies should pat him down. When Deputy B told Mr. Johnson he would pat him down for weapons, Mr. Johnson tensed up, twisted away and said they could not search him. The deputies struggled with him on the ground, and a gun was exposed. A database check then showed a prior felony conviction.
The proceedings
Mr. Johnson was charged with felon in possession of a firearm and resisting an officer without violence. His motion to suppress argued that Deputy B’s testimony about a bulge had been fabricated for the hearing. The trial court credited the deputies and denied the motion. A jury convicted him of resisting but deadlocked on the firearm count, and he pleaded no contest to that count, reserving the right to appeal the suppression ruling. He received 15 years with a 10-year mandatory minimum as a habitual felony offender.
The majority’s reasoning
The court distinguished cases such as Regalado v. State, 25 So. 3d 600 (Fla. 4th DCA 2009), and the Eleventh Circuit’s 2026 decision in United States v. Joseph, in which the stop itself rested only on an officer’s belief that the person had a gun. Here, Mr. Johnson “was lawfully detained because of the section 316.2065(7) bicycle light infraction.” It then rejected the argument that a person with a gun poses no danger to police unless he is engaged in crime, applying Terry v. Ohio and Arizona v. Johnson, which requires reasonable suspicion that the person is armed and dangerous.
The court relied on several circumstances together: the high-crime area, the dark and poorly lit street, a bulge Deputy B credibly identified as a firearm with an extended magazine, Mr. Johnson’s apparent effort to conceal it, and his close proximity to the deputies. It wrote that “a citizen can have a right to possess a firearm in general, but still be required to submit to a limited pat-down for weapons for officer safety purposes for the limited duration of a lawful stop,” depending on the totality of the circumstances. It concluded: “we decline to hold that police officers are required to expose themselves to unnecessary danger by leaving a detainee armed with a gun for the duration of their investigative stop.”
The dissent
Judge Ciklin accepted the trial court’s credibility findings and agreed the deputies reasonably suspected Mr. Johnson was armed. His disagreement is that being armed and being dangerous are separate questions. He wrote that Mr. Johnson was not the person dispatched on, produced his ID, complied, did not flee, made no threat, and did not touch or reach toward the suspected firearm before the frisk. He also wrote that the later discovery of the felony conviction and Mr. Johnson’s resistance to the frisk could not supply suspicion that was absent when the frisk began. Without individualized suspicion of dangerousness, he wrote, the armed-and-dangerous standard would collapse into armed alone: “the detainee would be armed and, by virtue of being armed during a police encounter, sufficiently dangerous to frisk.”
What this does and does not mean
The majority framed its holding around this record, a deferential standard of review and the combination of the factors above. It did not hold that seeing a gun alone justifies a frisk, and it did not disturb the principle that officers cannot detain someone solely for apparently carrying a concealed firearm. The opinion is not final until any timely motion for rehearing is resolved.
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Read the opinion (PDF): Download the opinion (PDF)
Also on tagerlaw.com: Can Police Frisk You for a Gun After a Bicycle Light Stop? A Divided Fourth DCA Says Yes on These Facts
Source: Johnson v. State, No. 4D2025-1162 (Fla. 4th DCA Nov. 4, 2026) (Ciklin, J., dissenting). This article is general information, not legal advice.