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A police officer “may conduct certain unrelated checks during an otherwise lawful traffic
stop,” but “may not do so in a way that prolongs the stop, absent reasonable suspicion ordinarily
demanded to justify detaining an individual,” even if the delay is “de minimis.” Matthews v.
Commonwealth, 65 Va. App. 334, 344-45 (2015) (emphasis added) (quoting Rodriguez, 575 U.S.
at 355). In Matthews, the responding officer exceeded the time reasonably necessary to address
the traffic violation by asking various questions of Matthews not related to the traffic violation
and requesting a K-9 unit to conduct a dog sniff of Matthews’s vehicle. Neither activity could be
supported by independent reasonable suspicion or probable cause. Id. Here, Allen exceeded the
bounds of the traffic stop by beginning a line of investigation into the presence of guns or drugs
in the vehicle without any indication from Allen or the second officer that there was any
reasonable articulable suspicion whatsoever of whether there were any guns or drugs in the
vehicle that would justify further detention of Knight-Walker.5 Further, Allen had already
allowed Knight-Walker and her passenger to search and rummage through the vehicle when they
were initially trying to locate her license and the vehicle’s registration without any apparent
concern for officer safety as they did so. Allen even stated that while he could arrest
Knight-Walker for driving on a suspended license because it was her third offense, he was not
going to arrest her because she had been “nice” during their encounter. He merely warned her
5 We note, however, that the typical questions an officer asks related to the initial inquiry
of a traffic stop including but not limited to asking where the driver is traveling to or from; how
their day or night is going; or even if they know why they were stopped by the officer are not
implicated here. We also note that questions concerning officer safety, such as “are there any
weapons in the car?,” are not implicated here. We only address those questions which initiate a
new line of investigation separate from the original traffic offense and which subsequently
prolong the stop beyond the investigation of the traffic infraction, unless a reasonable articulable
suspicion develops, necessitating further investigation—not questions related to securing the
scene for the purposes of officer safety. Furthermore, we certainly do not adopt a per se rule that
any delay by an officer would unconstitutionally extend a traffic stop, but rather address only the
specific factual circumstances of the case presently before us. Jump to an indexed page (23 of 23)