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broadly to areas in the absence of individualized, articulable facts suggesting criminal
wrongdoing. Accordingly, under these circumstances, Chisholm’s presence in a high crime area
adds no meaningful weight to the reasonable suspicion analysis.
The Virginia Supreme Court has also held that officers may not attribute a high crime
area to a defendant when they do not observe suspicious or illegal activity. In McCain, the
Virginia Supreme Court acknowledged that officers may consider whether an encounter occurs
in a high drug area as part of the overall context. 275 Va. at 553. However, the Court made
clear that a defendant’s mere presence in such an area does not, by itself, support an inference of
criminal activity. Id. The Court further rejected the officers’ attempt to attribute criminal
significance to McCain’s brief entry into a residence where a drug deal had occurred months
earlier and his quick return to his parked vehicle. Id. Instead, the Court found that the officers
had no evidence of McCain’s purpose for entering the house and did not observe any drug
transactions or other suspicious conduct. Id. Absent such evidence, the Court held that the
officers could not reasonably infer that McCain had purchased drugs simply because of the
location and his movements.14
The same reasoning controls here. Officers observed Chisholm walking down a public
street in broad daylight while carrying groceries. They received no report of criminal activity,
observed no suspicious behavior, had never interacted with him, were unaware of his criminal
history, and possessed no individualized information suggesting unlawful conduct. Like
McCain, the officers’ attempt to attach criminal significance to otherwise innocent behavior rests
14
See Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 52 (1979) (rejecting reasonable suspicion where the
record showed no indication that it was unusual for individuals to be present in the alley and
explaining that “[t]he fact that appellant was in a neighborhood frequented by drug users,
standing alone, is not a basis for concluding that appellant himself was engaged in criminal
conduct”).
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