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Name: United States v. Jensen
Case #: 04-30094
Court: US Court of Appeals
District 9 Cir
Opinion Date: 10/06/2005
Summary

Where an officer makes an arrest at the direction of other officers, information known by the other officers may form the basis for probable cause. The arresting officer here was part of a drug task force and had received information from other task force members regarding the defendant’s drug activities. On appeal from the denial of his motion to suppress, the defendant argued that the prosecution had not shown that the arresting officer had probable cause, because the officer’s testimony failed to specify precisely what information he had received regarding the defendant’s activities. The Ninth Circuit disagreed, finding that the record established that the arresting officer and other members of the task force had sufficient collective knowledge of the defendant’s drug activities to supply probable cause for his arrest. It did not matter whether the information was known to the officer who directed the arresting officer to make the arrest.