State v. Humphrey

No. 41 October 1, 2026 703 IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON STATE OF OREGON, Respondent on Review, v. MICHAEL ADAM HUMPHREY, Petitioner on Review. (CC 21CR50460) (CA A179475) (SC S071818) En Banc On review from the Court of Appeals.* Argued and submitted November 4, 2025, at Chemeketa Community College, Salem, Oregon. David Sherbo-Huggins, Deputy Public Defender, Oregon Public Defense Commission, Salem, argued the cause and filed the briefs for petitioner on review. Also on the briefs was Ernest G. Lannet, Chief Defender. Gregory A. Rios, Assistant Attorney General, Salem, argued the cause and filed the brief for respondent on review. Also on the brief were Dan Rayfield, Attorney General, and Benjamin Gutman, Interim Deputy Attorney General. JAMES, J. The decision of the Court of Appeals and the judgment of the circuit court are affirmed. ______________ * Appeal from Lane County Circuit Court, Kamala H. Shugar, Judge. 337 Or App 715, 564 P3d 490 (2025). 704 State v. Humphrey Cite as 375 Or 703 (2026) 705 JAMES, J. In this criminal case, officers responded to a report of an assault, where witnesses informed them that the sus- pect was a “Black male, around 45, 50 years of age,” who just “went around the corner, * * * [o]ne block down the street that way.” The officers drove a short distance in that direc- tion and saw defendant sitting alone at a bus stop. One of the officers turned on her squad car’s emergency lights, parked in a canted position in defendant’s general direction, and got out of the car to approach him, and was closely followed by a second officer who parked in a similar fashion. This case presents two questions: (1) when did a stop occur; and (2) whether, at the time the stop occurred, there was rea- sonable suspicion, as required by Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution, if that suspicion was based, in part, upon witness descriptions that relied on generalized char- acteristics of gender, age, and race. The trial court denied defendant’s motion to suppress, concluding that there was reasonable suspicion for the stop. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the relevant stop occurred when the officers activated their emergency lights. We agree that the stop occurred at that time. And although we recognize that conducting stops based upon such generalized characteris- tics as race may, in some circumstances, raise constitutional concerns, we conclude that the stop in this case met the standard of reasonable suspicion. Accordingly, we affirm. I. BACKGROUND On an October evening in 2021, Officers Mueth and Kroeker of the Eugene Police Department responded to “vague” 9-1-1 calls that two people had been hit by an assail- ant with a stick. A couple of minutes after receiving the call, the officers arrived at the scene. They remained in their vehicles and gathered information from bystanders and the victims. One of the victims told Mueth that the assailant was a 45- to 50-year-old Black male, and the victim indi- cated the direction in which the assailant had run. Kroeker could not hear the information that the victim conveyed to Meuth, but she learned from a bystander that the assailant “was a Black male wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt” and that he had just “taken a left” and “r[u]n up the street.” The 706 State v. Humphrey entire interaction lasted less than 20 seconds before Mueth drove in the direction that the bystander had indicated, and Kroeker followed Mueth in her vehicle. Mueth estimated that, about 40 seconds after she drove off, she saw defendant sitting alone at a bus stop. Mueth activated her squad car’s emergency lights, parked in a canted position, and got out of her car. Kroeker drove slightly past Mueth, parked, and likewise left her car. Kroeker later estimated that she and Mueth must have been about a block away from the original scene. Kroeker further testified that there was not a lot of foot traffic out that night, as she had only seen one woman walking. Mueth’s bodycam footage did not show the streets as she drove along them, but it appeared that no one besides the defendant was at the scene when she got out of her squad car. Upon approaching defendant, Mueth said, “Hey man, Eugene Police, so you know our contact is being recorded, so the reason for the stop tonight is we got a call that somebody was beating somebody with a baseball bat, and you match the description for the guy involved.” In the conversation that followed, defendant acknowledged that he had been in an altercation. Mueth read defendant his Miranda rights, and defendant made further incriminating statements about using a piece of bamboo to hit one of the victims. The state charged defendant with two counts of second-degree assault, two counts of unlawful use of a weapon, and two counts of menacing. Before trial, defen- dant moved to suppress all evidence obtained from the stop, arguing that Mueth stopped defendant when she parked her car in his direction with her lights activated and that she did not have reasonable suspicion justifying the stop at that time. At the hearing on defendant’s motion to suppress, the state conceded that there was a stop, but it did not specify when, in its view, the stop had occurred. Only Kroeker tes- tified at that hearing, but the state entered Mueth’s body- cam footage into evidence.1 The state argued that the two 1 Before the Court of Appeals, defendant conceded that the footage could be used to prove Mueth’s subjective belief that defendant committed a crime. State v. Humphrey, 337 Or App 715, 719, 564 P3d 490 (2025). Cite as 375 Or 703 (2026) 707 officers, working as a team, had reasonable suspicion. The court ultimately denied defendant’s motion. The court did not explicitly determine when the stop had occurred, but it concluded that both Kroeker and Mueth had reasonable suspicion based on the totality of the circumstances.2 A jury found defendant guilty on multiple counts related to the assaults. On appeal, defendant again challenged the legality of the stop. State v. Humphrey, 337 Or App 715, 717, 564 P3d 490 (2025). He argued that the stop occurred when Mueth parked and activated her car’s emergency lights. That was so, he argued, because a reasonable person in his posi- tion would have believed that, by taking such actions, the officer was exercising her official authority to detain. The state countered that the stop occurred only when the offi- cers exited their vehicles and began speaking with defen- dant. It argued that a reasonable person would conclude that the officers were conducting some kind of investigation in the vicinity by arriving on scene with emergency lights, then parking near a bus stop at an intersection in down- town Eugene, not that they were specifically investigating a single individual. The Court of Appeals concluded that a stop occurred when Mueth activated her emergency lights, because, “[w]ith no one else around, and no other obvious targets of a stop, a reasonable person would believe that they were not free to leave upon the arrival of a police car with its emergency lights on that parked pointed towards them.” Humphrey, 337 Or App at 718 (footnote omitted). As to whether reasonable suspicion justified the stop at that time, defendant argued that there was none, because Mueth was acting on nothing more than a generic description of the suspect and defendant was simply the first Black man she came across in the general vicinity of the crime. Defendant also argued that, prior to effectuat- ing the stop, Mueth could not tell whether defendant exhib- ited signs of physical exertion; and, he emphasized, he was neither running nor carrying a bat or stick when officers 2 However, when considering the admissibility of his statements, the court determined that the circumstances became compelling only after the officers Mirandized defendant, not when they approached him immediately upon contact when “officers [had] both [of] their lights flashing in their vehicles.” 708 State v. Humphrey encountered him. The state argued that, even assuming a stop had occurred before Meuth exited the vehicle, any such stop was supported by reasonable suspicion because of (1) the close match between defendant and the described sus- pect, (2) defendant’s physical proximity to the crime scene in an otherwise unoccupied location, and (3) defendant’s loca- tion soon after that crime being consistent with the direc- tion of the suspect’s flight. The Court of Appeals agreed with the state that Mueth had reasonable suspicion at the time she made the stop. Humphrey, 337 Or App at 719. It concluded that Mueth’s statements recorded on her bodycam footage—that she was stopping defendant because she had received reports of an assault with a weapon and that he matched the description of the suspect—were sufficient for the trial court to conclude that Mueth subjectively believed that defendant had com- mitted a crime. Moreover, the court agreed that Mueth’s basis for suspicion was objectively reasonable, concluding: “Mueth knew that the suspect was a Black male, aged 45 to 50, that the crime had occurred just minutes earlier, and that the suspect had fled on foot in a particular direc- tion. She came upon defendant less than a minute away from the scene, and only a few minutes after the crime had occurred, and defendant matched the information she had. Based on that information, Mueth’s belief that defendant had committed the crime was objectively reasonable.” Id. Accordingly, the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s denial of defendant’s motion to suppress. Id. II. ANALYSIS We review a trial court’s denial of a motion to sup- press for legal error, and we are bound by the trial court’s factual findings if there is constitutionally sufficient evi- dence in the record to support them. State v. Ehly, 317 Or 66, 75, 854 P2d 421 (1993) (citing Ball v. Gladden, 250 Or 485, 487-88, 443 P2d 621 (1968)). If the trial court did not make express findings of historical fact on all pertinent issues and there is evidence from which those facts could be decided in more than one way, we “presume that the facts were decided in a manner consistent with the court’s ultimate conclu- sion.” Id. (citing State v. Stevens, 311 Or 119, 126, 806 P2d Cite as 375 Or 703 (2026) 709 92 (1991)). So, too, may we consider any inferences that rea- sonably may be drawn from the evidence. State v. Juarez- Godinez, 326 Or 1, 7, 942 P2d 772 (1997). A. When did the stop occur? As a preliminary matter, we consider when the stop in this case occurred. When litigating motions to sup- press, it is helpful—for both parties and courts—to begin by identifying the specific moment in the timeline where the moving party alleges the constitutional violation occurred. Identifying that point in time will determine what informa- tion was available to the officers, and thus what information is to be properly considered in the constitutional evaluation by the court. Here, defendant argues that the stop occurred as soon as the officers activated their overhead lights. The state counters that the stop did not occur until after the officers exited their vehicles and approached defendant on foot. If the state is correct, the facts supporting reasonable suspicion for the stop would include the officer’s observa- tions while outside their vehicles, including that the defen- dant was sweating, an alleged indicator that he had recently been running. As we have recognized, there are an “infinite vari- ety” of encounters between law enforcement and citizens. State v. Holmes, 311 Or 400, 406, 813 P2d 28 (1991). Only some of those encounters implicate the prohibition against unreasonable seizures under Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution: “Analytically, police-citizen encounters typically fall into one of three categories that correlate the degree of intrusiveness on a citizen’s liberty with the degree of jus- tification required for the intrusion. At one end of the con- tinuum are mere encounters for which no justification is required. At the other end are arrests, which involve pro- tracted custodial restraint and require probable cause. In between are temporary detentions for investigatory pur- poses, often termed ‘stops,’ which generally require rea- sonable suspicion. Both stops and arrests are seizures for constitutional purposes, while less restrictive encounters are not.” State v. Fair, 353 Or 588, 593-94, 302 P2d 417 (2013). 710 State v. Humphrey A person is seized under Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution: “(a) if a law enforcement officer inten- tionally and significantly restricts, interferes with, or other- wise deprives an individual of that individual’s liberty or freedom of movement; or (b) if a reasonable person under the totality of the circumstances would believe that (a) above has occurred.” State v. Ashbaugh, 349 Or 297, 316, 244 P3d 360 (2010) (emphasis in original). An officer intentionally and significantly interferes with an individual’s liberty either by physical force or by some “show of authority.” State v. Backstrand, 354 Or 392, 399, 313 P3d 1084 (2013). For a “show of authority” to give rise to a seizure, the circum- stances must be such that a reasonable person, under the totality of the circumstances, would believe that an “offi- cer is exercising his or her official authority to restrain.” Id. at 401. That requires “something more” than the officer just asking a question, requesting information, or seeking an individual’s cooperation. Id. The “something more” can include the content or manner of questioning, or the accom- panying displays of official authority or other physical acts by the officer, if those added factors would reasonably be construed as a show of authority requiring compliance with the officer’s request. Ashbaugh, 349 Or at 317; see also Ehly, 317 Or at 76-77 (mere requests for cooperation not seizures unless officer, through demeanor, tone, language, or totality of circumstances, conveyed a restraint on liberty). The state argues that this court has previously held that “an officer’s activation of their patrol car’s overhead lights do not constitute a stop when unaccompanied by other gestures of police authority.” The state principally relies on two cases—Holmes, 311 Or 400, and State v. Gerrish, 311 Or 506, 815 P2d 1244 (1991)—for the proposition that, without more, “an officer’s activation of overhead lights nearby, or even pointed at, a person does not constitute a seizure under Article 1, section 9.” It is not entirely clear to us how far the state intends that argument to reach. To the extent that the state would read Holmes and Gerrish to hold that an indi- vidual can never be seized through the activation of over- head lights alone, and that the “gestures of police authority” accompanying overhead lights must include exiting a patrol vehicle and confronting a suspect, we disagree. Cite as 375 Or 703 (2026) 711 Holmes involved a fatal motor vehicle accident that had completely blocked travel on a bridge on Highway 197. 311 Or at 402. Officers set up a detour at the north end of the bridge to reroute southbound traffic around the accident. Id. Officers deployed flares on the highway, north of the bridge, and positioned a patrol car, with its overhead lights flash- ing, behind the flares. Id. In addition, they stationed a uni- formed officer in the center of the southbound lane, about one-half mile from the accident, to divert traffic. Id. With a flashlight in one hand, that officer motioned with his free hand for approaching vehicles to stop so that he could advise the drivers of the accident and reroute them. Id. at 403. When the officer reached the defendant’s vehicle, the driver-side window was down. Id. Shining his flashlight into the defendant’s car, the officer explained that, because of the accident on the bridge, the defendant would have to take a detour through the neighboring town. Id. As the defendant responded, the officer detected a strong odor of alcohol on the defendant’s breath and observed that his eyes appeared to be bloodshot, his eyelids were “sleepy” or not fully open, his face was flushed, and his speech was slurred. Id. The officer asked the defendant to step out of his car, the defendant ultimately failed field sobriety tests, and he was arrested for driving under the influence of intoxicants. Id. The defendant argued that the police lights had effectuated a stop. We disagreed, holding that an officer’s activation of overhead lights solely to reroute motorists around an acci- dent scene was not a seizure within the meaning of Article I, section 9. Id. at 403. In Gerrish, an officer responded to a report of an armed robbery and shooting at a resort on the Oregon Coast. 311 Or at 508. The officer positioned his patrol car to estab- lish a roadblock on the sole road leading out of the resort in order to gather information from patrons leaving the resort and potentially apprehend the perpetrator. Id. Although the officer had his emergency lights activated, the defendant ini- tially drove past the officer without stopping. Id. When the officer commanded the defendant to stop, however, he com- plied. Id. at 509. The officer asked the defendant whether he knew anything about the robbery and, observing the 712 State v. Humphrey defendant’s lack of sobriety, instructed him to remain there as the officer called for backup. Id. The defendant was later charged with driving under the influence of intoxicants, and he moved to suppress all evidence on the grounds that the officer had unlawfully seized him. Id. We rejected the defendant’s argument that the offi- cer’s conduct created a “psychologically intimidating envi- ronment” that amounted to a seizure under Article I, section 9. Id. at 512. Instead, we likened his case to Holmes, holding that the officer’s actions of flagging down the defendant to stop with his emergency lights was akin to “tapping [a] citi- zen on the shoulder at the outset to get a citizen’s attention.” Id. at 513 (brackets in Gerrish). We thus concluded that a reasonable individual would not believe that this was a sig- nificant restriction on his liberty or freedom of movement. Id. Contrary to the state’s claim, Holmes and Gerrish are distinguishable from this case.3 In Holmes, the offi- cer’s use of police lights could not reasonably be perceived as directed at anyone in particular; rather, the lights were used for general safety and traffic control, not unlike a road- side flare. Similarly, the officer in Gerrish used police lights to establish a roadblock, which indicated a generic intent to interact with all approaching motorists to gather informa- tion. Here, by contrast, the officer zeroed in on this specific defendant. She drove up to defendant, activated her emer- gency lights, and parked her patrol car in close proximity and facing his general direction before finally exiting the car to approach him. Gerrish and Holmes reflect the practical reality that there are many scenarios in which an officer might use emergency lights for reasons other than effectuating a stop. As noted, in neither case did the use of emergency lights effect a seizure. Even so, those cases do not stand for the 3 The state also briefly mentions State v. Jacobus, 318 Or 234, 864 P2d 861 (1993), but it is not applicable here. In that case, an officer pulled up behind defen- dant’s vehicle, turned on his emergency lights, and then approached the defen- dant in his car before asking him to step out. Id. at 236. We held that the stop occurred when the officer “ordered defendant out of the car.” Id. at 240. Because we did not analyze the use of emergency lights in effectuating the stop, that case is not on point. Cite as 375 Or 703 (2026) 713 proposition that the use of emergency lights alone is never enough to constitute a seizure. We further disagree with the state’s argument that a reasonable person in defendant’s position would have “conclude[d] that the officers were conducting some kind of investigation in the vicinity, most likely at the apartment building where the lights were directed.” In this case, the officers parked multiple patrol cars, whose lights were acti- vated, in canted positions nearest to the only person in the vicinity. On the facts before us, that constituted a “show of authority” from which a reasonable person would conclude that they are not free to leave.4 For that reason, like the Court of Appeals, we conclude that the stop here occurred when Mueth activated her lights and parked her car, before she exited the vehicle. B. Reasonable Suspicion and “Specific and Articulable Facts” Having concluded that defendant was stopped when Officer Mueth activated her lights and parked her car, we next consider whether the facts known to her at the time of the stop, combined with any reasonable inferences she might have drawn from those facts, were sufficient to give rise to “reasonable suspicion.” Reasonable suspicion refers to the degree of justi- fication that a police officer must have before conducting a criminal investigative stop. See, e.g., State v. Watson, 353 Or 768, 775-781, 305 P3d 94 (2013) (so explaining). The stan- dard balances the “practical necessities” of law enforcement, 4 It is well established in other jurisdictions that, given social norms, rea- sonable persons would view the targeted activation of police lights as a “show of authority” by police. Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 US 567, 575, 108 S Ct 1975 (1988) (suggesting that activating sirens or flashing lights can amount to a show of authority that constitutes a seizure); People v. Brown, 61 Cal App 4th 968, 977-78, 353 P3d 305, 312-13 (2015) (holding that a reasonable person in the defen- dant’s position would have perceived officer’s actions — pulling up behind the defendant’s legally parked car and activating his emergency lights — as a show of authority, i.e., a seizure); State v. Gantt, 163 Wash App 133, 142, 257 P3d 682, 688 (2011) (officer “made a show of authority by turning on the patrol car’s emer- gency lights”); Hudson v. State, 247 SW3d 780, 786 (Tex App 2008) (holding that “activation of the patrol car lights” caused defendant-pedestrian to yield to offi- cer’s “show of authority”); State v. Johnson, 599 SW3d 196, 201 (Mo Ct App 2020) (discussing case law suggesting that “the presence of emergency lights in pedes- trian encounters would be a show of authority effectuating a seizure”). 714 State v. Humphrey State v. Cloman, 254 Or 1, 8, 456 P2d 67 (1969), with the need “to prevent arbitrary and oppressive interference” with individual privacy and personal security. Fair, 355 Or at 602. Reasonable suspicion reflects the understanding that a stop—even a temporary and brief one—is still a “consti- tutionally significant seizure.” State v. Maciel-Figueroa, 361 Or 163, 171, 389 P3d 1121 (2017). For those reasons, reason- able suspicion is less than probable cause to arrest, State v. Holdorf, 355 Or 812, 823, 333 P3d 982 (2014), but it is beyond “mere speculation,” State v. Kreis, 365 Or 659, 665, 541 P3d 954 (2019). The legal standard for reasonable suspicion is sat- isfied if the court concludes (1) that an officer actually sus- pected that the stopped person had committed or was about to commit an identifiable crime, and (2) that the officer’s sub- jective belief was objectively reasonable under the totality of the circumstances existing at the time of the stop. Maciel- Figueroa, 361 Or at 182. In assessing reasonableness, we typically review the officer’s testimony at the suppression hearing. State v. Belt, 325 Or 6, 12, 932 P2d 1177 (1997). Specifically, we consider “the totality of the circumstances confronting a police officer and not just those circumstances that directly relate to a suspect or are personally observed by the police officer stopping a suspect.” Holdorf, 355 Or at 824. Defendant contends that, because Mueth did not testify, this court may only consider the “specific and artic- ulable” facts that Mueth verbalized in the bodycam footage. That would limit this court’s reasonable suspicion analysis to the statement that defendant “matched the description of the guy involved.” Defendant argues that our inquiry must be so limited because we would otherwise be required to speculate about additional, unarticulated facts of which Mueth may or may not have been aware. For example, defendant emphasizes that Mueth’s bodycam does not estab- lish that Mueth drove in the direction that the victim had indicated, nor that she found defendant along that path. Similarly, defendant argues that it does not necessarily fol- low from Kroeker’s general observation that there “wasn’t a heavy amount of foot traffic out” that Mueth made similar Cite as 375 Or 703 (2026) 715 observations, or that, even if she had, that those observa- tions were among Mueth’s reasons for stopping defendant. Although the lack of testimony from Mueth slightly limits the amount of information available in our analysis, we reject defendant’s suggestion that our objective analysis of the totality of the circumstances is limited to the specific and articulable facts verbalized by the officer specifically at the time of the stop. In fact, we rejected such a truncated approach in Holdorf, where we held that the Court of Appeals erred in its reasonable suspicion analysis by refusing to con- sider any information that suggested criminal activity sim- ply because it “did not ‘relate to defendant himself’ or was not personally observed” by the officer. 355 Or at 824. We recognize that this case presents a unique scenario in which an officer stated certain specific and articulable facts in her bodycam footage but was unable to appear at the suppres- sion hearing to supplement or clarify those statements. See, e.g., State v. Miller, 375 Or 173, 197-98, 589 P3d 151 (2026) (discussing more generally the challenges appellate courts have in dealing with a limited record). We agree with defen- dant that Mueth’s failure to testify limits the inferences that may be drawn from the record about what Mueth did or did not know when she made the stop. However, the lack of testimony does not preclude a reviewing court from draw- ing reasonable inferences. See Juarez-Godinez, 326 Or at 9 (accepting implicit findings about an officer’s intent and a defendant’s interpretation of an officer’s actions where those inferences could be “reasonably” inferred by a trier of fact from the record and were consistent with the trial court’s ultimate finding on the legal issue). It can be reasonably inferred from the record that Mueth knew to look for defendant in the direction that the witness indicated he had fled. Kroeker, meanwhile, learned from another bystander the direction in which the suspect had run, and she decided to follow Mueth in her vehicle. This suggests that the witnesses both said that the suspect fled in that direction. Because Mueth learned that defen- dant had fled on foot, it is also a reasonable inference that she expected to find defendant in a more limited area than if he had fled by car or bicycle. 716 State v. Humphrey Similarly, it can be reasonably inferred that Mueth knew the crime occurred, as defendant notes, “some point relatively recently,” even if she did not articulate as much during her initial contact with defendant. Although it is unclear how much time elapsed between the assault and the call to police at 9:26 p.m., the record establishes that it took only an additional ten minutes for the officers to arrive at the scene, gather information from the victims and bystand- ers, and then drive to the bus stop where Mueth initiated the stop at 9:36 p.m. At that time, one of the victims was still bleeding and the ambulance had not yet arrived. Lastly, it can be reasonably inferred from the record that Mueth noticed what Kroeker noticed—that there were, at most, only a few people out on the streets of Eugene that evening, and that defendant was the only one at or near the bus stop at the time she initiated the stop. Neither Mueth’s nor Kroeker’s bodycam footage shows the streets as they were driving. However, Kroeker testified that she saw only one woman on the street before the stop, and that there was “not a lot of foot traffic” that night. Because Kroeker followed Mueth in her vehicle on the way to the bus stop, it is reason- able to infer that Mueth would similarly have noticed the lack of pedestrian activity along the suspected flight path. The footage at the time of the stop confirms that pedestrian traffic was light: When Mueth exits her vehicle, her body- cam shows that defendant is the only one at or near the bus stop. It is only later, after the stop occurred and after three police cars were at the scene with their emergency lights on, that other individuals can be seen exiting the apartment building behind defendant. To summarize, Mueth saw an individual who was (1) one of few people out on the streets, (2) within minutes of the reported assault, (3) located about a block away, (4) in the reported suspect’s path of flight, and who (5) approxi- mated the description of the age range, gender, and race of the suspect. C. Generalized descriptions and racial profiling This brings us to the issue of generalized descrip- tions. Defendant cautions that “a generalized physical Cite as 375 Or 703 (2026) 717 description of a suspect, involving the nondescript features of gender, race, and age range is nearly always insufficient to stop a given person in a public space * * * because those factors merely generate a broad profile shared by large num- bers of people entitled to be in those public spaces at any given time.” Both parties address the issue of racial profiling. Defendant expresses a legitimate concern that relying exclu- sively on a generalized physical description is insufficient to prevent law enforcement from arbitrarily interfering with the personal security of any number of individuals who also fit that description. Defendant further argues that such prac- tices “cannot be sufficiently scrutinized by reviewing courts to ensure that intuitions and stereotypes played no part in the seizure of an individual.” To hold otherwise, defendant cautions, will diminish the rights of all Oregonians in gen- eral and racial minorities in particular. Defendant particularly cautions against using race as a matching criterion. Given the “significant variation in phenotypic expression both within and across ‘races’ (e.g., skin tone; hair color, texture, and style; and body shape) as well as those aspects of culture and ancestry that may influ- ence whether one person may categorize or misperceive the ‘race’ of another,” defendant argues, “no reasonable person could consider race alone to be a sufficient basis to believe * * * that a particular person committed a crime.” Defendant contends that a description comprised solely of general phys- ical characteristics like race must be supported by addi- tional facts to justify a stop. Absent additional corroborating facts such as “holding the instrumentalities or proceeds of the crime,” or “engaging in some other ‘remarkable’ activity reasonably indicative of having just committed the crime,” such a stop does not pass constitutional muster. We agree with defendant that it is difficult to foresee a scenario in which the generalized description of a suspect’s race, without more, would be sufficient to give an officer rea- sonable suspicion that a particular person had committed a crime. However, we perceive a critical difference between an officer’s consideration of a suspect’s race as described by a bystander to aid in identifying the observed perpetrator of 718 State v. Humphrey a known crime, and an officer’s reliance on a person’s race to generate suspicion about criminality generally. Our case law recognizes as much. In State v. Valdez, 277 Or 621, 629, 561 P2d 1006 (1977), for example, we held that officer intuition alone is not a sufficient basis to establish reasonable suspicion of a crime. In that case, officers saw the defendant and two other men preparing to enter a vehicle in a motel parking lot in a high vice area in Portland. Id. at 623. When the men detected that they were being observed, they ceased what they were doing and watched the officers. Id. Because one of the suspects had a “nice looking blue leisure suit, shiny black shoes,” and “neat” Afro, one of the officers testified that he looked like a “typical pusher.” Id. Although we acknowledged that “police develop what amounts to an intuitive sixth sense” about what amounts to reasonable suspicion, we held that “such instinct and experience cannot * * * form the entire basis for ‘reasonable suspicion,’ ” because “no practical control could be exercised over police by courts if, in the absence of any very remarkable activity, the officer’s instinct and experi- ence may be used as the sole reason to justify infringement upon the personal liberty sought to be protected.” Id. at 628. We reiterated that “shined shoes, sharp clothes, neat ‘Afro’ haircuts, and people who stand and stare at officers do not say very much—even in a setting where they are not usu- ally found.” Id.; see also State v. Miglavs, 337 Or 1, 12, 90 P3d 607 (2004) (holding that “appearance alone never can support reasonable suspicion of unlawful activity,” because “officer[ ] suspicion must be particularized to the individual based on the individual’s own conduct”); State v. Bates, 304 Or 519, 526, 747 P2d 991 (1987) (holding that “the late hour [and] the high crime rate in the area” did not alone provide reasonable suspicion that “this defendant is likely to be a criminal, unless there is some reason to think that everyone driving in that particular area at that time of night is up to no good (or is a policeman)” (italics in Bates)). Defendant’s concerns, legitimate though they may be, are not present in this record. At the time she initiated the stop, Mueth observed an individual who matched two of the general descriptors given by the bystanders (race and Cite as 375 Or 703 (2026) 719 sex), and who approximated the third one (age). That indi- vidual (i.e., defendant) appeared to be located close to the scene of the crime spatially, temporally, and in the suspect’s reported path of flight. Importantly, defendant appeared to be the only one at or near the bus stop at the time Mueth ini- tiated the stop. This is a point in the analysis that the Court of Appeals did not address, but which we view as important: The reasonableness of the stop obviously has a relationship to the surrounding environment. Responding to “They went that way!” and then encountering a person nearby in the indicated direction who matches a general description is more likely to be reasonable in an area with little-to-no foot traffic than in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. The stop in this case took place on a quiet evening in Eugene, with few people around, not in the middle of Manhattan. In light of those facts, we conclude that Mueth’s suspicion that defen- dant had committed the reported assault was objectively reasonable. III. CONCLUSION We conclude that Mueth stopped defendant when she turned her emergency lights on and parked her vehicle. Reasonable suspicion supported the stop. The decision of the Court of Appeals and the judg- ment of the circuit court are affirmed.