Police officers have a warrant to arrest a guy named Delgadillo. Based on something (unstated), they think he might be in a particular hotel room in Colton. After they set up on that hotel room, two people walk out of it. They think that one of the guys is Delgadillo, so they tackle him to the ground.

But it's not Delgadillo. It's someone else.

Turns out, though, that the guy they tackled -- a teenager -- had a gun in his waistband. So they charge him (in a wardship petition) with that.

The mistakenly-tackled guy (I.H.) moves to suppress, saying the police didn't have probable cause to tackle him, since he admittedly hadn't done anything wrong (or even suspicious). But the Court of Appeal disagrees, saying:

"The officers also reasonably mistook I.H. to be Delgadillo. The arrest warrant for Delgadillo described him as a Hispanic male in his late teens or early 20s, about six feet tall, with brown or black hair and brown eyes. I.H. largely matched that description: he was 17 at the time of his arrest, about six feet tall, and has black hair and brown eyes.

I might perhaps helpfully add, however, that this basic description lumps in a huge number of Hispanic male youth. They're all in their "late teens or early 20s," a large fraction of them are "about six feet tall (around a quarter of Hispanic males are between 5'9 and 6'3), and over 90% of them have "brown or black hair and brown eyes." So we're basically saying that "If two Hispanic males walk out of a hotel room, one of them is probably the guy we're looking for, so tackle the taller one." The description that the Court of Appeal highlights as a "reasonable mistake" is so general as to be almost useless, at least for that particular ethnic group.

I'll also mention that the Court of Appeal's statement in this regard doesn't reflect either (1) that the description of Delgadillo was that he was "wearing a black sweater, dark-color hat[,] and sunglasses," and there's no indication anywhere that I.H. had any of that, and (2) the description of Delgadillo also included that he had particular tattoos on his arm, whereas I.H. didn't have any arm tattoos at all.

So the description that of Delgadillo that might perhaps to some seem fairly specific, and to closely describe I.H. as well, is actually, I think, really just a description of a wide swath of Hispanic youth.

Something to think about.