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The John Adams Courthouse at One Pemberton Square in Boston

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Citing disproportionately high rates of interactions between Boston police officers and black men and women in the city, members of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said black people may have legitimate reasons to run from police.

The opinion was made in a ruling released Tuesday between Commonwealth vs. Jimmy Warren.

The Roxbury man was convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm. The weapon was found on Warren after he was stopped on the street in connection with a breaking and entering in a home a mile away 30 minutes prior to the stop.

Boston police officers said they had reasonable suspicion that Warren was a suspect, as the victims reported seeing several black males in their home: one wearing a red hoodie, one a black hoodie and another dressed in dark clothing. The victim reported his backpack, computer and five baseball hats missing after the burglars fled the premises.

While driving around the surrounding area, a Boston police officer reported seeing two black males walking, including one wearing a dark-colored hoodie. Neither carried a backpack.

After reporting seeing the men, two officers approached the pair. After one said, "Hey fellas," Warren ran up a hill, away from the officers.

While chasing the defendant, the officer observed the defendant "clutching the right side of his pants," court documents state, a motion the officer described "as consistent with carrying a gun without a holster."

After catching up with Warren after several blocks, the officer drew his weapon, pointed it at the man and yelled for him to show his hands and get down on the ground.

No weapon was found on his person. Within minutes of his arrest a .22 caliber firearm was found inside the front yard fence of a nearby house. When asked if he had a license to carry a firearm, Warren replied that he did not.

The highest court in Massachusetts ruled this week the guilty conviction against him would be vacated, that officers lacked any basis to question and then search Warren and his companion in the park.

Suspicion that one committed a crime must be grounded in "'specific, articulable facts and reasonable inferences [drawn] therefrom' rather than on a hunch," the court wrote in their ruling, citing a past case, Commonwealth v. DePeiza.

Officers were given insufficient detail regarding the suspects to distinguish them "from any other black male wearing dark clothes and a 'hoodie' in Roxbury," the court said. The victim did not provide facial features, hairstyles, skin tone, height weight or other distinguishing characteristics.

"With only this vague description, it was simply not possible for the police reasonably and rationally to target the defendant or any other black male wearing dark clothing as a suspect in the crime," the ruling states.

With limited information regarding the suspects, the court said officers were limited to only speaking with people in the neighborhood, possibly doing an FIO, field interrogation and observation. Such interactions between individuals and officers are consensual, the court said, and individuals have a right not to speak and to walk away from the encounter.

Additionally, the court said that when an individual does run from an officer, that doesn't imply guilt, and that previous encounters between the individual and police must be taken into consideration.

The court cited Boston police data and a ACLU of Massachusetts report that found black men and women are disproportionately stopped by Boston police. Between 2007 and 2010, 63 percent of stops by members of the Boston Police Department were of black men and women. During the same time period, just under one in every four city residents were black.

Matt Segal, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, said upon the release of the report that it showed "not just racial disparities but racial bias."

Given the pattern of "racial profiling of black males in the city of Boston," the court said they may have legitimate reasons to run from police.

"We do not eliminate flight as a factor in the reasonable suspicion analysis whenever a black male is the subject of an investigatory stop. However, in such circumstances, flight is not necessarily probative of a suspect's state of mind or consciousness of guilt. Rather, the finding that black males in Boston are disproportionately and repeatedly targeted for FIO [Field Interrogation and Observation] encounters suggests a reason for flight totally unrelated to consciousness of guilt. Such an individual, when approached by the police, might just as easily be motivated by the desire to avoid the recurring indignity of being racially profiled as by the desire to hide criminal activity. Given this reality for black males in the city of Boston, a judge should, in appropriate cases, consider the report's findings in weighing flight as a factor in the reasonable suspicion calculus."

Segal told WBUR he was pleased with the ruling.

"The state's highest court, in talking about people of color, it's saying that their lives matter and under the law, their views matter," Segal told WBUR. "The reason that's significant is that all the time in police-civilian encounters there are disputes about what is suspicious and what is not suspicious. So this is an opinion that looks at those encounters through the eyes of a black man who might justifiably be concerned that he will be the victim of profiling."

Boston Police Commissioner Bill Evans told reporters Tuesday he took issue with the court citing the ACLU report, calling it "heavily tainted against the police department."

He added, "I'm a little disappointed that they relied heavily on a report that didn't take into context who was stopped and why. That report clearly shows that we were targeting the individuals that were driving violence in the city and the hot spots."