Riley, J.
At approximately 1:00 a.m. on May 23, 2012, Sergeant Kriston K. Weisner (Sergeant Weisner) of the Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Office observed a 1996 green Ford Thunderbird driving along U.S. 31 in Edinburgh, Indiana. As he drove behind the Thunderbird, Sergeant Weisner conducted a routine license plate check and discovered that the vehicle’s registered owner, Lucas, had an expired driver’s license. Thus, when Lucas turned into a gas station parking lot, Sergeant Weisner followed and activated the emergency lights on his patrol vehicle to initiate a traffic stop. Sergeant Weisner approached Lucas’ driver-side window and observed that she was smoking a freshly lit cigarette. Sergeant Weisner explained to Lucas that he had stopped her for driving with an expired license, to which she responded that it must have expired on her birthday, one month earlier. “Maybe a minute, two minutes” into the traffic stop, Sergeant Weisner requested that Lucas exit her vehicle, extinguish her cigarette, and accompany him to his squad car in order to “review the information and decide what we were going to do.” (Transcript pp. 22, 41). Lucas complied, and once seated in the front seats of the patrol vehicle, they “began talking about her expired license.” (Tr. p. 34). “[W]ithin a minute or so” of this discussion, Sergeant Weisner detected the odor of alcohol on her breath. (Tr. p. 34). He questioned Lucas as to whether she had been drinking, and she admitted that she had consumed four sixteen-ounce beers.
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It is clear from our readings of Wilson and Crocker that, absent reasonable suspicion or another law enforcement purpose, officers may not expand the scope of the investigatory stop if it is going to expose the individual to a more intrusive search. Accordingly, like the courts in Wilson and Crocker, we do not endorse a blanket rule precluding an officer from ever detaining a suspect in the squad car during a traffic stop. Rather, because this additional intrusion exceeds the de minimis level of intrusion established in Mimms for asking a driver to simply exit his vehicle, we hold only that Sergeant Weisner’s decision to place Lucas in the squad car must have been justified by some particular circumstance that reasonably furthered a law enforcement purpose.
Here, Sergeant Weisner could not identify one reason related to the initial purpose of the stop for needing Lucas to sit in his patrol vehicle; in fact, he readily admitted that he could have accomplished his objective at the side of her vehicle. The State offers that Lucas’ expired license would prevent her from driving herself away at the completion of the traffic stop, so she “was going to have to wait at the scene with Sergeant Weisner” until other arrangements for her transportation could be made. (State’s Br. p. 13). Therefore, the State contends that this “particularized circumstance” warranted Sergeant Weisner’s placement of Lucas in his squad car. (State’s Br. p. 13). We disagree. We first note that Sergeant Weisner never advanced this as a reason for removing her to his vehicle; he explained that he wanted to discuss her options, which he conceded he could have done at the side of her vehicle, but he did not claim that she was going to have to wait inside of his vehicle until transportation arrived. Second, at the completion of the stop, Lucas could have walked somewhere, she could have arranged for a ride and waited in her own vehicle, or she could have waited inside of the gas station. While Lucas might have requested that Sergeant Weisner wait with her until she could secure alternate transportation, the State does not explain why Lucas would have been subject to confinement in Sergeant Weisner’s vehicle. See Lewis v. State, 755 N.E.2d 1116 (Ind. Ct. App. 2001) (holding that it was reasonably necessary for the police officer to conduct a pat-down search prior to placing a motorist in the squad car where the motorist’s expired license prevented him from driving himself and he had requested that the officer transport him to a telephone).
In addition, during the suppression hearing, Sergeant Weisner explained that he requested that Lucas relocate to his squad car, “[p]artially,” because he wanted to talk to her in a controlled environment where he would be able to discern any odors of drugs or alcohol on her person as part of his “normal procedure.” (Tr. pp. 27-28). To this end, Sergeant Weisner clarified that he saw it as a “red flag” that Lucas was smoking a cigarette when he approached her vehicle because “[i]t is common that when someone has a freshly lit cigarette it could be used to mask odors inside the vehicle.” (Tr. pp. 25, 30). Although we have previously determined that “[d]etecting the odor of alcohol on a person’s breath does not constitute a search” subject to Fourth Amendment protection, Sergeant Weisner ceded that there was no evidence to indicate that Lucas was intoxicated to support the suspicion that she was trying to conceal another odor. Crump v. State, 740 N.E.2d 564, 572 (Ind. Ct. App. 2000), trans. denied. Instead, Sergeant Weisner testified that he did not observe any speeding, improper lane changes, or other erratic driving; he did not detect the odor of alcohol while he was talking with Lucas at the side of her vehicle; nor did Lucas exhibit any hallmarks of intoxication, such as glassy or bloodshot eyes, slurred speech, or unsteadiness. See Gatewood v. State, 921 N.E.2d 45, 48 (Ind. Ct. App. 2010), trans. denied. Thus, because Sergeant Weisner did not have a reasonable suspicion to investigate Lucas for operating while intoxicated until after she was inside the squad car, he did not further any legitimate law enforcement purpose related to her expired driver’s license by transferring her to his vehicle.
Finally, the State espouses the reasonableness of Sergeant Weisner’s traffic stop based on Sergeant Weisner’s testimony that Lucas voluntarily complied with his request to sit in the squad car. Although Sergeant Weisner did not inform Lucas that she had the option to remain in her own vehicle, he testified that if she had expressed her reluctance, he would have instead completed the traffic stop “at her vehicle outside of mine.” (Tr. p. 28). Because she was still clearly being stopped for her expired license, we cannot find that a reasonable person in her situation would have felt free to decline Sergeant Weisner’s request to shift the interaction to his patrol vehicle, and certainly no reasonable person would have felt free to exit the police vehicle. See Payne v. State, 854 N.E.2d 1199, 1204-05 (Ind. Ct. App. 2006), trans. denied.
. . . Here, the traffic stop was more intrusive than authorized for a permissible investigatory stop because Sergeant Weisner did not articulate a legitimate reason as to why he could not complete his investigation standing alongside Lucas’ vehicle. As a result, suppressing the evidence obtained after Sergeant Weisner unreasonably moved Lucas to his squad car is necessary as a means of deterring police officers from impinging the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment in the future. See Camp v. State, 751 N.E.2d 299, 302-03 (Ind. Ct. App. 2001), trans. denied. We therefore conclude that the trial court should have granted Lucas’ motion to suppress.
ROBB, J., concurs.
BRADFORD, J. concurs in result with separate opinion:
Although I do not believe that Sergeant Weisner’s request that Lucas sit in his patrol vehicle violated Lucas’s rights under the Fourth Amendment,1 I concur in result with the majority opinion because, under the circumstances, I believe that Lucas was subjected to an illegal custodial interrogation without first being advised of her rights. I would therefore conclude that the incriminating statements made to Sergeant Weisner and the physical evidence recovered from Lucas’s vehicle during the search incident to her arrest should have been suppressed.