Following an evidentiary hearing, the trial court entered a detailed order granting Willie Jones’s motion to suppress, which order the State appeals. Based on the testimony given at the hearing, the court found that the police escalated a first-tier encounter to a second-tier encounter without a reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity, and that the police had no reason to believe Jones had or intended to use a weapon. Because some evidence supported the trial court’s findings, we affirm. “When reviewing a trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress, we apply the ‘any evidence’ standard, which means that we sustain all of the trial court’s findings of fact that are supported by any evidence. We construe all evidence presented in favor of the trial court’s findings and judgment.” Punctuation omitted. Davis v. State .1 In this case, it is also important to emphasize that “we have repeatedly held that a trial court has every right to disbelieve police testimony, even if it is uncontradicted.” State v. Starks .2 See State v. Alexander 3 “the trial court was . . . authorized to disbelieve the officers . . ., even though their testimony was uncontradicted by defendant”. See generally Tate v. State .4
Construed in favor of the trial court’s findings, the evidence showed that on March 14, 2007, two policemen on bicycle patrol each approached the driver’s and passenger’s sides of a vehicle respectively, where a female was leaning into the driver’s side window and a male later identified as Jones was sitting in the passenger seat. Neither officer observed the violation of any laws. After speaking briefly with the female and determining that she was fine, the officer on the driver’s side observed Jones remove a “Crown Royal” bag from the cupholder and hold it in his hand, while a pizza box lay in his lap. Jones began to exit the vehicle but was prevented from doing so by the presence of the second officer on the passenger’s side. He replaced the bag in the cupholder. The first officer asked what was in the bag, but Jones did not reply. The officer repeated his question several times, but Jones again declined to answer, at one point attempting to place the pizza box over the bag. The officer leaned into the vehicle and opened the bag so he could see its contents, which appeared to be cocaine. The officer seized the bag and determined that it contained cocaine, the drug “ecstasy,” and marijuana.
