The State appeals the grant of Robb Rheinlander’s motion to suppress evidence of Rheinlander’s refusal to take a breath test in connection with charges of driving under the influence of alcohol. It contends that the trial court erred in finding that the arresting officer lacked sufficient reasonable and articulable suspicion to make an initial investigative stop of Rheinlander. We agree and therefore reverse. “When the evidence is uncontroverted and no issues of witness credibility are presented, we review de novo the trial court’s application of the law to undisputed facts. Cit.” State v. Hammang , 249 Ga. App. 811 549 SE2d 440 2001. At the hearing on the motion to suppress, the officer who made the traffic stop was the only witness regarding the initial stop of Rheinlander.1 At approximately 2:00 a.m., the officer was on patrol in a “slick top” patrol car, without a light bar on top but with two lights in the rear and flashing strobes in the brake lights. On North Druid Hills Road near Clairmont Road, the officer saw a traffic stop in progress in the far right turn lane and stopped to see if that officer needed assistance, pulling up in the through lane next to him and turning on his emergency equipment. As he was speaking with the second officer, the first officer looked in his rear-view mirror and saw a vehicle approaching his patrol car in his lane, from behind. While he watched, expecting that the vehicle would move over, it continued to approach, then “all of a sudden at the last minute he just changes lanes, kind of had me a little anxious.”
The first officer testified that the vehicle got within “5 to 10 feet” of the rear of his patrol car before suddenly changing lanes, although he couldn’t say the exact distance, that it was close enough to alarm him and “got my adrenaline going,” and that it “almost hit me.” After the vehicle passed the police officers, it struck the yellow line, didn’t brake at first, then corrected and returned to the center of the lane. The officer decided to follow the vehicle, and it “continued to drift in his lane” until he engaged his emergency equipment and stopped it. If the officer acting in good faith believes that an unlawful act has been committed, his actions are not rendered improper by a later legal determination that the defendant’s actions were not a crime according to a technical legal definition or distinction determined to exist in the penal statute. The question to be decided is whether the officer’s motives and actions at the time and under all the circumstances, including the nature of the officer’s mistake, if any, were reasonable and not arbitrary or harassing. Citations and punctuation omitted. Hammang , supra, 249 Ga. App. at 811. Here, the trial court based its decision primarily on its assessment of Rheinlander’s perceptions of the ongoing traffic stop as he approached from behind in the dark, particularly what the trial court considered to be the reduced visibility of the “slick top” cruiser without a light bar.2 The trial court concluded that Rheinlander did not “weave, speed, go through a red light, or commit any other traffic violation” after almost hitting the officer’s car, but the trial court never rejected any of the officer’s earlier testimony as untruthful or unbelievable, simply concluding that it “must be analyzed in the context of the total facts and circumstances.”
