United States of America v. Raphael Ross

PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
________________
No. 23-1631
________________
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
v.
RAPHAEL ROSS,
Appellant
________________
On Appeal from the United States District Court
For the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
(D.C. No. 2:21-cr-00200-001)
District Judge: Honorable Eduardo C. Robreno
________________
Argued on April 30, 2025
Before: KRAUSE, BIBAS, and MONTGOMERY-REEVES,
Circuit Judges
(Opinion filed: August 19, 2025)

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Abigail E. Horn [ARGUED]
Federal Community Defender Office
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
601 Walnut Street
The Curtis Center, Suite 540 West
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Counsel for Appellant
Sara Solow [ARGUED]
Office of United States Attorney
615 Chestnut Street, Suite 1250
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Counsel for Appellee
________________
OPINION OF THE COURT
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KRAUSE, Circuit Judge.
Traffic stops, by their very nature, are tense and often
awkward affairs. The officer walks up to the car knowing little
about the driver behind the wheel. The driver, meanwhile,
knows he is not free to leave. So some conversation is
inevitable. But under Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348
(2015), not all conversation is constitutionally equal. The
Fourth Amendment permits conversation that furthers the
stop’s mission, including questions related to processing the
infraction and officer safety, but it shuns inquiries that turn the
stop into a roving criminal investigation—unless
independently supported by reasonable suspicion.

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Here, Appellant Raphael Ross argues that the guns and
drugs found in his vehicle during a routine traffic stop should
have been suppressed because the officer’s conversation—
complimenting Ross’s watch and asking him where he
worked—exceeded Fourth Amendment bounds. He is
mistaken. Because the watch-and-job exchange, which lasted
mere seconds, furthered the stop’s mission of ensuring officer
safety, we will affirm the denial of Ross’s suppression motion
and his subsequent conviction.
I. Background
A. Factual Background1
On January 15, 2021, Philadelphia Police Department
(PPD) Officers John Smart and Danielle Foreman were
patrolling an area in South Philadelphia known for violent
crime and narcotics sales. Around 7:30 pm, the officers pulled
over a car that had windows tinted in violation of state law and
that, it turned out, was driven by Ross.2 Once the car came to
a stop, the officers approached by foot, with Officer Smart at
the driver side and Officer Foreman at the passenger side.
1 The facts here are taken from the District Court’s findings of
fact and are supplemented by undisputed facts in the record,
unless noted otherwise. See infra note 3. And “[b]ecause the
District Court denied the suppression motion,” we recount “the
facts in the light most favorable to the Government.” United
States v. Stewart, 92 F.4th 461, 466 (3d Cir. 2024).
2 Ross does not dispute that his windows were excessively
tinted, in violation of 75 Pa. Stat. and Cons. Stat. § 4524(e).

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Officer Smart first explained to Ross the reason for the
stop and then “asked him for his license, registration, and proof
of insurance.” App. 110. After “Ross produced expired
insurance and vehicle registration cards” and explained that he
“left [his license at someone’s] house,” App. 466, Officer
Smart reassured Ross “that if everything . . . checked out” with
his documents, he “wouldn’t be issued a ticket and . . . would
be on his way” with just “a warning,” App. 190, 193.
During this initial exchange, “both officers observed in
Ross signs of anxiety and nervousness including shaking
hands, stammering voice, quivering lips, heavy breathing, and
a refusal to make eye contact.” App. 466. Ross also “started
to fumble and rummage around the middle of the cabin” and
erratically move his jacket around the car—shifting it from the
passenger seat, over to his lap, and then positioning it over the
center console. Id. Ross claimed that he was looking for his
license, but neither officer believed him because Ross “had
already told [them] that he had left it at home” and “it did not
look like [he] was actually looking for anything in the jacket
but was instead simply moving it around in an odd way.” App.
466–67.
Before going back to his patrol vehicle to verify Ross’s
information, Officer Smart complimented the Rolex watch
Ross was wearing and “asked [Ross] where he worked.” App.
466.3 Ross thanked him and “answered that he owned a home
3 Whether the watch-and-job exchange occurred before,
during, or after the Officers first observed Ross fumbling with
his jacket is unclear from the District Court’s findings of fact
and the record. That said, because we must “view the facts in

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health aide business.” Id. Officer Smart promptly returned to
the patrol car to conduct the records checks, while Officer
Foreman walked over to the driver’s side window. In total, this
initial interaction lasted between 1–3 minutes, with the watch-
and-job exchange lasting around five seconds.
Back at the police cruiser, Officer Smart ran the usual
database checks to verify Ross’s identity and license status.
Those checks brought up Ross’s lengthy rap sheet, which
notably included a recent arrest for firearm possession.
Recognizing the arresting officer’s name, Officer Smart
phoned that colleague for the story behind the charge and
learned that Ross had been caught with a gun after he resisted
and “fought . . . police officers” during a routine traffic stop.
App. 467. The colleague urged Officer Smart to quickly “call
for backup,” and he took that advice. App. 467. All told, the
database queries and call consumed roughly 5–7 minutes.
Meanwhile, Officer Foreman remained at Ross’s
driver’s side window. She tried to strike up a casual
conversation with Ross by asking him “about where he was
coming from [and] where he was going.” Reply Br. 9. Still,
“Ross continued to avoid eye contact and to shake, stammer,
and breathe heavily while reaching around the center console
with his jacket.” App. 468. When Officer Foreman asked “why
he was nervous,” Ross began fishing under the front seat.
Reply Br. 9. Twice Officer Foreman told him to plant “his
hands on the steering wheel”; twice he ignored her—instead
“reaching around” the interior of the car where Officer
Foreman “could not see.” App. 468. Ross then tried opening
the light most favorable to the Government,” we presume it
occurred simultaneously or after. Stewart, 92 F.4th at 466.

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the driver’s side door until Officer Foreman wedged her body
in its path.
Officer Smart rejoined the scene a moment later and
“asked Ross whether there were any ‘firearms’” or drugs in the
car. App. 468. Ross “giggled and said no,” but his gaze
remained fixed straight ahead, and Officer Smart “observed
that Ross continued to appear very nervous and continued to
reach towards the center console and move his jacket around.”
App. 468–69. At this juncture, both officers shared the concern
that Ross might be armed.
Backup arrived soon thereafter, and Officer Smart
ordered Ross out of the car and frisked him for weapons. Smart
found a wad of cash in Ross’s back pocket, which Ross claimed
was for his grandfather’s funeral. Officers Smart and Foreman
then frisked the front interior of the car for weapons and
recovered a semi-automatic pistol and 136 packets of fentanyl
and heroin hidden in the center console.
B. Procedural History
Based on the contraband found in his car, Ross was
charged with: (1) possession of a firearm as a felon,4 in
violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1); (2) possession with intent
to distribute a controlled substance, in violation of 21 U.S.C.
§ 841; and (3) possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug
trafficking crime, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A). He
4 At the time of the traffic stop, Ross was on federal supervised
release stemming from two earlier felony convictions—
possessing a gun with an obliterated serial number and selling
crack cocaine within 1000 feet of a playground.

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then sought to exclude that evidence—which, in effect, would
have necessitated dismissal of the indictment—by filing a
suppression motion in the District Court. Relying on
Rodriguez, Ross contended that the officers impermissibly
extended the duration of the stop, in violation of the Fourth
Amendment, when Officer Smart asked him about his
employment.
At the suppression hearing, both officers recounted how
the stop had played out. Officer Foreman, who has pulled over
“ton[s]” of other drivers, testified that Ross was in the “top
five” most nervous drivers with whom she had ever interacted.
App. 113. Officer Smart, who himself had previously
“conducted hundreds of traffic stops,” similarly described Ross
as unusually and “extremely nervous” and explained that he
“complimented [Ross’s] watch” as “an icebreaker to calm him
down [and] find a common ground of conversation.” App.
190, 192. He also testified that he “always make[s] simple
conversation” during traffic stops to help drivers feel “more
comfortable and relaxed” instead of “nervous . . . and tense.”
App. 253.
The District Court denied Ross’s motion. It credited the
officers’ testimony and concluded that the brief watch-and-job
exchange was mere “small talk” designed to “‘calm [Ross]
down’” and thus did not amount to a “Rodriguez moment.”
App. 466, 473 (alteration in original). And it concluded that
the subsequent frisk of Ross and his car was consistent with the
Fourth Amendment because, by that time, the officers had
reasonable suspicion that Ross was armed or had a gun within
his reach.

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Ross subsequently pleaded guilty to all three counts but
preserved his right to challenge the denial of the motion to
suppress. Having been sentenced to 120 months’
imprisonment and a three-year term of supervised release, Ross
now timely appeals the denial of his suppression motion.5
II. Discussion6
Ross contends that the District Court erred by denying
his motion to suppress because the watch-and-job exchange
violated the Fourth Amendment. We exercise plenary review
over a district court’s legal determinations and review its
factual findings for clear error. United States v. Clark, 902
F.3d 404, 409 (3d Cir. 2018). “Whether a traffic stop was
5 Although Ross also argues that 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) is
unconstitutional facially and as applied to him, he concedes
that his challenge is “currently precluded for two reasons.”
Opening Br. 24. He is correct. First, because he failed to
preserve this argument, we review for plain error, United States
v. Dorsey, 105 F.4th 526, 528 (3d Cir. 2024), and it is far from
obvious under our caselaw that disarming a person with
firearm and drug-trafficking convictions violates the Second
Amendment, see Pitsilides v. Barr, 128 F.4th 203, 213 (3d Cir.
2025) (explained that drug trafficking is the kind of conviction
that justifies disarmament). Second, because Ross possessed a
firearm while serving a term of federal supervised release, his
facial and as-applied challenge to § 922(g)(1) is foreclosed by
United States v. Moore, 111 F.4th 266, 273 & n.5 (3d Cir.
2024), and United States v. Quailes, 126 F.4th 215, 221 (3d
Cir. 2025).
6 The District Court had jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3231,
and we have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291 and 3742(a).

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unlawfully extended is a question of law” that we review de
novo. United States v. Hurtt, 31 F.4th 152, 158 n.45 (3d Cir.
2022). And because the motion to suppress was denied, we
must “view the facts in the light most favorable to the
Government” and draw reasonable inferences in its favor.
United States v. Garner, 961 F.3d 264, 269 (3d Cir. 2020).
A. Rodriguez Framework
Traffic stops—however brief—are seizures, so the
Fourth Amendment requires they “be ‘[]reasonable’ under the
circumstances.” Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 810
(1996). A traffic stop is reasonable at its inception when an
officer has reasonable suspicion to believe that the motorist
committed a traffic violation. United States v. Delfin-Colina,
464 F.3d 392, 396–97 (3d Cir. 2006). Like a Terry stop,
however, “the tolerable duration of police inquiries in the
traffic-stop context is determined by the seizure’s ‘mission’—
to address the traffic violation that warranted the stop and
attend to related safety concerns.” Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 354
(quoting Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 407 (2005)). For
that reason, a lawful traffic stop that was justified at the outset
only by a traffic violation transforms into an unconstitutional
seizure “if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably required
to complete” that dual mission. Id. at 350–51 (quoting
Caballes, 543 U.S. at 407).
Under Rodriguez, inquiries that further the stop’s
mission, when made with reasonable diligence, do not
unreasonably prolong the stop and thus are permitted under the
Fourth Amendment. “Beyond determining whether to issue a
traffic ticket,” on-mission tasks include “ordinary inquiries
incident to [the traffic] stop,” such as “checking the driver’s

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license, determining whether there are outstanding warrants
against the driver, and inspecting the automobile’s registration
and proof of insurance.” Id. at 355 (quoting Caballes, 543 U.S.
at 408). “Tasks tied to officer safety are also part of the stop’s
mission when done out of an interest to protect officers.”
Clark, 902 F.3d at 410. This includes ordering drivers and
passengers out of the car, even in the absence of any articulable
suspicion of possible danger, Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S.
408, 414–15 (1997), “asking limited questions directed at
ensuring officer safety,” United States v. Cortez, 965 F.3d 827,
838 (10th Cir. 2020), conducting “routine criminal record
check[s],” even if they take several minutes, United States v.
Hunter, 88 F.4th 221, 225–26 (3d Cir. 2023), and other
“negligibly burdensome precautions” reasonably taken to
safely complete the stop, Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 356, as well
as “delays caused by safety concerns related to the stop,”
Garner, 961 F.3d at 271.
In contrast, “measure[s] aimed at detect[ing] evidence
of ordinary criminal wrongdoing,” including a dog sniff,
“safety precautions taken in order to facilitate” on-scene
“investigation into other crimes,” and other fishing expeditions
fall outside of the scope of the stop’s mission of processing the
ticket and ensuring roadway safety. Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at
355–56 (cleaned up). At the moment when an off-mission
inquiry measurably prolongs a stop—sometimes called the
“Rodriguez moment”—the officers must have developed
“reasonable suspicion” of criminal activity independent of the
traffic violation itself. United States v. Green, 897 F.3d 173,
179 (3d Cir. 2018). Otherwise, the extension of the stop
violates the Fourth Amendment.

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“There is no de minimis exception to t[he] rule” in
Rodriguez. Clark, 902 F.3d at 410. So any off-mission task
that “measurably extend[s] the duration of the stop” beyond the
time it “reasonably should have been . . . completed” is
unlawful unless supported by reasonable suspicion.
Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 354–55 (cleaned up). But even so,
Rodriguez’s standard accommodates the on-the-ground
realities of a roadside seizure, for the “acceptable length of a
routine traffic stop . . . cannot be stated with mathematical
precision.” United States v. Hill, 852 F.3d 377, 381 (4th Cir.
2017) (cleaned up). Accordingly, “fleeting[]” off-mission
inquiries lasting “mere seconds” typically will “not measurably
prolong the stop.” United States v. Taylor, 60 F.4th 1233, 1239
(9th Cir. 2023).7 As more seconds tick by, however, the risk
of unlawful prolongation increases.8
7 See, e.g., United States v. Puckett, 139 F.4th 730, 739 (8th
Cir. 2025) (concluding that “20 seconds of [off-mission]
questioning did not prolong the stop beyond the time that it”
reasonably should have lasted); United States v. Buzzard, 1
F.4th 198, 204 (4th Cir. 2021) (finding that a single question
asked “mid-stop” “didn’t extend the stop by even a second”);
People v. Chavez–Barragan, 379 P.3d 330, 337 (Colo. 2016)
(holding that “brief off-topic questions” about guns, drugs, and
stolen goods “did not transform the traffic stop into a seizure
of unreasonable duration”).
8 See, e.g., Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348, 352
(2015) (holding that a “seven or eight minute” delay was a
measurable extension); United States v. Campbell, 26 F.4th
860, 885 (11th Cir. 2022) (en banc) (concluding that off-
mission questioning lasting “approximately twenty-five
seconds” measurably extended a stop); United States v.
Garner, 961 F.3d 264, 271 (3d Cir. 2020) (assuming “five

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Under Rodriguez, therefore, an unlawful seizure occurs
when an officer (1) diverts from the infraction-and-safety-
based mission of the stop to investigate other criminal conduct,
(2) in a way that meaningfully prolongs the stop, and (3) the
investigative detour is unsupported by any independent
reasonable suspicion. Green, 897 F.3d at 179.
B. Officer Questioning Under Rodriguez
Ross does not contest the legality of the initial stop—he
argues instead that Officer Smart impermissibly extended the
scope and duration of the stop when he complimented Ross’s
Rolex and asked Ross what he did for a living. Although
Rodriguez draws a bright line between on and off mission
inquiries, this dispute highlights how some conversations
evade easy classification. The parties and the District Court,
for example, characterize the watch-and-job exchange in three
distinct ways: The District Court concluded it was mere “small
talk,” App. 466; Ross argues it marked the launching of a
“criminal investigation,” Opening Br. 12; and the United States
describes it as having been “made to calm the defendant and
avoid an escalation,” thus falling squarely in the realm of
safety-related activities blessed by Rodriguez, Answering Br.
26.
Despite the prevalence of casual exchanges during
routine traffic stops on matters facially unrelated to the traffic
minutes” of off-mission questioning “measurably extended the
traffic stop”); United States v. Landeros, 913 F.3d 862, 867
(9th Cir. 2019) (finding that “several minutes of [off-mission]
questioning” was an unlawful extension).

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infraction or safety, including employment,9 the outer bounds
of such roadside “small talk” remain hazy after Rodriguez.
Having benefited from superb oral advocacy on both sides of
this case, we aim to bring clarity to those boundaries here.
While this Court has not explicitly advanced a framework for
categorizing police questions during a routine traffic stop, we
have implicitly recognized that roadside questioning can be
placed into the four categories discussed below, three of which
pass constitutional muster, and the fourth of which, if not
supported by reasonable suspicion that the driver has
committed a crime independent of the traffic violation, violates
the Fourth Amendment.
1. Small Talk: The first category is pure small talk,
encompassing anodyne conversation that carries no
constitutional significance and instead simply rides sidecar to
the stop’s mission. This encompasses common greetings and
courtesies, including in the form of questions. As Ross
recognizes, “pleasantries about the weather” or innocuous
compliments like “nice Eagles jersey,” for instance, have no
constitutional significance. Reply Br. 4. Such social graces
are neither investigatory in nature, nor do they meaningfully
prolong the stop. They are customary cultural expectations and
practices. Nothing in the Constitution requires officers to
behave like robotic “automatons” or demands “stony silence”
9 See, e.g., United States v. Englehart, 811 F.3d 1034, 1037
(8th Cir. 2016); United States v. Williams, No. CR 22-418,
2023 WL 6626126, at *5 (E.D. Pa. Oct. 11, 2023); United
States v. Stewart, No. 3:18-CR-00310, 2021 WL 2478440, at
*2 (M.D. Pa. June 17, 2021), aff’d, 92 F.4th 461 (3d Cir. 2024);
United States v. Romero-Mendez, No. 116-CR-00204, 2018
WL 2191540, at *2 (S.D. Ind. May 14, 2018).

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on the side of the road. United States v. Steinman, 130 F.4th
693, 707 (9th Cir. 2025). So long as small talk occurs in the
flow of the stop, it poses no Fourth Amendment problem. See,
e.g., Green, 897 F.3d at 176–77 (officer’s forty-second inquiry
of “How you doin’ today?” and why the person was driving
from Philadelphia was not a Rodriguez moment); United States
v. Mason, 628 F.3d 123, 131 (4th Cir. 2010) (“[Q]uestions
about the weather or simply ‘How ‘bout them Georgia
Bulldogs?’ do not implicate the Fourth Amendment” unless
extended “beyond the period reasonably necessary to
effectuate the purposes of the lawful detention”).
2. Infraction-Related Inquiries: The second category
includes questions aimed at assessing whether the driver is
legally on the road and processing the ticket. This includes,
among other things, requests for license, registration, and proof
of insurance; questions about the traffic infraction; and
context-framing inquiries about the driver’s travel history and
plans. See Garner, 961 F.3d at 271; United States v. Yusuf, 993
F.3d 167, 182 (3d Cir. 2021); Clark, 902 F.3d at 411
(suggesting that an officer may “ask[] questions” to “test[] a
driver’s candor about his authority to operate a vehicle”).
Even if some of these stop-related questions might incidentally
reveal more than the officer bargained for, they remain
“ordinary inquiries incident to [the traffic] stop” and thus
squarely on-mission under Rodriguez. 575 U.S. at 355
(alteration in original) (quoting Caballes, 543 U.S. at 408).
Employment questions may fall in this category,
depending on context. This Court has held, for instance, that
an officer can ask “questions about the driver’s occupation” to
assess a driver’s sobriety during a DUI stop. Hurtt, 31 F.4th at
161. Other observations or the context of preceding

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conversation might also render such inquiry unremarkable. As
recognized by our sister circuits, for example, if a driver
volunteers that he is traveling for work, asking the driver
“about what he d[oes] for a living” falls “comfortably within
the bounds of reasonable follow-up questions.” United States
v. Dion, 859 F.3d 114, 118, 126 n.7 (1st Cir. 2017); see also
United States v. Cole, 21 F.4th 421, 433 (7th Cir. 2021) (en
banc) (“[Because the driver] initially volunteered his
occupation . . . in response to a question about his license and
registration and repeatedly returned to it when explaining his
travel and living situation, . . . it was reasonable for [the officer]
to ask a few follow up questions about it.”).
3. Safety-Related Inquiries: Officer and roadway safety
is mission-critical. Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 356. So
“question[s] related to officer safety a[re] related to the traffic
stop’s mission.” United States v. Buzzard, 1 F.4th 198, 203 (4th
Cir. 2021). Questions directly tied to officer safety, such as
asking the driver whether there are any passengers in the car or
if he has any weapons on him, are always permitted on officer-
safety grounds. See, e.g., Taylor, 60 F.4th at 1240. The same
is true of brief, direct questioning about the driver’s past
arrests, criminal record, or “parole status”—asked before the
officer conducts a computerized criminal history check—
because knowing a driver’s criminal background helps officers
“assess[] potential risks involved in a traffic stop” and gauge
what “additional precautions” may be necessary. United States
v. Ramirez, 98 F.4th 1141, 1144–45 (9th Cir. 2024); see also
United States v. Cone, 868 F.3d 1150, 1153–54 (10th Cir.
2017) (concluding that “criminal-history questions [a]re not
unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment” when the
requested information does “not exceed the scope of what a
computer check would reveal”); cf. Clark, 902 F.3d at 410–11

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(concluding that extensive criminal history questioning,
performed after officer conducted computerized criminal
history check, was “not tied to the traffic stop’s mission”
because the officer already knew the answers to his questions).
But direct questioning is not the only safety-driven
dialogue permitted by the Fourth Amendment. Brief, casual
questioning aimed at gauging risks or deescalating a situation
may also qualify as “reasonable precautionary measures during
traffic stops to ensure the safety of [officers] and others.”
United States v. Weaver, 9 F.4th 129, 143 n.57 (2d Cir. 2021).
Picture a late-night stop: a lone officer, a jittery driver whose
hands tremble on the wheel, and an anxious passenger peering
from the backseat. Reading the social cues in the moment, an
officer might reasonably decide that immediately ordering the
driver out of the car or demanding to know whether he is armed
would ratchet tension up, not down, and that a few low-stakes,
rapport-building questions—“Long day at work?” “Nice
pickup; how long have you had it?”—would do more to calm
nerves and keep everyone safe. Plus, that kind of safety-related
small talk allows for observation of a speaker’s coherence,
agitation, and impairment—“important clues pertaining to
safety” that give the solo officer a read on whether more direct
precautions are needed. Cone, 868 F.3d at 1153 (quoting
United States v. Holt, 264 F.3d 1215, 1224 (10th Cir. 2001) (en
banc)). Therefore, depending on the circumstances, a few
easygoing questions can fall squarely within Rodriguez’s
allowance for “negligibly burdensome precautions” that
advance officer safety. 575 U.S. at 356.
In sum, when asked “out of an interest to protect
officers,” Clark, 902 F.3d at 410, and “supported by
objectively reasonable safety concerns,” Hunter, 88 F.4th at

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226, some questions that appear on their face unrelated to
safety, including employment questions, may nevertheless fall
within this category of permissible safety-promoting inquiries,
see, e.g., Cortez, 965 F.3d at 839 (questions about what driver
and “her boyfriend did for a living” and with “whom she was”
living were permissible “inquiries directed at ensuring officer
safety”).
4. Off-Mission Inquiries: Questions that cannot be
reasonably characterized as relating to roadway safety or the
traffic violation fall within the fourth category, which includes
inquiries designed “to facilitate” on-scene “investigation into
other crimes” and to “detect crime in general or drug
trafficking in particular.” Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 356–57.
Although our objective inquiry under Rodriguez is context-
dependent, certain questions would hardly serve any other
purpose. See, e.g., United States v. Campbell, 26 F.4th 860,
885 (11th Cir. 2022) (en banc) (concluding that “Do you have
any counterfeit merchandise?” and “Have any dead bodies in
your car?” were “fairly obviously . . . precisely the type of
questions Rodriguez prohibits”) (cleaned up); United States v.
Gomez, 877 F.3d 76, 91 (2d Cir. 2017) (holding that an officer
“‘detour[ed] from th[e] mission’ of the stop” by asking the
driver narcotics-related questions “from the moment that [the
officer] first approached the [car]” (quoting Rodriguez, 575
U.S. at 356)).
Conversely, depending on the facts of a stop, a question
that appears off mission on its face may in fact promote safe
completion of the stop and thus relate to the stop’s mission. In
Buzzard, for example, the Fourth Circuit concluded that an
officer’s “single question” near the beginning of the stop—“Is
there anything illegal in the vehicle?”—was best understood as

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an inquiry about whether there was “anything dangerous in the
vehicle” and thus “related to officer safety and . . . the traffic
stop’s mission” because, in that context, it was asked by a solo
officer, who was “outnumbered” during a late-night stop in a
high-crime area, and both occupants exhibited “abnormal”
behavior. 1 F.4th at 202–04 (“[W]e decline to require such
laser-like precision from an officer asking a single question in
these circumstances.”); compare United States v. Gorman, 859
F.3d 706, 711, 715 (9th Cir. 2017) (asking driver “if there was
anything illegal in his car” 20 minutes into the stop after the
citation was processed and when driver should have been “free
to go” was off-mission inquiry). In short, context matters when
assessing roadside questioning.
Employment questions, when deployed as a pretext to
sniff out unrelated criminal activity, can veer into this
investigative lane. As we held in Garner, an officer who asked
a driver “about his employment” and then followed up with
“five minutes” of intense questions about “family, criminal
history, and other conduct unrelated to the traffic stop” went
off mission because these inquiries could not reasonably be
justified on infraction-processing or safety grounds. 961 F.3d
at 271. And other courts have repeatedly concluded that an
officer’s repetitive and in-depth questions about a driver’s
employment, especially when paired with other probing
questions, fall outside the stop’s mission. See, e.g., United
States v. Boatright, 678 F. Supp. 3d 1014, 1037 (S.D. Ill.
2023); United States v. Carillo Rea, 393 F. Supp. 3d 1025,
1032–33 (D. Mont. 2019).
To be sure, off-mission questions designed to uncover
unrelated criminal conduct are nevertheless permitted, even
without reasonable suspicion, when they do not meaningfully

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“lengthen the roadside detention.” Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 354.
This situation may arise when the investigatory questioning
occurs “simultaneously with tasks that f[a]ll within the mission
of the traffic stop,” such as when an officer is multitasking,
Steinman, 130 F.4th at 707, or where one officer expeditiously
completes all traffic-related tasks while another officer makes
the off-mission inquiries, see, e.g., Arizona v. Johnson, 555
U.S. 323, 333 (2009) (investigative questioning of passenger
did “not measurably extend the duration of the stop” because
another officer was running the driver’s license, insurance, and
registration). But if the stop is meaningfully prolonged beyond
the time it should reasonably take, the questioning violates the
Fourth Amendment unless supported by independent
reasonable suspicion. See Campbell, 26 F.4th at 885.
* * *
Distilling the above case law on Rodriguez and officer
questioning to practical guidance, questions that initially
appear unrelated to officer safety may nonetheless qualify as
on-mission, safety-related inquiries when: (1) the officer has
an articulable basis for safety concerns grounded in observable
facts; (2) the questions in context can be reasonably understood
as relating to those safety concerns, such as an effort to defuse
tension, assess demeanor, determine the degree of caution
needed, or evaluate whether the driver presents a threat; and
(3) the officer does not prolong the stop with unrelated follow-
up inquiries once reassured. With that framework in mind, we
consider whether the watch-and-job exchange fits the bill.

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C. The Watch-and-Job Exchange Did Not
Unlawfully Prolong the Stop
Ross concedes that “benign” small talk has “no
constitutional significance.” Opening Br. 19–20. And he does
not contest that Officer Smart and Officer Foreman’s actions
after the watch-and-job exchange as they processed his tint
violation—running of records checks, placing a phone call to a
fellow officer, and questioning him about where he was
going—were all on-mission measures taken to administer the
traffic ticket while ensuring officer safety, in line with
Rodriguez. But as Ross points out, after complimenting his
Rolex, Officer Smart asked him what he did for a living. This
question, in Ross’s view, transformed otherwise legitimate
small talk into an impermissible investigative inquiry. We
disagree.
True, because expensive items lacking a verified,
legitimate explanation can be used as circumstantial evidence
of drug dealing, see United States v. Chandler, 326 F.3d 210,
215 (3d Cir. 2003), the watch-and-job exchange, when
considered in isolation, could be viewed as a lead-in to an
unconstitutional fishing expedition, see Steinman, 130 F.4th at
700, 707 (describing officer asking driver “whether he had ever
been in any trouble” and “how he obtained the money to
purchase his BMW” as “arguably investigatory questioning”
but not deciding the question because it “occurred
simultaneously with tasks that fell within the mission of the
traffic stop” and thus was not a Rodriguez moment). But it also
could be understood as a simple compliment and “innocuous
background question[]” crafted “to assess driver stress,
nervousness, and evasiveness to help gauge the degree of
caution necessary in conducting a stop,” as the Tenth Circuit

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concluded in Cortez, when it held that an officer’s questions
related to whether the driver “was working,” “what her
boyfriend did for a living,” and with “whom she was” living
were “permissible . . . inquiries directed at ensuring officer
safety.” 965 F.3d at 839. In this case, however, we do not
consider the watch-and-job exchange in a vacuum. In
reviewing the denial of Ross’s motion to suppress, we defer to
the District Court’s finding of fact and view the evidence in the
light most favorable to the Government. Garner, 961 F.3d at
269. And in this context, when considering the interaction in
its totality, Officer Smart’s remarks fall within the zone of
constitutionally permissible safety-driven dialogue.
First, the officers had “objectively reasonable safety
concerns.” Hunter, 88 F.4th at 226. Ross exhibited clear signs
of extreme anxiety and nervousness, including shaking hands,
stammering voice, quivering lips, heavy breathing, profuse
sweating, and a refusal to make eye contact. As Officer
Foreman testified, Ross was “in the top five of how nervous”
someone could be—“something was off.” App. 113. Beyond
that, Ross kept making abnormal hand movements, including
erratically shifting his jacket across the seats and center
console and fumbling around the interior of his car. His
explanation for such movements—that he was looking for his
license—was incongruous with both his earlier statements that
he left it at home and his shifting of the jacket without checking
the pockets. At this point, a reasonable officer would be
concerned that Ross “may have committed (or may be about to
commit) a serious crime,” was preparing to fight or flee, or was
“drunk, on drugs, armed, or some combination thereof.”
Barnes v. Felix, 145 S. Ct. 1353, 1361 (2025) (Kavanaugh, J.,
concurring).

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Second, Officer Smart articulated a non-investigatory
reason for his interaction, consistent with social custom, i.e.,
that he, like many officers in this country, routinely uses small
talk to calm “nervous” and “tense” motorists. App. 253. In
testimony the District Court credited, Officer Smart explained
that he is a fan of watches and that he complimented Ross’s
Rolex because it was the first thing he noticed and thought it
provided a “common ground of conversation.” App. 192, 252.
Viewing the watch conversation “through a filter of common
sense and ordinary human experience,” Cortez, 965 F.3d at 840
(citation omitted), and drawing reasonable inferences in the
Government’s favor, as we must, Garner, 961 F.3d at 269, it
provided a natural entry point of conversation between the two
strangers. In this context, we, like the District Court, see the
compliment merely as an icebreaker aimed at making Ross
“calm” and thus falling within the third category of permissible
officer-safety related exchanges under Rodriguez. United
States v. Ross, No. 21-cr-200, 2022 WL 16963247, at *1 (E.D.
Pa. Nov. 16, 2022).
Ross points out correctly that the follow-up question
about what he did for a living fits less neatly with Officer
Smart’s asserted interest in reducing the temperature of the
stop—but it fits nonetheless. Smart testified that this was his
first time seeing a Rolex during a stop, and that, as a watch
enthusiast, he was naturally curious about what Ross did for a
living—so he reflexively asked Ross about it. That follow-up
question, while perhaps inartful, was one a reasonable officer
could believe would establish a rapport with a driver, diffuse
tension, and “‘provide important clues pertaining to safety,’
such as nervous or evasive responses.” Cone, 868 F.3d at
1153–54 (quoting Holt, 264 F.3d at 1124). It was also
consistent with Officer Smart’s other temperature-reducing

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measures, including telling Ross that he would get off with just
a warning if his story checked out.
Ross insists that the watch-and-job exchange was not
safety-related because it was neither optimally calming nor
soothing. True, the job question might be more appropriate
during a cocktail party than a traffic stop. But “[t]raffic stops
are very fluid and dynamic encounters between police and
ordinary members of the public,” and the Fourth Amendment
is not blind to the realities of human interaction. Hunter, 88
F.4th at 233 (McKee, J., concurring). Nor does it reduce
officers’ car-side questions to rote recitation. Cf. Florida v.
Powell, 559 U.S. 50, 60 (2010) (Miranda-warning recitation
need not be exact). To the contrary, because even routine
traffic stops are “inherently risky for police officers,” Barnes,
145 S. Ct. at 1361 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring), officers must
have flexibility in how they navigate around potential safety
hazards, see United States v. Mayville, 955 F.3d 825, 832 (10th
Cir. 2020) (explaining that “the Fourth Amendment does not
require officers to use the least intrusive or most efficient
means conceivable to effectuate a traffic stop”). Here, “given
the importance of officer safety and the Supreme Court’s
repeated recognition that ‘[t]raffic stops are especially fraught
with danger to police officers,’” Buzzard, 1 F.4th at 204
(quoting Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 356), we will not second-guess
the officer’s reasonable question in the course of a diligently
completed stop.
Third, neither officer asked any “repetitive,” intrusive,
or “in depth” questions after the brief exchange. Cortez, 965
F.3d at 840. Importantly, Officer Smart did not use Ross’s
answer as a springboard to justify further inquiry or facilitate a
“detour” into investigating unrelated crimes. Rodriguez, 575

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U.S. at 356. After learning that Ross owned a home-health
aide business, Officer Smart did not follow up about his work,
income, or any other matter beyond the traffic stop itself. See
Cole, 21 F.4th at 431–32 (“It is only when an officer’s follow-
up questions go too far and become unreasonable that a stop
risks becoming prolonged.”). Instead, “apparently satisfied
that more precautions were unnecessary, he immediately
returned to the business of completing the stop.” Cortez, 965
F.3d at 839. And once Officer Smart was back at the patrol
car “diligent[ly] . . . performing” the tasks related to processing
the tint violation, Yusuf, 993 F.3d at 182, Officer Foreman, as
Ross concedes, had a free pass to ask him any questions she
wanted without impermissibly lengthening the stop, see
Arizona, 555 U.S. at 333. Yet she notably did not use this
occasion to question Ross about his home-health-aide
business, his watch, his money, or anything related to drug
trafficking. Nor did she take any non-verbal steps that might
have marked an advancement of an off-mission investigation,
such as surveilling his car for evidence of other crimes.
Finally, the length of the discussion was minimal—lasting
mere seconds—so it was negligibly burdensome.10 Hunter, 88
10 Of course, the brevity of the roadside chat is also relevant to
Rodriguez’s second prong: Whether the stop was meaningfully
prolonged “beyond the time reasonably required to complete
th[e] mission.” 575 U.S. at 350–51 (alteration in original); see
supra notes 7 & 8. We need not decide whether the watch-
and-job exchange measurably extended the stop, however,
because the exchange was “related to officer safety and thus
related to the traffic stop’s mission,” meaning that the job
“question didn’t extend the stop by even a second.” Buzzard,
1 F.4th at 203–04; see Garner, 961 F.3d at 271 (explaining that

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F.4th at 226 (holding that a reasonable safety precaution lasting
“approximately two minutes . . . f[e]ll[] squarely within the
confines of the stop’s mission”). Therefore, the safety-
adjacent compliment and question was permissible as it was
brief, proportional to the circumstances, and tethered to the
moment.
Ross insists that the question was necessarily
investigative because both officers automatically assumed he
was a drug dealer once he told them he owned a home-health-
aide business. True, both officers testified that “home health
aide” is a common occupation provided by drug dealers. App.
129, 192. But a permissible question does not transform into
an investigative one simply because the driver replies with a
potentially incriminating answer. See Rhode Island v. Innis,
446 U.S. 291, 301–02 (1980) (“[T]he police surely cannot be
held accountable for the unforeseeable results of their words or
actions.”). Whether a particular question was designed to elicit
criminal information is an objective assessment, Hunter, 88
F.4th at 224, and Ross cannot point to anything in the record
suggesting that his answer to the job question influenced the
rest of the stop in any way. So viewed objectively, the safety-
related small talk was just that—brief conversation to tone
down the encounter for the safety of all involved.
* * *
Under Rodriguez, when officer questioning leaves the
safety lane and merges into investigative territory, that lane
switch requires independent reasonable suspicion. Yet
“delays caused by safety concerns related to the stop” are “tied
to the [stop’s] mission”).

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reasonableness remains the touchstone of the Fourth
Amendment, and what is reasonable depends on the
circumstances of a case. Lange v. California, 594 U.S. 295,
301 (2021). When looking at the totality of the circumstances
and “view[ing] the facts in the light most favorable to the
Government,” as we must, Stewart, 92 F.4th at 466, the watch-
and-job exchange stayed within reasonable limits given the
objective safety concerns. In this context, Officer’s Smart’s
compliment and single “question[] is consistent with both the
public’s expectations regarding ordinary inquiries incidental to
traffic stops and taking the least burdensome approach to
ensuring officer safety.” Cortez, 965 F.3d at 839.
III. Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, we will affirm.

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