Cite as: 534 U. S. 266 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
selves were "quite consistent with innocent travel" collectively amounted to reasonable suspicion).
The Court of Appeals' view that it was necessary to "clearly delimit" an officer's consideration of certain factors to reduce "troubling . . . uncertainty," 232 F. 3d, at 1248, also runs counter to our cases and underestimates the usefulness of the reasonable-suspicion standard in guiding officers in the field. In Ornelas v. United States, we held that the standard for appellate review of reasonable-suspicion determinations should be de novo, rather than for "abuse of discretion." 517 U. S., at 691. There, we reasoned that de novo review would prevent the affirmance of opposite decisions on identical facts from different judicial districts in the same circuit, which would have been possible under the latter standard, and would allow appellate courts to clarify the legal principles. Id., at 697. Other benefits of the approach, we said, were its tendency to unify precedent and greater capacity to provide law enforcement officers with the tools to reach correct determinations beforehand: Even if in many instances the factual "mosaic" analyzed for a reasonable-suspicion determination would preclude one case from squarely controlling another, "two decisions when viewed together may usefully add to the body of law on the subject." Id., at 697-698.
But the Court of Appeals' approach would go considerably beyond the reasoning of Ornelas and seriously undercut the "totality of the circumstances" principle which governs the existence vel non of "reasonable suspicion." Take, for example, the court's positions that respondent's deceleration could not be considered because "slowing down after spotting a law enforcement vehicle is an entirely normal response that is in no way indicative of criminal activity" and that his failure to acknowledge Stoddard's presence provided no support because there were "no 'special circumstances' rendering 'innocent avoidance . . . improbable.' " 232 F. 3d, at 1248-1249. We think it quite reasonable that a driver's
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