Cite as: 528 U. S. 119 (2000)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
any event, just as we do not require "scientific certainty" for our commonsense conclusion that unprovoked flight can sometimes indicate suspicious motives, see ante, at 124-125, neither do we require scientific certainty to conclude that unprovoked flight can occur for other, innocent reasons.12
The probative force of the inferences to be drawn from flight is a function of the varied circumstances in which it occurs. Sometimes those inferences are entirely consistent with the presumption of innocence, sometimes they justify further investigation, and sometimes they justify an immediate stop and search for weapons. These considerations have led us to avoid categorical rules concerning a person's flight and the presumptions to be drawn therefrom:
"Few things . . . distinguish an enlightened system of judicature from a rude and barbarous one more than the manner in which they deal with evidence. The former weighs testimony, whilst the latter, conscious perhaps of its inability to do so or careless of the consequences of error, at times rejects whole portions en masse, and at others converts pieces of evidence into rules of law by investing with conclusive effect some whose probative force has been found to be in general considerable. . . . Our ancestors, observing that guilty persons usually fled from justice, adopted the hasty conclusion that it was only the guilty who did so . . . so that under the old law, a man who fled to avoid being tried for felony forfeited
elements of the police community, of which minority groups, particularly Negroes, frequently complain." 392 U. S., at 14. But in this passage, Terry simply held that such concerns would not preclude the use of the stop and frisk procedure altogether. See id., at 17, n. 14. Nowhere did Terry suggest that such concerns cannot inform a court's assessment of whether reasonable suspicion sufficient to justify a particular stop existed.
12 As a general matter, local courts often have a keener and more informed sense of local police practices and events that may heighten these concerns at particular times or locations. Thus, a reviewing court may accord substantial deference to a local court's determination that fear of the police is especially acute in a specific location or at a particular time.
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