By Michele Evans / NYweeklyRecord.com / Date: 8/19/2026
Category: Criminal Courts / Fourth Amendment / Public Safety / Due Process
QUEENS, NY – A Queens judge has refused to suppress a firearm recovered by a private security guard, ruling that constitutional search protections were not triggered because police neither directed nor participated in the detention.
The decision in People v Powell defines a boundary that affects New Yorkers whenever private security workers search, restrain or handcuff someone before officers arrive. The Fourth Amendment regulates government action. It does not automatically govern conduct by a private person acting independently.
Nomari Powell is charged with second-degree criminal possession of a weapon and other offenses. The accusations remain allegations, and the suppression ruling does not determine whether he is guilty.
According to testimony credited by Acting Supreme Court Justice Germaine A. Auguste, police responded around 1:40 a.m. on November 2, 2025, to a pop-up party venue on Irving Avenue in Queens after security personnel reported recovering a gun.
An officer arrived to find Powell on the ground, surrounded by security workers. The venue’s head of security, James Jenkins, reportedly said a verbal dispute had occurred, Powell tried to leave, and Jenkins stopped him and recovered a firearm from his waistband.
Jenkins then handcuffed Powell, put him on the ground and called police. The responding officer testified that no police operation was underway at the venue and that no officers had been present when the detention and search occurred.
That sequence controlled the constitutional analysis. Courts generally exclude evidence obtained through an unlawful government search. A private search can trigger the same protections when police instigate it, supervise it, participate in it or use a private person to advance a law-enforcement objective.
Justice Auguste found none of those indicators. The security guard acted before police arrived, was not working under police direction and handed over the recovered firearm only after calling authorities.
The judge also rejected the argument that handcuffs transformed the detention into state action. Private guards can use tactics that resemble police conduct without becoming government agents. The question is not simply what equipment they use. It is whether government involvement shaped the search.
That does not mean private security has unlimited power. A private detention or search may still raise questions under criminal law, civil law, licensing rules, employment policy or premises liability. The court decided only whether the exclusionary rule required suppression in this criminal case.
The ruling also leaves an accountability gap that matters in a city filled with private guards at stores, residential buildings, nightlife venues and public-facing events. Evidence may remain usable in court even when a private search would have faced constitutional scrutiny if an officer had performed it.
For defendants, the distinction can determine whether physical evidence reaches a jury. For venue operators, it underscores the importance of training, written policies and oversight. For police, it reinforces that close coordination with private security can change the legal analysis.
The court relied on earlier New York cases involving store detectives and airline workers. Those decisions distinguish genuinely private action from situations where police involvement becomes so extensive that the private actor effectively serves as an arm of the state.
Here, the responding officer said Jenkins did not identify himself as law enforcement and produced a driver’s license when asked for identification. The judge said speculation that he might have some unidentified law-enforcement affiliation was not enough to establish state action.
The firearm therefore remains admissible under this ruling. Powell may continue to contest the prosecution through other motions, trial defenses and any available appellate review.
The larger lesson is that constitutional protection often turns on who initiated a search and whose objective it served. The same physical conduct can produce different courtroom consequences depending on whether the person searching acted independently or at the government’s direction.
That boundary deserves public scrutiny. As private security assumes a larger role in New York’s everyday spaces, courts will continue deciding when private enforcement ends and government power begins.
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