From reading the end of the story, it is clear that they did not have reasonable suspicion. They had a responsive seller on Craigslist who was selling the same computer as the supposed buyer had lost. Do you believe owning the same model computer is reasonable suspicion? Does use of Craigslist meet your threshold of reasonable suspicion? Their reasonable suspicion was predicated on the signaling of the person inspecting the laptop, and that signal never came.
Is that true? I've always heard that Terry allows officers to stop you, and ask questions under reasonable suspicion, but that performing pat downs and handcuffing is only allowed if there is a reasonable suspicion that the suspect is armed.
And I'm still not really convinced that there was reasonable suspicion that a crime is being committed. Wouldn't that mean that any private party sale negotiated in public is inherently suspicious? I know law enforcement has a lot of leeway here but that would be kind of alarming.
Interestingly, there was a recent This American Life with almost this exact same setup, but it was approached cautiously and executed correctly. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/549/a...