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Supreme Court OKs Stop and Search Based On Anonymous 911 Tips
An anonymous reader writes "On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police officers are legally allowed to stop and search vehicles based solely on anonymous 911 tips. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority opinion, reasoned that 'a 911 call has some features that allow for identifying and tracking callers' as well as for recording their calls, both of which he believed gave anonymous callers enough reliability for police officers to act on their tips with reasonable suspicion against the people being reported.
The specific case before them involved an anonymous woman who called 911 to report a driver who forced her off the road. She gave the driver's license plate number and the make and model of his car as well as the location of the incident in question. Police officers later found him, pulled him over, smelled marijuana, and searched his car. They found 30 pounds of weed and subsequently arrested the driver. The driver later challenged the constitutionality of the arrest, claiming that a tip from an anonymous source was unreliable and therefore failed to meet the criteria of reasonable suspicion, which would have justified the stop and search. Five of the nine justices disagreed with him." The ruling itself (PDF).
The specific case before them involved an anonymous woman who called 911 to report a driver who forced her off the road. She gave the driver's license plate number and the make and model of his car as well as the location of the incident in question. Police officers later found him, pulled him over, smelled marijuana, and searched his car. They found 30 pounds of weed and subsequently arrested the driver. The driver later challenged the constitutionality of the arrest, claiming that a tip from an anonymous source was unreliable and therefore failed to meet the criteria of reasonable suspicion, which would have justified the stop and search. Five of the nine justices disagreed with him." The ruling itself (PDF).
Out congress critters gave themselves legislative plates it's the don't even think about it to a cop.
The Justices are pretty much immune to anything but impeachment by congress so they do not care either. They also have a permanent protection detail that reports only to them and the ability to cite for contempt.
No sir I dont like it.
> Does this seem like yet another easily fabricated excuse the police can use to search your property?
Uh... no. No search is involved or permitted solely based on an anonymous tip... just pulling someone over. This falls under the "reasonable suspicion" standard for pulling someone over. They pulled me over for "accelerating too fast out of an intersection" at about the time the bars were closing... that was reasonable suspicion that I was drinking and driving and all they needed to pull me over even though there IS no crime for "accelerating too fast".
The "reasonable suspicion" standard is MUCH lower than "probable cause" which is required for a search. They still can't search you based on an anonymous tip... just pull you over and ask you questions, which you can of course refuse to answer.
People discussing this issue would do well to bone up on the difference between "reasonable suspicion" and "probable cause". People misuse the terms all the time... they are very different, and anyone who interacts with, or may interact with the police, should know what the terms mean.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
From the dissent:
The Court’s opinion serves up a freedom-destroying
cocktail consisting of two parts patent falsity: (1) that
anonymous 911 reports of traffic violations are reliable so
long as they correctly identify a car and its location, and
(2)
that a single instance of
careless or reckless driving
necessarily supports a reasonable suspicion of drunken
ness. All the malevolent 911 caller need do is assert a
traffic violation, and the targeted car will be stopped,
forcibly if necessary, by the police. If the driver turns out
not to be drunk (which will almo
st always be the case), the
caller need fear no conseque
nces, even if 911 knows his
identity. After all, he never alleged drunkenness, but
merely called in a traffic violation—and on that point his
word is as good as his victim’s
This. The NPR article seems misleading. They stopped him based on the 911 call. Which seems reasonable to me. If some moron is driving like a fool I'd really like to cops to stop him. The probable cause for the SEARCH was due to the marijuana smell. I don't think this ruling is a broad as it's being made out to be.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
If there is probable cause, then there is no legal problem with obtaining a warrant and searching someone's home or car. The question is whether an anonymous, unverified report from an unknown source counts as probable cause. As usual, Popehat has a much clearer explanation of the subject than anything I have said:
"So, for instance, if you call in an anonymous tip that I am running a meth lab in my blue house on the corner, and the cops confirm that I have a blue house on the corner, those details are not meaningfully corroborative. If the cops find evidence of witnesses seeing me move precursor chemicals into my blue house on the corner, that's meaningfully corroborative. Here, the police observed no erratic driving or other corroboration of meaningful facts. In fact, they observed five minutes of unremarkable driving. The only corroboration was the innocent fact of the truck being present on the highway. "
If you don't see the problem with running the concept of probable cause through a paper shredder and then lighting the Fourth Amendment on fire then perhaps Justice Antonin Scalia's description might help:
"Drunken driving is a serious matter, but so is the loss of our freedom to come and go as we please without police interference. To prevent and detect murder we do not allow searches without probable cause or targeted Terry stops without reasonable suspicion. We should not do so for drunken driving either. After today’s opinion all of us on the road, and not just drug dealers, are at risk of having our freedom of movement curtailed on suspicion of drunkenness, based upon a phone tip, true or false, of a single instance of careless driving."