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).

Comments

Anybody know the plate# for each scotus?

[tekrat]

I've got this hankerin' to call 911.
This law could get repealed mighty quick if it's senators and congressmen getting pulled over from anonymous tips.

Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus?

[silas_moeckel]

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.

Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus?

[erroneus]

It's not a false report if you use enough soft language. "I *think* I heard something about something and they may have a thing in their car now!"

But then again, that all depends on what your definition of "is" is.

Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Use a burner phone. I'm sure that's what the police will do when they need reasonable suspicion.

Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus?

[Minwee]

Perhaps she could accept that the police are bound by something called the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which says something about "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

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."

Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus?

[erroneus]

Can you substantiate that claim? There are police who routinely harass people on the basis of 9-1-1 calls where people complain of something which is 100% legal. (I speak of open carry activity)

Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus?

[Jaysyn]

Our congress critters gave themselves legislative plates it's the don't even think about it to a cop.

Yup. Makes me wonder if their family members also get those plates.

Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ted Kennedy killed someone with his car while drunk and nothing came of it. So good luck with those reports.

Does it also apply to homes?

[EmagGeek]

If someone who doesn't like me makes an "anonymous" call to 911 to report that I'm running meth lab in my garage, does that also give the cops the right to ransack my house looking for a meth lab?

It's sad that "probable cause" has been diluted to the point that it has.

Hasn't this already been going on with "anonymous" tips from the DEA and DHS leading to traffic stops where "parallel construction" is used to fabricate grounds for probable cause after the fact? I guess this ruling removes the need to do the whole "parallel construction" thing?

Re:Does it also apply to homes?

[omnichad]

To equate it to something domestic, think of a noise complaint. The officer can come to your door and knock. If you answer and they see something inside, or they see something suspicous while they're there, they would still have to get a warrant. The difference in this case, is that they pulled someone over and smelled something. Pulling someone over does not require probable cause - only reasonable suspicion. The anonymous tip satisfies that just fine. The smell they found during the stop is the probable cause. And the car isn't quite so secure against search as a home. At least according to the courts.

4 of 9 agreed with him

[flyingfsck]

but we all agree that Seven of Nine is the most gorgeous...

Re:Uh...

[Le Marteau]

> 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.

Parallel Construction.

[Jahoda]

Parallel Construction. You'll pardon me if I don't believe a single word from the mouths of our American "law enforcement" and "justice" system. Amazing that he just happened to have those 30 pounds of weed.

Re:Uh...

[n1ywb]

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.

Re:This is wrong!

[king neckbeard]

Funny how their sense of smell works. They can recognize a potent marijuana smell in a vehicle that has never contained marijuana if the occupants look like they smell like marijuana.

Re:That wasn't the question

[Gr8Apes]

While it may have worked out ok in this situation it is a very bad president.

It might be better than last few presidents we've had.

Re:That wasn't the question

[CrimsonAvenger]

They got a call, including plate number and location, that a car had run someone off the road.

What they did not have was any evidence that someone was actually run off the road.

Nor did they have any evidence that the driver of the suspect vehicle was in any way impaired (they followed him for five minutes without seeing any erratic driving).

For all we know, the "anonymous caller" could have been his ex trying to get him in trouble, or a member of a rival drug gang trying to get his payload confiscated....

Re:That wasn't the question

[king neckbeard]

Or more likely, a government agent with information obtained illegally.

Re:That wasn't the question

[TheCarp]

> For all we know, the "anonymous caller" could have been his ex trying to get him in trouble, or a member of a
> rival drug gang trying to get his payload confiscated....

Exactly, and you know....I know people with exes who would pull shit like that. I mean for fucks sake, when my friend's wife went down to report his ex-wife punching her, she found the ex-wife was already down there filing a report saying that she was the one punched. Now, after years of back and forth battles (custody would you believe) in and out of court, including false charges of various kinds,

More than that though.... if there is no need to go back and verify the original tip, if it can be anonymous....then the police can phone in their own tips! This is yet more parallell construction bullshit. How do we even know there was such a woman? For all we really know it was a cop, or the wife of a cop, making a call to cover up the real source of the information....ie a criminal conspiracy to deny the driver the right to a fair trial.

Erratic driving does give reasonable suspicion

[mark-t]

Bad driving *does* give reasonable suspicion of impairment, and even an anonymous report is certainly sufficient cause to stop the vehicle and briefly question the driver... which in general would amount to them just saying that they received a report about the vehicle... Since they had not personally witnessed the erratic driving, they would have had no basis to even ask him to get outside of his vehicle, but would have just questioned him through an open window, After quickly checking to see if there were any other reports about the vehicle, they would have asked the driver if they had anything to drink that evening. If the answer was no, and they had no reason to suspect the person was lying (ie, he was not visibly impaired), then they would have just let the person go.

It was only after they had stopped the vehicle and actually questioned the guy that gave them further reasonable suspicion to search his vehicle, and find that he was guilty of another crime.

Re:That wasn't the question

[afidel]

Dude, with 30lbs of marijuana in the car even a coke fiend with a head cold could have smelled the stuff and become suspicious that the car contained illegal contraband. I personally am in favor of legalization, but as long as it's illegal I fully acknowledge that someone carrying that amount of stuff is going to give enough signals to the police to easily justify a search, just like grow houses that the cops can smell from public places. The problem is drugs being against the law, not that police officers confronted with obvious signs of illegal behavior are conducting searches based on reasonable suspicion. The question at hand was whether an anonymous call to 911 could justify pulling over a vehicle, not whether a cop who smells a vehicle reeking of drugs has a reasonable enough suspicion to conduct a search.

Re:That wasn't the question

[Agent0013]

Which just shows that the "anonymous" call was actually placed by the DEA or NSA or whoever had some illegally gotten information. Remember how they like to perform what they call "Parallel Construction". And now the supreme court has ruled that OK.