The “Anonymous-Tip-Plus-Very-Little-Else” Rule

Robert C. Phillips
Deputy District Attorney (Ret.)
June, 2014

The United States Supreme Court determined over a decade ago in Florida v. J.L. that an uncorroborated anonymous tip is legally insufficient to justify a detention and a patdown for weapons.  The problem with this rule is that it makes it unnecessarily dangerous for an officer to approach a potentially armed suspect when based on nothing more than an anonymous tip.

Contacting a potentially deadly suspect without the legal power to protect oneself is not a position in which any law enforcement officer likes to find him or herself.  California courts, believe it or not, have been uncomfortable with this as well.  The courts, therefore, have been looking for exceptions.  The United States Supreme Court has finally followed California’s lead and instituted a new rule that we might appropriately entitle the “anonymous-tip-plus-very-little-else” rule.

In Navarette v. California (Apr. 22, 2014)134 S. Ct. 1683, the High Court held, although in a context wholly different than in J.L., that an anonymous tip concerning a driver of a specifically described vehicle committing a single act of recklessness “might” be enough to provide a police officer with the necessary reasonable suspicion to believe that the driver was driving while intoxicated, thus justifying a traffic stop and detention of the driver. 

In Navarette, a woman called the California Highway Patrol 911 emergency number and reported that she had just been run off the road by the driver of a silver Ford 150 pickup with a license plate number of 8D94925.  She told the dispatcher that the incident happened on southbound highway 1, at mile marker 88, in Humboldt County.  This information was passed along to CHP officers in neighboring Mendocino County. 

A northbound CHP officer passed the suspect vehicle at mile marker 69, 18 minutes after the incident, about 19 miles away.  The officer did a U-turn and made a traffic stop approximately five minutes later despite not seeing any additional suspicious conduct.  Upon noting the odor of marijuana, the truck was searched and 30 pounds of marijuana was discovered. 

Defendant was charged in state court with various marijuana-related offenses.  He argued in a motion to suppress that he was stopped without sufficient reasonable suspicion.  The trial court denied his motion.  After pleading guilty, defendant appealed.  The Court of Appeal affirmed and the California Supreme Court denied review.  The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari and, in a split 5-to-4 decision which the majority described as a “close case,” affirmed. 

In so ruling, it was noted that while the Fourth Amendment permits brief investigative stops, including of vehicles on the road, such a stop must be supported by a “particularized” reasonable suspicion that the occupants of the vehicle have been engaged in some sort of criminal activity.  “Although a mere ‘hunch’ does not create reasonable suspicion, the level of suspicion the standard requires is ‘considerably less than proof of wrongdoing by a preponderance of the evidence,’ and ‘obviously less’ than is necessary for probable cause.”  Under the rule of J.L., an uncorroborated anonymous tip of reckless driving, by itself, does not meet this standard.

The issue, therefore, was whether the 911 tip in this case was sufficiently corroborated to allow the officer to stop defendant’s vehicle.  The majority of the Supreme Court determined that the 911 tip was sufficiently corroborated, justifying the officer’s conclusion that there was a reasonable suspicion to believe that defendant might be a drunk driver; i.e.; “that the call bore adequate indicia of reliability for the officer to credit the caller’s account.”  This “indicia of reliability” was supplied by the following: 

(1) The victim claimed eyewitness knowledge of the alleged dangerous driving, “lend(ing) significant support to the tip’s reliability.”  “[An] explicit and detailed description of alleged wrongdoing, along with a statement that the event was observed firsthand, entitles (a) tip to greater weight than might otherwise be the case.”

(2) The circumstances indicate that the victim made a “contemporaneous report.”  Defendant was seen driving southbound on Hwy 1, some 19 miles from the alleged incident, some 18 minutes later.  This all tends to corroborate the victim’s veracity. 

(3)  The victim used the 911 emergency system.  A tipster, knowing that he can easily be identified and located, is less likely to provide false information. 

The Court concluded that the officer could reasonably rely upon the tipster’s information that defendant had run her off the road, and that defendant was driving while under the influence.  “Running another vehicle off the road suggests lane-positioning problems, decreased vigilance, impaired judgment, or some combination of those recognized drunk driving cues.”  Further, the fact that the defendant did not repeat any dangerous driving in the officer’s presence was held to be “not sufficiently relevant” to overcome the officer’s suspicions.

This same theory can be extrapolated to contacts with potentially armed suspects.  An anonymous tip, alleging first-hand, eyewitness, contemporaneous knowledge of an armed suspect, using a department’s 911 system to report the event, along with enough detailed knowledge to lend credibility to the report, may be enough to allow an officer to detain and patdown the suspect for weapons.