Supreme Court OKs Stop and Search Based On Anonymous 911 Tips 461
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).
Anybody know the plate# for each scotus? (Score:5, Insightful)
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This law could get repealed mighty quick if it's senators and congressmen getting pulled over from anonymous tips.
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So why was that guy driving a car while intoxicated and forced a woman off the road? What is the woman supposed to do, just accept that people smoke weed and drive while drunk?
Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus? (Score:5, Informative)
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 [popehat.com]:
"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."
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Getting back to point, had the guy not been carrying 30 lbs of marijuana, it's likely he would have been sent on his way with a warning and there would be no story or no problem. Claiming this is a constitutional issue is quite a stretch and the four dissenting judges should be reminded of what their purpose actually is.
So you won't mind if the police just drop by your home tonight and have a little look around, right? After all, if you have nothing to hide you have no need of constitutional rights.
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they got a call including plate # and location and stopped the car
what's the problem?
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While it may have worked out ok in this situation it is a very bad president. I do not want to be pulled over for no fucking reason.
Re:That wasn't the question (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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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.
Well, the last couple of presidents have been guiding us on a downward course where surveillance is everything and you are guilty until proven innocent. All the way back to "get-the-government-off-the-backs-of-the-people-Reagan", who thoughtfully provided us with the "you're a drug-addled illegal alien and you can't be hired until you demonstrate otherwise" model for business.
At the rate we're going, a rock would make a better president.
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it is a very bad president
Come on, now. This is Obama's fault, too?
Re:That wasn't the question (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:That wasn't the question (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Dude with 30lbs of marijuana in an uncovered truck bed.
I hate the War on Drugs as much as the next /.er, but seriously, if you have that much weed you can probably afford a hard-top or a van or something.
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A couple of times while on a bicycle I've stopped police cars to give them descriptions of vehicles that were driving dangerously: in one case a gravel truck that almost ran us over on a narrow road and in another case a sports car coming up a winding mountain road with all 4 wheels on the wrong side of the yellow line around a blind corner. In both cases they lit up and set out after them without worrying about whether they could find me again. In both cases I could describe the vehicle, recent location,
Re:That wasn't the question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That wasn't the question (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That wasn't the question (Score:5, Insightful)
> 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.
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Right there in the word "Anonymous tip.
Quite simply the tip itself is part of the tree. At the very least, that tip is the trunk of the tree. Without it, he would not have been given extra scrutiny beyond what anyone else would get. If that trunk is not part of the evidence presented, then how do we know if it is the trunk or just another branch; being presented as such.
Parallel construction is fraud, and this is little more than the courts giving a full green light to the production of false evidence trail
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Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes but that information will not be included if the anonymous tip came from other police or from a burner phone located in the police car.
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It's about as anonymous as an IP address.
And we've already had verdicts rendered on how useful they are for proving who did what.
Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:4, Informative)
Makes me wonder if their family members also get those plates.
In my state at least, the congressperson's spouse is entitled to one. Same goes for judges (and their spouses) who also get special "Judiciary" plates if they want them.
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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.
I like the logic, but the problem with that logic is that senators/congressmen/judges/state politicians etc usually have special license plates which make it clear that they are 'somebody'. Cops may see that and decide not to kick the hornets nest.
Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, don't go after Senators' spouses and children, go after their mistresses. Really hit them where they live.
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Senators, Congressmen and SCOTUS get their own special license plates. The cops would simply decide that people of such distinction don't need to be investigated on such tips.
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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.
That was my first thought. It might be time for some civil disobedience.
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What pay phone? The only 3 that still exist in the US are also covered by cameras I'm sure.
Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus? (Score:4, Insightful)
What pay phone? The only 3 that still exist in the US are also covered by cameras I'm sure.
I used to think this way myself, until I started paying more attention to my surroundings.
There are actually a LOT of pay phones still in service, you just have to know where to look for them; most of the ones I've seen as of late were in gas station parking lots.
Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus? (Score:5, Insightful)
Use a burner phone. I'm sure that's what the police will do when they need reasonable suspicion.
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What pay phone? The only 3 that still exist in the US are also covered by cameras I'm sure.
Substitute payphone for VoIP gateway and you are left with the same problem. We routinely get anonymous whackos calling us from all over the world appearing to come from local numbers. It gets easier every day to make a practically untraceable call using IP as POTS overlay.
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What pay phone? The only 3 that still exist in the US are also covered by cameras I'm sure.
Substitute payphone for VoIP gateway and you are left with the same problem. We routinely get anonymous whackos calling us from all over the world appearing to come from local numbers. It gets easier every day to make a practically untraceable call using IP as POTS overlay.
Which just goes to show the problem with letting dinosaurs whose understanding of technology is, shall we say, "limited," to make laws and decide how the scope of said laws are affected by technology.
Maybe we should be demanding our "representatives" impeach one or two SCOTUS "justices," and replace them with some younger people who actually know what the fuck they're talking about.
Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus? (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:4, Informative)
The stuff might be 100% legal, but it still has to be something that the person actually witnessed firsthand. Saying that you "think" somebody is doing something illegal is not valid unless you actually saw them *DO* something that you thought was illegal.
And yes, I know this. Although this knowledge is admittedly based on my own jurisdiction and it's possible laws may be different elsewhere.
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Fixed that for you.
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The job of the police isn't to stalk people with disagreeable personalities, much less harass them, but to investigate suspected illegal activities. If you think paranoid idiots shouldn't have guns, take it up with the legislature. But as long as it's not actually illegal, it's not up to Joe Flatfoot to try to make it de facto so through abuse of pow
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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!"
Just do what politicians do - use performatives. "I want to report ..." or "I think it's important for you to know about it if...", etc. Anything after the phrase is modified by your performative, thus true in that space. "I didn't say he actually did it, just that I wanted to report it..."
Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:4, Insightful)
Shows the level of maturity on slashdot, I suppose. False police reports are a felony.
Who says it's false? I'm sure if I followed an important public figure around for a while I could catch him rolling a stop sign or two.
Idiot. (Score:3)
I'm sure if I followed an important public figure around for a while I could catch him rolling a stop sign or two.
It's called stalking.
If you are spotted, expect your high profile target or his warders to call for back-up.
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It's called surveillance.
FTFY.
Also commonly referred to as "sauce for the gander" and the answer to Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? [wikipedia.org]
.
Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ted Kennedy killed someone with his car while drunk and nothing came of it. So good luck with those reports.
Re:Anybody know the plate# for each scotus? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sorry, but BUYING a pair of shoes that costs more than $200 should be a felony!
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It goes far beyond caller ID. They know your GPS location and they know your phone. Unless you know how to set up a burner phone (it's not overly simple in the US - most prepay companies verify billing address). E911 is not a normal phone call.
Does it also apply to homes? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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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?
While the short answer might be yes, the officers will know pretty quickly, without ransacking your house, that you don't have a meth lab. At that point, the not really anonymous caller will be arrested and charged with filing a false report. You will also have civil actions against the perp. Their life has for all practical purposes been destroyed, and the evidence is solid.
Making false reports has been around forever. Using a modern phone to do that will document your crime, and will probably be the fi
Re:Does it also apply to homes? (Score:4, Interesting)
I gather that you have evidence that this woman was run off the road by this guy?
Other than her 911 call, I mean.
Did the police go to the site of the incident? Not that I've read anywhere.
Did the police take her statement officially? Again, I've not seen anything hint that they de-anonymized (is that a word? If not, it should be) her by actually talking to her or anything.
From all I've read, she called 911, reported something that got the police to hunting for the vehicle (which they found 18 miles from the purported incident), the police checked him for drunken driving, found he wasn't, then searched his car for drugs, found he was carrying a lot of weed.
Re:Does it also apply to homes? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Empirical (Score:2)
The empirical evidence in this case is that the tip was indeed reliable.
In some state odor of marijuana is in itself enough to justify a search.
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Odor of pot? Heck, all they have to do is claim they smell alcohol (weather they do or not) and they have the go ahead to harass you for as long as they want.
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I've read lots of your comments here, and you keep beating the same drum.
The police are allowed to pull someone over on an anonymous tip. They didn't even have to trail the person for 15 minutes to try to find other evidence of impairment. Just because they did that does not mean that they are no longer allowed to pull them over.
Just in the same way that pulling them over and then asking, "Are you impaired?" and getting a "no" answer does not mean that they are not allowed to ask further questions.
The sea
4 of 9 agreed with him (Score:5, Funny)
Do you see the problem with this? (Score:2)
Re:Do you see the problem with this? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I am shocked. *Shocked* (Score:2)
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Or maybe he'll continue believing it's the lawyers' job to provide the evidence, not the judges', and that just listening to their arguments is sufficient.
Free warrant! (Score:3, Insightful)
2) Police officer calls 911 placing an anon tip
3) Police officer gets to do whatever the hell he wants.
historically, authority figures getting to do whatever the hell they want has worked out pretty well.
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Re:Free warrant! (Score:4, Informative)
1) Police officer sees car he wants to search
2) Police officer calls 911 placing an anon tip
3) Police officer gets to do whatever the hell he wants.
historically, authority figures getting to do whatever the hell they want has worked out pretty well.
Jesus tapdancing Christ, this has been refuted three times now. The tip did not warrant the search, the tip only warranted pulling the driver over. The marijuana smell warranted the search, something that was not introduced by this ruling. As for #2, did you even read the digest? The ruling only accounts for when anonymity does not hold.
Get the tinfoil hat out of your eyes and read TFA please.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
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DUI checkpoints don't get to search your car. (But they are also a bad idea...)
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That's a weird law: smelling marijuana is reasonable suspicion of illegal activity which ought to trigger a search. Why, in this case, doesn't it? Smelling a decomposing corpse is reasonable suspicion, no?
It seems to be a tacit acknowledgement that marijuana prohibition is stupid but liked by Puritanical elements: "okay, we'll keep this illegal, to mollify you lot, but restrict how that is enforced." Why not just make the law consistent by getting rid of prohibition?
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>Just to play devil's advocate, how is this more invasive than DUI checkpoints?
It's less invasive. DUI checkpoints are dragnets. In the case listed above, a guy called in to 9-11 to report that another driver had driven him off the road, and was driving recklessly around the freeway. This was considered adequate justification to conduct a traffic stop, at which point they found drugs in the car.
I actually don't see what the big deal is (Scali, I'm looking at you). People report things to the police all t
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With checkpoints, they have to provide notice, and an alternate route around the checkpoint (which is usually staffed, but that's another issue).
At the check point, you don't have to answer any questions. You just have to stop. IANAL, but you can watch this. [youtube.com]
Also, obligatory, Never talk to the police [youtube.com]
A boon for Parallel Construction (Score:3)
This is a boon to "parallel construction" [wikipedia.org]
I for one don't think that the accuser should ever be anonymous when it comes to court cases, since we would have a right to face them in a court of law. I think for reporting the guy down the street who keeps violating noise or lawn ordinances is a different story. As those never really go to court.
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Exactly. Now, if cops want to search someone they don't have enough legal basis to search ... they will just have one of their officers call in an 'anonymous' call.
This is going to lead to police having more and more powers to conduct things without enough legal basis.
This is not a good thing.
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I for one don't think that the accuser should ever be anonymous when it comes to court cases, since we would have a right to face them in a court of law.
Hint: an E911 call is not anonymous (in most cases). But even if they are, we're only talking about establishing reasonable suspicion. That's all it takes to make a traffic stop. Everything that happened beyond that is fully legal and by the book. The search was based on an odor which is also an established probable cause (although parallel construction could be an issue if they didn't actually smell anything).
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The stop was based on "anonymous", the odor only was encountered because of the stop, in which the window came down. Neither the odor nor the drugs were perceivable before that. If the police just happened across the vehicle, they would need a suspicion of their own.
I'm all for the guy getting stopped because of his operating a vehicle unsafely.
I'm all for the guy getting busted for pot.
I'm not ok with his accuser being considered "anonymous".
Scalia is jumping the shark. (Score:2)
In a scathing dissent, fellow conservative Scalia called the Thomas opinion a "freedom-destroying cocktail" that would encourage "malevolent" tipsters to make false reports. It matters not whether the caller gave details about her alleged accident. The issue, said Scalia, is "whether what she claimed to know was true."
Is Scalia seriously suggesting police can act on a tip only after proving that tipster is telling the truth? The operative word is "reasonable" suspicion. The number of false reports to 911 is vanishingly small, and there is very reasonable to believe the tipster was telling the truth.
Just last week he suggested seriously people unsatisfied with taxes should rebel. Wonder what would happen if people who strongly believe that "the citizens united decision was unconstitutional and dilutes the franchise of
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As to the inference that the truck's driver was drunk, Scalia pointed out that the police officers here followed the pickup for over five minutes — and "five minutes is a long time" — without any indication of drunken driving or even bad driving. "After today's opinion," said Scalia, "all of us on the road, and not just drug dealers, are at risk ... "
Actually sounds Scalia was the dissenting opinion, period. I tend to agree with the quoted point of view of Scalia...an anonymous 911 call prompts police to target this driver, the driver gives NO indication of dui/reckless/endangering driving, yet the cops STILL pull the guy over, and win in court because of a "technicality". Scalia is right, we are all at risk for abuse of power by cops (not only that, but the justice system ruling in favor of the loss of our freedoms that are OWED to us by the Constitut
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As much as I hate to find myself anywhere near Scalia (through he's joined here by Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan), police can legitimately act on a tip only after proving that a tipster is *likely* to be telling the truth. In this case, after following the car for five minutes and not seeing anything that gave them suspicion that the driver was drunk, there's no way that they could have reasonable s
Parallel Construction. (Score:4, Insightful)
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This.
It relieves the police of the need to manufacture a plausible reason for the stop. So they won't have to reveal that cell phone feed from the NSA that gave them the details of the drug delivery.
Sure, there are measures the police can use to identify the source of an anonymous 911 call. But these would only be used in the event someone might be abusing the system. There would be no need to investigate the source of a call giving a valid tip, so they wouldn't. Likewise, there would be no investigation
Erratic driving does give reasonable suspicion (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Lesson #1 of Drug Smuggling on the Highway (Score:3)
DON'T BE A DICK ON THE HIGHWAY! Drive conservatively, dress conservatively, and be completely (able to pass a blood test) sober.
Most importantly: Don't draw attention to yourself.
Nothing to do with anonymous tips... (Score:3, Informative)
Weird decision (Score:3)
Scalia w/ the liberal females in dissent and Breyer in the majority w/Thomas, Roberts, Alito and Kennedy? On *this* issue Breyer sides w/Thomas et al?
I don't even....
What a WEIRD argument! (Score:3)
The bizarreness of Thomas' justification is pretty over-the-top. He's saying that an anonymous call creates probable cause because its not anonymous? The progression of that argument would be the government can authorize itself to search anything. A cop could just call 911, non-anonymously and even give his name, to create the tip that authorizes himself to search. Wouldn't that trigger the newly-created exception and make it legal?
Maybe there's some way that 911 calls could circumvent the 4th, but a not-really-anonymous anonymous call angle? WTF.
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Informative)
> 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.
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Informative)
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My issue in this case is assume he didn't have weed in his car, what exactly were they going to do to him? They track him down, pull him over and then what do they do? They have an anonymous call saying he forced someone off the road, but no evidence of it. They have no video, no witnesses, not even a real person willing to say they were run off the road. So they pull him over and ask him if he ran someone off the road? And when he obviously says no they just let him go? There was nothing they could do to h
Re:Uh... (Score:4, Insightful)
My issue in this case is assume he didn't have weed in his car, what exactly were they going to do to him? They track him down, pull him over and then what do they do? They have an anonymous call saying he forced someone off the road, but no evidence of it. They have no video, no witnesses, not even a real person willing to say they were run off the road. So they pull him over and ask him if he ran someone off the road? And when he obviously says no they just let him go? There was nothing they could do to him unless there is some other secondary issue like in this case.
I can see now a lot of anonymous tips coming in from pay phones near where cops are hanging out. They suspect someone has drugs in their car, they just make an anonymous tip about the car doing something bad and then they have a reason to pull them over.
I would expect the officer to pull him over, make sure he's licensed and insured, and then explain that there was a complaint that he was driving recklessly. Just as I would expect the police to come and knock on my neighbor's door for if someone called and claimed they heard someone being beaten inside. They don't have to issue a citation, or search the person's property. Just the act of stopping the person can dissuade them from continuing their behavior. The moral of the story is to not drive like a total jackass when you have 30 pounds of marijuana in your car.
I'm perfectly fine with the police acting on tips from citizens. Where this becomes a problem is when the "anonymous tipster" is actually a government agent. If you allow this sort of tip to be used, it can definitely be abused by the government.
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And this is exactly what happened, more or less. The search came after they smelled something (which I suppose is easy to lie about as long as they find something).
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Citation?
And what reasonable belief did they have that the tipster was telling the truth? It's not like the cops saw the guy weaving down the road (they followed him for five minutes without observing any sign of impaired driving). Nor is there any evidence they went to the "crime scene" and saw the tipster's car in the ditch (which would have effectively made the report NON-
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> ...even though there IS no crime for "accelerating too fast".
There are such laws, usually prohibiting "exhibition of speed", "speed contests", and similar acts. In California, it is VEHICLE CODE 23109:
Speed Contests
23109. (a) A person shall not engage in a motor vehicle speed contest on a highway. As used in this section, a motor vehicle speed contest includes a motor vehicle race against another vehicle, a clock, or other timing device. For purposes of this section, an event in which the time to cov
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The officers stopped the car under reasonable suspicion of drunk driving. The anonymous call was enough to equate to an eyewitness observation of erradict driving, according to this ruling.
In a separate issue, upon pulling the truck over the officer could recognize a potent marijuana smell, which under the Plain View Doctrine (that includes smell) [wikipedia.org] allowed them to search the truck.
Re:This is wrong! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Scalia never met a search he considers unreasonable ...
Except for this one? Did you miss that Scalia wrote the dissent while Thomas wrote the majority opinion?