Anonymous Police Stops Being Reviewed By Supreme Court

Police can use Q-tip swabs to collect DNA and some DUI suspects are forced to give blood if they refuse, so it may surprise you to learn that any court has second thoughts about police pulling drivers over based on anonymous tips.

The Supreme Court is suspicious of police searches or seizures based on tips from anonymous callers. They have heard arguments dealing with that for the first time in a decade. Can police stop a driver based on nothing more than an anonymous tip that he or she was driving recklessly?

Navarette v. California, has Fourth Amendment considerations and serious implications in the road-rage era, particularly in South Florida where drivers scream obscenities at other drivers and could just as easily call 911 and say that driver is weaving all over the road. That scenario is precisely that what the court is going to wrestle with: Can such callers be trusted enough to justify a police stop?

The Navarette case began with a 911 call in California. An anonymous caller reported that a silver Ford pickup truck had just run her off the road. The dispatcher relayed that information to police, who soon spotted a silver Ford pickup with a license plate matching the one the caller had reported. Officers followed the pickup for a few minutes and didn't see any signs of reckless driving. They pulled the pickup over, finding Lorenzo and Jose Navarette and four large bags of marijuana.

The case is now before the Supreme Court, and their ruling may depend on how they choose to read its own decision in Florida v. J.L., a 2000 opinion in which the court ruled that police could not make a stop of a teenager (J.L.) based solely on an anonymous tip that he had a gun.

Justice Ginsburg explained that police have to have reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot before they can search a suspect. An anonymous tip, without more, doesn't amount to reasonable suspicion. She wrote that police have to corroborate the tip and they have to have reason to think the tip is "reliable in its assertion of illegality."

But, Justice Ginsburg left the door open to exceptions in other cases. She wrote, that "a report of a person carrying a bomb" might be a case where the danger is so great that police can stop and search a suspect based on a pure anonymous tip.

The Navarette case is just like J.L., in my opinion. Police should be required to corroborate the tip by following the driver and observing reckless driving. What's to stop an angry driver from taking out his rage by calling in a bogus tip?

The court's ruling is expected sometime in summer of 2014.