Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 347

529US1

Unit: $U41

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272

FLORIDA v. J. L.

Opinion of the Court

for United States 16. These contentions misapprehend the
reliability needed for a tip to justify a Terry stop.

An accurate description of a subject’s readily observable
location and appearance is of course reliable in this limited
sense: It will help the police correctly identify the person
whom the tipster means to accuse. Such a tip, however,
does not show that the tipster has knowledge of concealed
criminal activity. The reasonable suspicion here at issue re-
quires that a tip be reliable in its assertion of illegality, not
just in its tendency to identify a determinate person. Cf. 4
W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 9.4(h), p. 213 (3d ed. 1996)
(distinguishing reliability as to identiﬁcation, which is often
important in other criminal law contexts, from reliability as
to the likelihood of criminal activity, which is central
in
anonymous-tip cases).

A second major argument advanced by Florida and the
United States as amicus is, in essence, that the standard
Terry analysis should be modiﬁed to license a “ﬁrearm ex-
ception.” Under such an exception, a tip alleging an illegal
gun would justify a stop and frisk even if the accusation
would fail standard pre-search reliability testing. We de-
cline to adopt this position.

Firearms are dangerous, and extraordinary dangers some-
times justify unusual precautions. Our decisions recognize
the serious threat that armed criminals pose to public safety;
Terry’s rule, which permits protective police searches on the
basis of reasonable suspicion rather than demanding that of-
ﬁcers meet the higher standard of probable cause, responds
to this very concern. See 392 U. S., at 30. But an auto-
matic ﬁrearm exception to our established reliability analysis
would rove too far. Such an exception would enable any
person seeking to harass another to set in motion an intru-
sive, embarrassing police search of the targeted person sim-
ply by placing an anonymous call
falsely reporting the
target’s unlawful carriage of a gun. Nor could one securely
conﬁne such an exception to allegations involving ﬁrearms.