Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 346.0

529US1

Unit: $U41

[09-26-01 09:10:16] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 266 (2000)

271

Opinion of the Court

Id., at 332. Although the Court held that the suspicion in
White became reasonable after police surveillance, we re-
garded the case as borderline. Knowledge about a person’s
future movements indicates some familiarity with that per-
son’s affairs, but having such knowledge does not necessarily
imply that the informant knows, in particular, whether that
person is carrying hidden contraband. We accordingly clas-
siﬁed White as a “close case.”

Ibid.

The tip in the instant case lacked the moderate indicia of
reliability present in White and essential to the Court’s deci-
sion in that case. The anonymous call concerning J. L. pro-
vided no predictive information and therefore left the police
without means to test the informant’s knowledge or credibil-
ity. That the allegation about the gun turned out to be cor-
rect does not suggest that the ofﬁcers, prior to the frisks,
had a reasonable basis for suspecting J. L. of engaging in
unlawful conduct: The reasonableness of ofﬁcial suspicion
must be measured by what the ofﬁcers knew before they
conducted their search. All the police had to go on in this
case was the bare report of an unknown, unaccountable in-
formant who neither explained how he knew about the gun
nor supplied any basis for believing he had inside informa-
tion about J. L.
If White was a close case on the reliability
of anonymous tips, this one surely falls on the other side of
the line.

Florida contends that the tip was reliable because its de-
scription of the suspect’s visible attributes proved accurate:
There really was a young black male wearing a plaid shirt
at the bus stop. Brief for Petitioner 20–21. The United
States as amicus curiae makes a similar argument, propos-
ing that a stop and frisk should be permitted “when (1) an
anonymous tip provides a description of a particular person
at a particular location illegally carrying a concealed ﬁrearm,
(2) police promptly verify the pertinent details of the tip ex-
cept the existence of the ﬁrearm, and (3) there are no factors
that cast doubt on the reliability of the tip . . . .” Brief