Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 351.0

529US1

Unit: $U41

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

276

FLORIDA v. J. L.

Kennedy, J., concurring

objective reason to believe that this tip had some particular
indicia of reliability.

If an informant places his anonymity at risk, a court can
consider this factor in weighing the reliability of the tip. An
instance where a tip might be considered anonymous but
nevertheless sufﬁciently reliable to justify a proportionate
police response may be when an unnamed person driving a
car the police ofﬁcer later describes stops for a moment and,
face to face, informs the police that criminal activity is occur-
ring. This too seems to be different from the tip in the pres-
ent case. See United States v. Sierra-Hernandez, 581 F. 2d
760 (CA9 1978).

Instant caller identiﬁcation is widely available to police,
and, if anonymous tips are proving unreliable and distracting
to police, squad cars can be sent within seconds to the loca-
tion of the telephone used by the informant. Voice record-
ing of telephone tips might, in appropriate cases, be used by
police to locate the caller.
It is unlawful to make false re-
ports to the police, e. g., Fla. Stat. Ann. § 365.171(16) (Supp.
2000); Fla. Stat. § 817.49 (1994), and the ability of the police
to trace the identity of anonymous telephone informants may
be a factor which lends reliability to what, years earlier,
might have been considered unreliable anonymous tips.

These matters, of course, must await discussion in other

cases, where the issues are presented by the record.