Case Name: UNITED STATES of America, v. Orson G. WHITE, Appellant; UNITED STATES of America, v. Lawrence ANDERSON, Appellant
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
Jurisdiction: District of Columbia
Decision Date: 1981-02-06
Citations: 208 U.S. App. D.C. 289
Docket Number: Nos. 80-1087, 80-1121
Parties: UNITED STATES of America, v. Orson G. WHITE, Appellant. UNITED STATES of America, v. Lawrence ANDERSON, Appellant.
Judges: Before WILKEY, WALD and EDWARDS, Circuit Judges.
Reporter: United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
Volume: 208
Pages: 289–320

Head Matter:
648 F.2d 29
UNITED STATES of America, v. Orson G. WHITE, Appellant. UNITED STATES of America, v. Lawrence ANDERSON, Appellant.
Nos. 80-1087, 80-1121.
United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.
Argued Oct. 16, 1980.
Decided Feb. 6, 1981.
As Amended April 10, 1981.
Michael S. Frisch, Washington, D. C. (appointed by this Court), for Orson G. White.
William J. Garber, Washington, D. C. (appointed by this Court), for Lawrence Anderson.
John C. Aisenbrey, Asst. U. S. Atty., Washington, D. C., with whom Charles F. C. Ruff, U. S. Atty., John A. Terry, Michael W. Farrell and W. Randolph Teslik, Asst. U. S. Attys., Washington, D. C., were on the brief, for appellee.
Before WILKEY, WALD and EDWARDS, Circuit Judges.

Opinion:
Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge WALD.
Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge EDWARDS.
WALD, Circuit Judge:
INTRODUCTION
Close cases involving the exclusionary rule present difficult issues for courts as well as law enforcement officials. This close case presents the question of whether narcotics squad officers acting on an anonymous tip "unreasonably" made an investigatory stop which culminated in an arrest and seizure of narcotics so as to violate the defendants' Fourth Amendment rights and require suppression of the narcotics. The trial court denied the suppression motion and we affirm its decision.
I. THE FACTS
Orson G. White and Lawrence Anderson were convicted of possession of heroin and possession of heroin with intent to distribute. They contend that the evidence crucial to their conviction was seized in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights.
At about 7:30 on the evening of September 11, 1979, Detective Norman A. Hill of the Metropolitan Police Department Narcotics Branch received an anonymous tip, by telephone, regarding drug traffic in the area of 15th and East Capitol Streets. Tr. 4, 16. The caller said that a young black man known as "Nicky," about 19 or 20 years old, wearing a blue jumpsuit with white stripes, had parked a 1971 Ford LTD in front of No. 1 15th Street, N.E., entered a 1974 Oldsmobile four door, and driven away in it. The caller identified the color of the Ford, and supplied the license tag numbers of both cars. Tr. 5-7. He concluded by stating that "Nicky" and the unidentified driver of the Oldsmobile were involved in narcotics traffic and would be "dirty" with drugs when they returned. Tr. 6.
Detective Hill had not used this informer before, Tr. 32; the caller refused to identify himself when asked. Id. Neither did he reveal how he came by his information. Id.
Immediately upon receipt of the tip, Detective Hill and his partner, Detective Ruben Sanchez-Serrano, drug squad veterans of eleven and eight years respectively, Tr. 120, 208, went to 15th and East Capitol Streets, N.E. in an unmarked police car to establish surveillance. Tr. 8. They found the Ford described by the tipster, parked in front of No. 1 15th Street, N.E., Id. While waiting for the Oldsmobile to return, the officers ran a check on the cars' license numbers and registered owners; they found that neither car was reported as stolen and that no criminal warrants were outstanding against their owners. Tr. 49-50.
The detectives spotted the Oldsmobile at the traffic light at 15th and East Capitol Streets at about 7:45. As it pulled behind the Ford, they observed its three occupants: the driver, later identified as appellant Orson White; a black male passenger in a blue sweatsuit, later identified as appellant Lawrence Anderson; and a child in the rear seat, later identified as White's fourteen year old stepson. The officers could see partially inside the car, though it was "dark" or "dusky" out, because the car was parked beneath a high intensity street light. In addition, the dome light inside the car was on, illuminating the upper body portions of the occupants.
Detective Hill promptly pulled the unmarked cruiser alongside the Oldsmobile, stopping at the rear of the left quarter panel to let Detective Sanchez-Serrano out, Tr. 10, and then continued a bit further before exiting himself. The cruiser was placed so as to make it difficult — but not impossible — for the Oldsmobile to pull away. Tr. 18-19. Both officers put on identifying arm bands and approached the car; Hill testified he also attached a police badge to his collar and held his identification holder in his left hand.
Detective Hill testified that he was not certain precisely when he first withdrew his gun from the holster, Tr. 21, but he did so as he approached the car. When he reached the side of the car by the driver, Detective Hill announced, "Police, get out of the vehicle." He said he did so "in a very moderate tone," not "like a raid" but "like a normal approach to the vehicle." Tr. 41. When the driver, White, did not exit promptly, Hill repeated twice in rapid succession, "Get out of the vehicle," and "Place your hands on the dashboard." Tr. 11. White started to place his hands on the dashboard; but stopped and put them back in his lap, becoming "fidgety." Id. When testifying as to what he saw White do with his hands, Hill said first that he saw White remove "a tinfoil item" from his pocket, and later that "I didn't know what it was at that particular point." Tr. 12,29. Detective Hill then stepped back from the car, leveled his revolver through the windshield at White, and repeated, "Get out of the car." Id.
In the meantime, Detective Sanchez-Serrano approached the car from the passenger's side with his gun out of the holster but at his side and pointed downward. Tr. 53. When he heard his partner "yelling," he ordered Anderson and the boy in the rear seat to "[g]et out of the car," id., since he assumed that Hill had seen something "over there [on the driver's side] that was going to go wrong." Id. Anderson exited the vehicle; Sanchez-Serrano grabbed him and brought him around to the hood on the driver's side of the car.
They reached the driver's side just as White was emerging from the car. Tr. 54. As White stepped out, a tinfoil fell to the ground. Tr. 13. Detective Hill grabbed White with one hand, holstered his revolver and picked up the tinfoil with the other. Id. Feeling something in it, he placed both appellants under arrest, id., and had his partner call for backup units.
Detective Sanchez-Serrano retained custody of the two appellants while Detective Hill searched the car. Hill found additional tinfoils on the floor and seat of the car. In addition, he noticed a shaving bag on the front seat in front of the armrest; when opened, the bag contained cutting agents, measuring spoons, a strainer, a hypodermic needle and other paraphernalia. Tr. 130, 132. He also recovered $400 from appellants' persons.
II. THE ISSUE
Prior to trial, appellants moved to suppress the evidence seized from the Oldsmobile, claiming that the search was the fruit of an illegal arrest, unsupported by probable cause, that took place at the point that the officers with guns drawn ordered appellants to exit the car. The district court denied the motion to suppress on the ground that the policemen's initial actions amounted to no more than an investigatory stop; the arrest, the trial judge concluded, took place only upon White's exit when Detective Hill saw the tinfoil fall out of the car, providing the requisite probable cause for the arrest.
Appellants appeal from the trial judge's ruling that the police actions preceding the arrest constituted a valid investigatory stop under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), rather than an illegal arrest without probable cause. Because the government has conceded that probable cause for arrest did not exist at the time the officers approached the car, Appellee's Brief at 12, and the appellants in turn do not contest the finding that probable cause for arrest did exist once Detective Hill sighted the tinfoil on White's exit, the question is whether the detectives' actions leading up to White's exit from the car constituted an infringement of appellants' Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable seizures.
III. ANALYSIS
1. Distinguishing Between An Investigatory Stop and An Arrest
The Supreme Court first recognized the legitimacy of an "investigatory stop" in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). Terry defined such a "stop" to include "an entire rubric of police conduct — necessarily swift action predicated upon the on-the-spot observations of the officer on the beat — which historically has not been, and as a practical matter could not be, subjected to the warrant procedure." Id. at 20, 88 S.Ct. at 1879. In such situations, the Court held, police actions must be tested "by the Fourth Amendment's general proscription against unreasonable searches and seizures," id., rather than by the strict probable cause standard traditionally applied to judge arrests. See also Bailey v. United States, 389 F.2d 305, 314 (D.C.Cir.1967) (Leventhal, J., concurring) (citing Dorsey v. United States, 372 F.2d 928, 931 (D.C.Cir.1967)) ("If policemen are to serve any purpose of detecting and preventing crime by being out on the streets at all, they must be able to take a closer look at challenging situations as they encounter them.").
The Court has frequently reminded us since, however, that the Terry exception was meant to be of "narrow scope," Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 93, 100 S.Ct. 338, 343, 62 L.Ed.2d 238 (1979), and not a means by which to legalize otherwise illegal arrests. Indeed, in Terry's companion case, Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917, (1968), the Court reversed the conviction of a defendant because it found the challenged search to be incident to an illegal arrest rather than part of a valid investigatory stop. See also Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979) (detention of suspect at police station for interrogation indistinguishable from traditional arrest and not a valid Terry stop). Terry authorizes no more than "[a] brief stop of a suspicious individual, in order to determine his identity or to maintain the status quo momentarily while obtaining more information," Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 146, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 1923, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972), and permits a "limited search . not to discover evidence of a crime, but to allow the officer to pursue his investigation without fear of violence." Id. The initial stop cannot be a random exercise, see Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979) (reversed drug conviction based on evidence obtained in purely random search), but must be justified by "specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion," Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1879, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968).
2. Was This a Stop or An Arrest?
The first question posed by this case is whether the actions of the police, from the time the officers left their own car until the moment the tinfoil fell out of the appellant's car and Detective Hill grabbed White, constituted merely an investigatory stop or a fullfledged arrest. When a "stop" ends and an arrest begins has been the subject of numerous judicial decisions. See, e.g., United States v. Hill, 626 F.2d 429 (5th Cir. 1980); United States v. Wylie, 569 F.2d 62 (D.C.Cir.1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 944, 98 S.Ct. 1527, 55 L.Ed.2d 542 (1978). Judge Leventhal, concurring in Bailey v. United States, 389 F.2d 305 (D.C.Cir.1967), provides a framework for considering the question:
Whether there has been an arrest turns on whether there has been an imposition of custody, and this is a determination made after examining both the objective circumstances and the subjective feeling those circumstances are likely to evoke.
Id. at 314 (emphasis supplied). Among the circumstances courts consider when making this decision are: the officer's intent in stopping the citizen; the impression conveyed to the citizen as to whether he was in custody or only briefly detained for questioning; the length of the stop; the questions, if any, asked; and the extent of the search, if any, made.
The lines drawn are not always sharp ones. Each situation is unique, involving the weighing and measuring of contrary indicators. However, we conclude, as did the trial judge, that this was an investigatory stop, not an arrest.
The officers testified that they initially intended to question, not arrest, the appellants. Hill decided to make the stop to "further my investigation." Tr. 44. He had an agenda for accomplishing this end. He intended to:
ascertain their names. I would have checked the car . by making a visual inspection of the car in the front and back . from the outside. And at that point if I hadn't found nothing, I would have said, "You are free to go," and that would have been it.
Tr. 44r-5.
The usefulness of such an identity check and visual inspection is apparent. A visual inspection of a car can reveal narcotics or weapons "in plain view" so as to justify an arrest. Even if a stop does not give rise to probable cause, the officers learn the occupants' identities, knowledge which may be useful at a later date.
What makes the case at hand difficult is the amount of force used to effectuate the stop. The officers approached the car with drawn, though not pointed or raised, guns and ordered the occupants to get out of the car and to put their hands on the dashboard several times before one officer, Hill, seeing the driver make "fidgety" hand to lap movements, leveled the gun at White. Only at that point did the other officer pull his gun out. Tr. 92. The use or display of arms may, but does not necessarily, convert a stop into an arrest. Courts have generally upheld stops made at gun point when the threat of force has been viewed as reasonably necessary for the protection of the officer. Thus where police approach armed robbery suspects in a car with guns drawn, such action has been held to be a stop, not an arrest, United States v. Diggs, 522 F.2d 1310, 1313-14 (D.C.Cir.1975), cert. denied sub nom. Floyd v. United States, 429 U.S. 852, 97 S.Ct. 144, 50 L.Ed.2d 127 (1976), as has an armed stop of a plane about to taxi down a deserted runway, United States v. Richards, 500 F.2d 1025, 1028 (9th Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 420 U.S. 924, 95 S.Ct. 1118, 43 L.Ed.2d 393 (1975). See also United States v. Bull, 565 F.2d 869 (4th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 946, 98 S.Ct. 1531, 55 L.Ed.2d 545 (1978) (drawing of guns prior to approach of suspiciously acting persons in deserted parking lot late at night did not convert stop into arrest); United States v. Worthington, 544 F.2d 1275, 1280 n.3 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 817, 98 S.Ct. 55, 54 L.Ed.2d 72 (1977) (stop at gunpoint on dark, deserted airstrip held investigatory because reasonable); United States v. Maslanka, 501 F.2d 208, 213 n.10 (5th Cir. 1974), cert. denied sub nom. Knight v. United States, 421 U.S. 912, 95 S.Ct. 1567, 43 L.Ed.2d 777 (1975) (reasonable for lone officer to draw guns when approaching car on a lonely highway containing three young males; stop held investigatory). On occasion, however, the courts have ruled that the use of excessive force transformed a stop into an arrest. E. g., United States v. Strickler, 490 F.2d 378 (9th Cir. 1974) (encircling a suspect's car with policeman and ordering him out at gunpoint held an arrest); United States v. Lampkin, 464 F.2d 1093, 1095 (3d Cir. 1972) (arrest occurred at moment officers approached suspect with drawn guns to detain him).
Rather than assume in this case that because the officers had their guns drawn (but not pointed) they intended or conveyed the impression that an arrest was taking place, we look for an explanation of why they were drawn, and whether that precaution was reasonable in light of all the circumstances. If so, the mere drawing of their guns out of their holsters did not convert the stop into an arrest.
Detective Hill testified that, though the tipster had not said so (and in fact they were not), he was concerned that the suspects might be armed as were a substantial number of the people involved in the 1,000 street drug arrests he had conducted. He thought his prior experiences gave him reason to be concerned about his safety. Tr. 17-21. This concern was not unreasonable. An officer approaching a car in which he has been told narcotics are present can reasonably anticipate that an arrest may at some point ensue. Such an arrest may require a show of force, or provoke an attempt to escape by car, or even an assault. It does not seem unreasonable to allow the officer to be prepared for such an occurrence by having his gun drawn. That appeared to be the thinking of the trial judge when he upheld the stop, commenting "in view of the fact that it was a serious felony, I think the officers would be a little foolhardy if they" approached the car at 7:30 in the evening, a car with three people in it, without their guns, at the ready." Tr. 94.
Though this ease would be easier if it involved a dark and deserted spot or one lone officer facing a carful of suspects, our reluctance to second-guess the judgment of experienced officers is not limited to such extreme situations. The officers were approaching a car which they had been told contained both traffickers and a cache of narcotics. Reviewing the situation through the "eyes of a reasonable and cautious police officer on the scene, guided by his experience and training," we cannot say that the officers acted unreasonably in being prepared for possible violence. United States v. Wylie, 569 F.2d 62, 68 (D.C.Cir.1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 944, 98 S.Ct. 1527, 55 L.Ed.2d 542 (1978) (citing United States v. Hall, 525 F.2d 857, 859 (D.C.Cir.1976)). This approach took place at night in a central city neighborhood. The officers did not wave or brandish their guns, but rather kept them at their sides when approaching the car. There is no evidence that the force used was excessive. Hence, if the officers had sufficient cause to make a Terry stop, see pp. 40-45 infra, we cannot conclude that simply having their guns drawn and ready would by itself convert the stop into an arrest.
We hold similarly that the officers' orders to the occupants to get out of the car for questioning were compatible with an investigatory stop.
Courts have routinely allowed officers to insist on reasonable changes of location when carrying out a Terry stop. See, e. g., United States v. Chatman, 573 F.2d 565, 567 (9th Cir. 1977) (fact suspect stopped at arrival gate in airport placed in interview room for questioning did not transform stop into arrest); United States v. Oates, 560 F.2d 45, 57 (2d Cir. 1977) (court saw "nothing wrong" in agents asking suspects in airport stop to step into nearby airline office, "a place more convenient for interrogation and more conducive to insuring the safety of other passengers in the crowded departure area"). The exigencies of the circumstances determine what moves are reasonable in a given situation, see Bailey v. United States, 389 F.2d 305, 313 (D.C.Cir.1967) (Leventhal, J., concurring) (reasonable for officers approaching suspected getaway car with guns drawn to order occupants to "sit still and keep their hands in sight").
The order to get out of the car in this case was based on the officers' judgment that the situation would be safer and less likely to escalate beyond their control if the questioning was conducted outside of the car. Such a judgment is not unreasonable. In Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 98 S.Ct. 330, 54 L.Ed.2d 331 (1977), the Supreme Court
specifically recognized the inordinate risk confronting an officer as he approaches a person seated in an automobile. "According to one study, approximately 30% of police shootings occurred when a police officer approached a suspect seated in an automobile. Bristow, Police Officer Shootings—A Tactical Evaluation, 54 J.Crim.L.C. & P.S. 93 (1963)." Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 148 n. 3 [92 S.Ct. 1921, 1924 n.3, 32 L.Ed.2d 612] (1972). We are aware that not all these assaults occur when issuing traffic summons, but we have before expressly declined to accept the argument that traffic violations necessarily involve less danger to officers than other types of confrontations. United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 234 [94 S.Ct. 467, 476, 38 L.Ed.2d 427] (1973).
Id. at 110, 98 S.Ct. at 333. But see id. at 118, 98 S.Ct. at 337 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (noting the unreliability of survey used as basis for proposition stated in majority opinion).
Since an officer's view of a suspect seated in a car is always partially obscured, the officer is at a disadvantage both when he approaches the occupant and when he tries to question him through a car window. He cannot scrutinize the suspect's movements as he can a pedestrian's; there is consequently a greater opportunity for the suspect in a car to pull, out a hidden weapon. Moreover, the frisk component of a Terry "stop and frisk" is not available to protect the policeman if a suspect is sitting inside a closed car and the officer is on the outside. Finally, the possibility always exists that a driver may try to start his ear and drive off, thereby endangering the officer and members of the public. In this case, although the suspects' car was partially blocked by the police car so that it would have been difficult for them to drive off quickly, such an escape was possible. Moreover, the officer testified the suspects' car's ignition was on as he approached it. Tr. 37.
In Mimms, the Supreme Court decided that a motorist stopped for a minor traffic violation may be ordered out of his car even though the officer has no reason to believe he is either dangerous or armed.
Establishing a face to face confrontation diminishes the possibility, otherwise substantial, that the driver can make unobserved movements; this, in turn reduces the likelihood that the officer will be the victim of an assault.
The hazard of accidental injury from passing traffic to an officer standing on the driver's side of the vehicle may also be appreciable in some situations. Rather than conversing while standing exposed to moving traffic, the officer prudently may prefer to ask the driver of the vehicle to step out of the car and off onto the shoulder of the road where the inquiry may be pursued with greater safety to both.
Against this important interest we are asked to weigh the intrusion into the driver's personal liberty occasioned not by the initial stop of the vehicle, which was admittedly justified, but by the order to get out of the car. We think this additional intrusion can only be described as de minimis. The driver is being asked to expose to view very little more of his person than is already exposed. The police have already lawfully decided that the driver shall be briefly detained; the only question is whether he shall spend that period sitting in the driver's seat of his car or standing alongside it. Not only is the insistence of the police on the latter choice not a "serious intrusion upon the sanctity of the person," but it hardly rises to the level of a "petty indignity." Terry v. Ohio, supra [392 U.S.], at 17 [88 S.Ct. at 1877]. What is at most a mere inconvenience cannot prevail when balanced against legitimate concerns for the officer's safety.
434 U.S. at 110-11, 98 S.Ct. at 333 (footnotes omitted).
The Court was careful to say, in response to a vigorous dissent by Justice Stevens, that "we do not hold today that 'whenever an officer has an occasion to speak with the driver of a vehicle, he may also order the driver out of the car.' " We are asked here by appellant to distinguish Mimms because there the original stop was justified by probable cause to believe an actual violation of the law had taken place. We do not find such a distinction persuasive; the trial judge tapped a vein of common sense when he suggested that it defied logic to permit the policeman to order a minor traffic violator out of the car for the policeman's safety but not allow him to exercise the same precaution when making a valid Terry stop of suspected narcotics traffickers.
Although the proper application of Mimms has been the subject of some confusion see, e. g., Jones v. United States, 391 A.2d 1188 (D.C.App.1978) (officer who saw car parked late at night in rear parking lot could approach car to investigate, but could not order occupants out of car even though he saw passenger make a quick movement as though to hide something), we do not find such an order here to be objectionable. As Judge Leventhal so cogently put in in Bailey:
the hard questions are in the middle, and can only be evaluated by looking, as in so many other Fourth Amendment questions, to the reasonableness of the police conduct.
We are not dealing here with psychological gamesmanship staged in the backroom of the police station. As a society, we routinely expect police officers to risk their lives in apprehending dangerous people. We should not bicker if in bringing potentially dangerous situations under control they issue commands and take precautions which reasonable men are warranted in taking.
389 F.2d at 315-16.
The climax of this sixty second drama, according to Hill's testimony, came when, after ordering the occupants to get out four times,
[tjhey moved — well, Mr. White, he moved. He looked at me and I said, "Get out of the car," and he was very reluctant to get out of the car. He kept moving around in his seat. He became very fidgety and moving around. I said, "Get out of the car," and I said — I think there came a time when I told him to put his hands on the dashboard and when he did that, I was going to come around and open the door. But when I did that, he dropped his hands back down in his waist area and at that point I said, "Get out of the car," and he just willingly refused to get out and he kept fumbling in the seat, going like this (demonstrating) and he brought his hand out and he dropped them back down.
And when he brought his hands out that time, I backed away from the car and that's when I went — I believe I went around to the front of the car and as he was getting out of the car, I continued to back away because I didn't want to shoot him and I just backed away. I don't know why I was backing up because I didn't know what he had as he was getting out of the car.
And as the door came open, tinfoil fell to the ground and he came around and he put his hands sort of in this position (demonstrating) and that's when I grabbed him from the rear.
Tr. 38-39.
The "furtive gesture" scenario is not an altogether unfamiliar one in cases of this kind. Levels of force and intrusion in an "investigatory stop" may be legitimately escalated to meet supervening events, such as attempted flight, e. g., United States v. Thompson, 558 F.2d 522, 524 (9th Cir. 1977), cert. denied sub nom. Reeve v. United States, 435 U.S. 914, 98 S.Ct. 1466, 55 L.Ed.2d 504 (1978) (drawing of weapon justified after officers had identified themselves and ordered the vans to stop and one van started to move, then lurched forward); United States v. Maslanka, 501 F.2d 208, 213 (5th Cir. 1974), cert. denied sub nom. Knight v. United States, 421 U.S. 912, 95 S.Ct. 1567, 43 L.Ed.2d 777 (1975) (reasonable for officer to approach car at gunpoint after five-mile, high-speed chase). Other kinds of suspicious behavior may lead an experienced officer to fear for his safety, thus justifying an escalation in the level of force used, e. g., United States v. Bull, 565 F.2d 869, 871 (4th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 946, 98 S.Ct. 1531, 55 L.Ed.2d 545 (1978) (suspects bent over when policeman approached as if to hide faces; one had on heavy jacket though it was a warm night; held reasonable to use gun, stop, and frisk suspects).
A "reasonable" reaction in this context, like "probable cause," turns on "the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent men, not legal technicians, act." Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 175, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 1310, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949). See Kamisar, Is The Exclusionary Rule An 'Illogical' or 'Unnatural' Interpretation of the Fourth Amendment?, 62 Judicature 66, 84 n.112 (1978). Judged by this standard, we do not hold Hill's actions in ordering the appellants to exit from the car at gunpoint to be unreasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.
If the Terry stop itself was validly originated, we cannot say that its escalation into an order at gunpoint directing the occupants to get out of the car was unreasonable in light of the driver's hesitation and furtive hand movements.
3. Was This a Valid Terry Stop ?
We have saved until last the most difficult part of the analysis, which focuses on the question of whether an investigatory stop, specifically one featuring the admittedly coercive elements of use of guns and orders to get out of the car, was justified in this case. The Terry threshold was described by this court in Wylie as follows:
The general constraint set forth in Terry is that an investigative seizure must be "reasonably related in scope to the justification for [its] initiation." Terry v. Ohio, supra, 392 U.S. at 29, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1884; accord, United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, supra, 422 U.S. at 881, 95 S.Ct. 2574 [at 2580]. And, in determining reasonableness, "the facts [must] be judged against an objective standard: would the facts available to the officer at the moment of seizure . 'warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief' that the action taken was appropriate?" Terry v. Ohio, supra, 392 U.S. at 21-22 [88 S.Ct. at 1879-1880].
569 F.2d at 70. See also United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 561, 100 S.Ct. 1870, 1881, 64 L.Ed.2d 497 (1980) (Powell, J., concurring) ("The reasonableness of a stop turns on the facts and circumstances of each case. In particular, the Court has emphasized (i) the public interest served by the seizure, (ii) the nature and scope of the intrusion, and (iii) the objective facts upon which the law enforcement officer relied in light of his knowledge and experience.") In this case, to restate the facts, Detective Hill, a veteran of 12 years on the force, 11 of them on narcotics detail, with 1,000 arrests to his credit, Tr. 17, received an anonymous tip from an unknown informer. The tip, however, was quite specific as to the location and description, down to license tag numbers, of the two cars and as to the name, age and garb of one of the defendants. Moreover, it described a pattern of behavior on the suspects' part — "Nicky" would park his car, get into the other man's car, drive away, and return within a short period. Finally, the tip charged the defendants with a specific, serious, crime. The tipster alleged that they were narcotics traffickers.
As the Supreme Court made clear in Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972), not all tips are created equal:
Informants' tips, like all other clues and evidence coming to a policeman on the scene, may vary greatly in their value and reliability. One simple rule will not cover every situation. Some tips, completely lacking in indicia of reliability, would either warrant no police response or require further investigation before a forcible stop of a subject would be authorized.
Id. at 147, 92 S.Ct. at 1923. In holding that the tip received in Adams warranted the challenged stop for questioning of a driver in a car, the Court stressed that the informant was known to the officer personally and had provided him with information in the past, and he came forward in person to give the information, and that under the applicable law, he would have been subject to immediate arrest for making a false complaint had the officer's investigation proved the tip incorrect. Id. at 146-147,92 S.Ct. at 1923. The Court explicitly distinguished the Adams situation from that of "an anonymous telephone tip," id. at 146, 92 S.Ct. at 1923, like the one involved here.
Some commentators urge, and some courts have held, that anonymous tips do not justify any investigative stops, citing the spectre of indiscriminate harassment of innocent citizens as a result of tips from disgruntled neighbors or mischief-makers.
Most federal appellate courts, however, have rejected this absolute rule in favor of an individualized analysis of the credibility of the tip. When that credibility is enhanced by the responding officer's observation of corroborating details an anonymous tip may provide a legitimate basis for a stop, and in some cases, an arrest. The difficult question is how much corroboration is necessary to justify an intrusion of the suspect's Fourth Amendment rights.
When the officers' own observations tend to confirm parts of the. tip that relate to illegal activity, the anonymous tip is "boost[ed] . over the probable cause threshold," justifying an arrest. United States v. Smith, 598 F.2d 936 (5th Cir. 1979). At that point, the two prongs of the test derived from Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969), are satisfied: "The 'credibility' prong — is the information believable?," and the "criminal conduct prong," — "The tip must contain a sufficient statement of the underlying circumstances from which the informer drew his conclusion that the suspect was engaged in criminal conduct." United States v. Smith, 598 F.2d 936, 938 (5th Cir. 1979). However, "the matter becomes more difficult when the corroborated facts concern activity wholly innocent." Id. The court in Smith held that mere corroboration of innocent details was not sufficient to boost the anonymous tips in that case, two anonymous letters warning of impending drug transactions, over the probable cause threshold. But see id. at 940-42 (Hill, J., dissenting); United States v. Tuley, 546 F.2d 1264, 1268 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 837, 98 S.Ct. 128, 54 L.Ed.2d 99 (1977) (accumulation of innocent detail conform ing to original tip coupled with exigent circumstances gave rise to probable cause); United States v. Brennan, 538 F.2d 711, 720-21 (5th Cir. 1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1092, 97 S.Ct. 1104, 51 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977) (though "the better practice is to obtain corroboration of incriminating details, . quantum of knowledge [of] equivocal information ripened into probable cause"). Cf. Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 417, 89 S.Ct. 584, 589, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969) (tip may provide "such detail, [that a magistrate] could reasonably infer that the informant had gained his information in a reliable way").
However, only "reasonable suspicion," not probable cause, is necessary to justify a Terry stop. Reasonable suspicion requires a lower quantum of proof than does probable cause. United States v. Afanador, 567 F.2d 1325, 1329 (5th Cir. 1978); United States v. Gorin, 564 F.2d 159, 161 (4th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1080, 98 S.Ct. 1276, 55 L.Ed.2d 788 (1978). Accordingly, courts have been more willing to allow stops justified only by anonymous tips corroborated by observation of innocent details than arrests based on similar information. In United States v. Andrews, 600 F.2d 563 (6th Cir.), cert. denied sub nom. Brooks v. United States, 444 U.S. 878, 100 S.Ct. 166, 62 L.Ed.2d 108 (1979), the court upheld an investigative stop of a drug suspect in an airport though the sole basis for the stop was the corroboration of innocent details of an anonymous tip: the suspect's name and description and the flight on which he was arriving. The court placed great emphasis on the fact that the tip alleged the drugs would be delivered to a known drug dealer; however, the dealer was nowhere in sight at the time of the stop.
The Ninth Circuit has similarly sustained the validity of a stop based on an anonymous tip corroborated only by observation of innocent details. In United States v. Sierra-Hernandez, 581 F.2d 760 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 936, 99 S.Ct. 333, 58 L.Ed.2d 333 (1978), an unidentified man drove up to a border patrol agent and told him that a truck, which he then described, was proceeding on a nearby road and had just "loaded up with weed at the cane-break." The officer, who knew the cane-break had been the site of previous instances of drug and alien smuggling, immediately went after, and found, the described truck. A voluntary search yielded a cache of drugs. The court upheld the stop after applying the following standard:
But just as there is no per se rule establishing the reliability of a citizen's tip to justify a stop in every instance, so too there is no per se rule requiring an officer to obtain the identity of the informant before he acts. In evaluating the reasonableness of the officer's conduct in this case, we therefore must consider both the circumstances in which the tip was made and the facts which would justify the officer in acting without knowing the citizen's identity or obtaining information for tracing him later.
Id. at 763. See also United States v. Jones, 599 F.2d 1058 (9th Cir. 1979) (anonymous tip about stolen wood accurate as to time, description of truck, location of delivery and nature of activity sufficient basis for stop); United States v. Gorin, 564 F.2d 159 (4th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1080, 98 S.Ct. 1276, 55 L.Ed.2d 788 (1978) (anonymous telephone tip describing armed man sitting at a bar, corroborated in part by the bartender, held to justify stop of a man meeting that description several blocks away).
The number and variety of anonymous tip cases is endless. None are directly on point; each can be distinguished. The question whether an anonymous tip corroborated only by observation of innocent details justifies a Terry stop is a live and disputed one. Indeed, earlier this year three members of the Supreme Court, recognizing division among the circuits on this issue, called for Supreme Court resolution of it in Jernigan v. Louisiana, 446 U.S. 958, 100 S.Ct. 2930, 64 L.Ed.2d 816 (1980) (White, J., dissenting, with whom Brennan, J. and Marshall, J., concur) (denial of certiorari):
We have not directly decided whether an anonymous tip may furnish reasonable suspicion for a stop and frisk. We have emphasized the specificity of the information provided, the independent corroboration by the police officer, and the danger to the public.. See, e.g., Adams, supra; Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307 [79 S.Ct. 329, 3 L.Ed.2d 327] (1959). But in the decided cases, these factors were not the only indicia of reliability. The informers in Adams and Draper were known to the officer and were known to have provided reliable information in the past. The same cannot be said of an anonymous tipster.
Arguably, the decision of the Louisiana Supreme Court is inconsistent with our prior cases which require that reasonable suspicion be based on a sufficiently reliable informer's tip. I would grant certiorari for this reason and also because the reliability of an anonymous or unidentified tipster is an issue that has divided the federal courts of appeals. Compare United States v. McLeroy, 584 F.2d 746 (CA5 1978), and United States v. Robinson, 536 F.2d 1298 (CA9 1976) (no reasonable suspicion), with United States v. Hernandez, 486 F.2d 614 (CA7 1973) (per curiam) (reasonable suspicion), cert. denied, 415 U.S. 959 [94 S.Ct. 1488, 39 L.Ed.2d 574] (1974). See also United States v. Gorin, 564 F.2d 159 (CA4 1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1080 [98 S.Ct. 1276, 55 L.Ed.2d 788] (1978), and United States v. Unverzagt, 424 F.2d 396 (CA8 1970) (identity of informer known but no proof of his reliability; reasonable suspicion found). The state courts are similarly divided.
Based on the particular facts of this case, we conclude that an anonymous tip about an ongoing transaction, detailed as to time and place, including a specific description of one of the participants and their vehicles as well as their modus operandi, and verified by the officers through surveillance in all details except for the actual possession or exchange of narcotics provides a sufficient basis for a legitimate Terry stop to question the occupants as to their identity and visually check inside the car. Where necessary, this approach to the car may be enforced — as it was here — by an order to the occupants to get out of the car.
We are well aware that in rendering even so careful a holding we are on the outermost perimeters of the Terry doctrine. We do so nonetheless for the following reasons:
1. It is well-recognized that citizen informants in narcotic-ridden neighborhoods want to retain anonymity for fear- of retaliation from traffickers. However, the pe culiar nature of narcotics crimes means that arrests are almost totally dependent on tips and undercover work; there are no reporting "victims." Therefore, enforcement officials actively encourage such tips from citizens who deplore the effects of drug traffic on their children and their neighborhoods. If we are serious about enforcing drug trafficking laws, police must have the ability to reasonably follow up such anonymous tips through investigation.
2. This was a tip about a narcotics transaction in progress; the tipster said "Nicky" and the driver would have narcotics with them when they returned in the Oldsmobile. It was also precise as to the descriptions of the two cars involved, the identity and dress of "Nicky", and the timing of the return. It was therefore reasonable to surmise that the informant must have (1) seen "Nicky" leave with the driver and (2) known enough about the pattern of his actions to predict the time of his return and what he would be doing in the interim. Cf. Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307, 79 S.Ct. 329, 3 L.Ed.2d 327 (1959). There is little doubt that if the informant had a "track record" so as to be deemed "reliable" or had detailed how he knew about "Nicky's" activities, the tip would meet the "reasonable suspicion" test required for a Terry stop, if indeed it did not establish the probable cause necessary for an arrest.
Even without these indices of reliability, however, we are unwilling to say that tips as detailed as this one, and which prove to be accurate in all the "innocent" details, must be ignored. If they are not to be ignored, an investigative stop seems the only alternative. Short of such a stop, the police can only sit, wait, and hope they will see from afar some suspicious conduct inside the suspects' car (not a likely possibility), or else follow one or both of the suspects when they drive on or leave the car, thereby risking the loss of their trail in traffic or in darkness. The fact they were in a ear which could move off created a need for reasonably quick action to preserve some legacy of the verified tip and observation. Compare Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 73, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 1907, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968) (Harlan, J., concurring) ("one important factor . in determining whether there are reasonable grounds for a forcible intrusion is whether there is any need for immediate action"; no need found) with United States v. Oates, 560 F.2d 45, 59 (2d Cir. 1977) (need for stop supplied by inherent odiousness of offense, and need for quick and decisive action when large-scale dope peddlers are about to board a jet aircraft).
In an antiseptic world, the officers might, of course, have simply walked up to the car and politely asked if the occupants would mind identifying themselves. Such "contact" implies that the citizen can refuse to cooperate, i.e. drive away, and generally is not considered to rise even to the level of a Terry stop. Since it is not read as a "seizure," presumably it need not be justified by a "reasonable suspicion" that a crime is taking place based on articulable facts. See, e. g., United States v. Elmore, 595 F.2d 1036 (5th Cir. 1979), cert. denied, 447 U.S. 910, 100 S.Ct. 2998, 64 L.Ed.2d 861 (1980) (asking for identity of man who made "strange moves around airport" was. not Terry stop so as to require justifiable suspicion); United States v. Wylie, 569 F.2d 62 (D.C.Cir.1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 944, 98 S.Ct. 1527, 55 L.Ed.2d 542 (1978) (no seizure occurred during on the street questioning).
But we do not live in an antiseptic world. And in our tarnished one, to limit an officer to the kind of voluntary "contact" he can make walking any beat reduces the tip and verifying observations to a nullity. Unless the officer has the authority to enforce the stop — for the limited purpose of obtaining identities and looking into the car — he has no intermediate response between a "contact" and an arrest. We do not find anything in Terry or its underlying rationale to require that the articulable facts and inferences upon which reasonable suspicion may rest can never be grounded in an anonymous tip, where an array of noncriminal details have been corroborated by the officers' own observations and where the suspects are in a position to move away. While recognizing that the precise question has not been before us previously, in the circumstances of this case, we find the police stop reasonable.
4. Fourth Amendment Implications of Our Decision
We need no reminder of the Court's profound responsibilities to uphold Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable seizures. Nonetheless, where there is a verified, though anonymous, detailed tip about narcotics trafficking, we do not find inherently unreasonable an intrusion consisting of a demand to step out of a car, enforced ultimately through leveling the officer's gun against recalcitrant subjects who not only do not respond but make suspicious movements inside the car. No search of a person or car was conducted here before probable cause had been established by the observed presence of narcotics; the only bodily contact up to that point was the officer's physical escort of "Nicky" to the front of the car. The police officers made a reasonable attempt to investigate a detailed, credible tip about a serious crime that would at most have involved temporary inconvenience to the occupants of a parked car, had they been entirely innocent. These are the facts of the case; other fact situations may produce different results. The judgment is
Affirmed.
. The district court called it a "close case" as well. Tr. 92. "Tr." refers to the transcript of the suppression hearing and trial held on November 27-29, 1979. While the dissent blandly asserts that "this is not a 'close case' as the majority suggests," Diss. Op. at 47, the dissent's own excruciating exercise seeking to distinguish cases in which Terry stops have been approved by the courts, and relying on essentially irrelevant "stop and frisk" cases, suggests quite the contrary.
. 33 D.C.Code § 402 (possession); 21 U.S.C. § 841(a) (intent to distribute).
. Appellant Anderson also argues that the evidence against him was insufficient to support the jury's verdict of guilty, and thus that his motion for a directed acquittal should have been granted. After reading the transcript, we conclude that this argument is meritless. He contends as well that certain jury instructions were misleading. The appellant asserts that one part of an instruction on distribution could have been interpreted by the jurors to mean that the prosecution did not have to prove that each appellant had to personally intend that the drug possessed be distributed, but rather that both could be convicted of possession with intent to distribute if only one had such an intent. We find that the portion challenged on its face reasonably conveys only the interpretation which the appellant admits is proper — that the prosecution need not show that the defendants intended to personally distribute the drug, but only that each intended someone to do so. Moreover, the instructions preceding and following the challenged passage further crystallize this interpretation.
."Tr." refers to the transcript of the suppression hearing and trial held on November 27-29, 1979.
. Both detectives were in plainclothes.
. The Oldsmobile was registered in the name of appellant White's mother. Tr. 197.
. The officers testified that they did not recognize either of the adult occupants from their previous police experience. Tr. 35.
. Appellant Anderson was called "Nicky."
. Detective Sanchez-Serrano saw the boy at this time; Detective Hall did not notice him until after their approach towards the car, at which point the boy became hysterical. Tr. 29.
. Tr. 20 (testimony of Detective Hill).
. Tr. 53 (testimony of Detective Sanchez-Serrano).
. Tr. 125.
. Both officers testified to the fact that the car's interior lights were on even when the doors were closed; they had difficulty turning them off when they left the area. Tr. 20, 53.
. His partner, Sanchez-Serrano, however, recalled that Hill "yelled." Tr. 53.
. Detective Hill also testified that he saw the passenger, Anderson, "remove from his waist area a tinfoil" which he "had reason to believe . . . contained possible narcotic substance." Tr. 12.
. The dissent implies that Hill left White unguarded while he reached for the tinfoil. In fact, the transcript makes clear that Sanchez-Serrano was standing behind both appellants, covering them with his service revolver, at the time White holstered his gun to pick up the packet of drugs. Tr. 13, 54.
. There was considerable dispute at trial as to which appellant the money came from, but the resolution of that issue is unnecessary to the disposition of this appeal.
.The trial judge did not accept Detective Hill's testimony that he had seen tinfoils on the persons of both White and Anderson in appellants' car prior to the time White exited. Tr. 93. However, at trial, both White and Anderson admitted that Anderson panicked when he saw the police and scattered the tinfoils around the car, Tr. 295, 326; White explained his "fidgeting" as an attempt to brush the tinfoils off him. Tr. 303-04. Although neither their testimony nor Hill's about the tinfoils' presence in the car is cognizable for purposes of appeal from denial of the suppression motion, we note that their stories are consistent.
. Sibron was a consolidated case. The conviction of the other defendant was affirmed on the ground that it was pursuant to a lawful arrest. 392 U.S. at 66, 88 S.Ct. at 1904.
. The state had conceded that probable cause was lacking at the time of the encounter and ensuing search. Id. at 62, 88 S.Ct. at 1902.
.There is still debate over whether Terry authorizes a brief detention for investigative purposes where no officer has observed behavior suggesting criminal activity. See Preiser, Confrontations Initiated by the Police on Less Than Probable Cause, 45 Albany L.Rev. 57 (1980).
. E. g., Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 46-7, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 1894, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968) (held not investigatory stop because policeman had no intention of asking questions); cf. United States v. Bull, 565 F.2d 869, 870 (4th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 946, 98 S.Ct. 1531, 55 L.Ed.2d 545 (1978) (testimony of officer that he intended stop-and-frisk, not arrest, accepted).
. E. g., United States v. Oates, 560 F.2d 45, 57 (2d Cir. 1977) ("significant . . [that customs officers] did not . represent in any way that their detainees were being placed under arrest"); United States v. Richards, 500 F.2d 1025, 1029 (9th Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 420 U.S. 924, 95 S.Ct. 1118, 43 L.Ed.2d 393 (1975) ("While an arrest can be made without the use of such [formal words of arrest], . the absence of such words . . . indicated] that appellant was merely detained for investigative questioning[.]").
. E. g., United States v. Richards, supra, 500 F.2d at 1029; Arnold v. United States, 382 F.2d 4, 7 (9th Cir. 1967).
. E. g., United States v. Purry, 545 F.2d 217, 219-20 (D.C.Cir.1976) (held investigatory stop when policeman stopped appellant, asked for identification and about bank robbery); cf. United States v. Barber, 557 F.2d 628, 632 (8th Cir. 1977) (fact that no questions asked indicative of arrest, not investigatory stop).
. E. g., Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 93, 100 S.Ct. 338, 343, 62 L.Ed.2d 238 (1979) (conviction reversed because search exceeded frisk for weapons permissible on investigatory stop); Government of Canal Zone v. Bender, 573 F.2d 1329, 1332 (5th Cir. 1978) (same).
. When asked at oral argument, counsel for the government explained that "drawn guns" in this case meant that the guns had been removed from their holsters and were being held at the officers' sides, pointing downward. The dissent calls it "academic" to "worry whether the police were pointing their weapons directly at appellants or not," since "any reasonable person, seeing drawn guns, would feel under the same absolute custodial restraint, wherever the officers' guns were pointed." Diss. Op. at n.19. This is of course pure speculation; there is nothing in the record to indicate whether appellants saw the drawn guns or how they perceived them. We believe that any reasonable person would indeed distinguish between the. implications of policemen approaching with guns at their side and policemen approaching with guns leveled at the subjects.
. The court in Strickler stated:
[W]e simply cannot equate an armed approach to a surrounded vehicle whose occupants have been commanded to raise their hands with the "brief stop of a suspicious individual in order to determine his identity or to maintain the status quo momentarily while obtaining more information" which was authorized in Williams.
490 F.2d at 380.
. One survey of drug arrests showed that 10% of drug suspects arrested in Washington included in the survey were armed. Johnson & Bogomolny, Selective Justice: Drug Law Enforcement in Six American Cities, in Appendix, Drug Abuse in America, Second Report of the National Advisory Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse 543 (1973). Twenty-eight District of Columbia police officers were assaulted with firearms in 1979. Metropolitan Police Department, Washington, D.C., Fiscal Year 1979 Annual Report 59 (1980). Unlike the dissent, we feel the odds too high to require policemen to play "Russian roulette" each time they effect a drug arrest.
. The dissent repeatedly stresses the fact that these particular appellants did not attempt to flee. However, it ignores the fact that such flight was possible — the car's ignition was on, it was not completely blocked, and the officers' vision of its occupants' activities was obscured. Tr. 57. Therefore, the officers had reason to suspect that appellants might attempt to flee.
. The officers had no alternative short of ordering appellants from the car to learn whether they were armed. Again, appellants' initial refusal to exit and White's furtive hand movements could reasonably provoke fear that they were armed in the arresting officers' minds.
. Though there were three people in the car, one was a child. Moreover, Detective Hill testified that he was unaware of the presence of this third person until after he leveled his revolver in White's face; thus his actions throughout the challenged period were predicated on the presence of only two persons in the car.
. The dissent quotes a 1968 article by Professor LaFave to the effect that narcotics violations do not justify police action on the basis of anonymous information, Diss. Op. at 59, because they involve no risk of "serious personal injury or grave irreparable property damage." If indeed such an appraisal of narcotics traffic was valid 13 years ago, we must take issue with it now. See note 34 infra.
. The trial judge did not ask the officers about whether the area was a "high crime" area at the suppression hearing. When cross-examined on the subject at trial, Officer Hall testified that the area was a high crime area.
We note the dissent itself refers to the area as an "innercity area" when "wonder[ing]" whether police officers would act similarly in "affluent suburbs nearby Washington (where drug peddling is known to be prevalent)." See Diss. Op. at 46.
The "inner city" resident, who must accept overt drug dealing as "part of living," is in our view the real victim of any disparity that exists between such areas and the "affluent suburbs"; the rare efforts of such residents to cooperate with police in apprehending dealers deserve appropriate consideration. See Wheeler, Drugs on O Street 'Part of Living,' Washington Post, Jan. 3, 1981, at Al, col. 1. This local newspaper article recounts the problems of one "inner city" neighborhood where open drug dealing is rampant on the streets.
Disputes among dealers and customers erupt periodically in gunfire. At least four fatal shootings have occurred there since May. The block is crisscrossed by a spider-like network of alleys and narrow streets that provide an instant refuge for the dealers, when police patrols arrive.
But many residents of O Street and adjoining Columbia Street simply have accepted the drug phenomenon as part of their lives and make no attempt to dislodge the dealers and their cohorts by calling the District Building or police.
[T]here is . pragmatic fear of possible retaliation by drug dealers if the status quo is disturbed. Maintaining the status quo buys protection and an odd kind of stability for the block.
"At first I called the police," said one man who asked not to be identified, "but then my house was broken into, and they bombed the front door. So now I don't call the police, and they don't bother me. You have to be very careful here."
(Emphasis supplied.)
.According to both defendants' trial testimony, Anderson panicked when he found out they were police, not when he saw them approaching with guns drawn. Tr. 326. White said at trial, "I had been arrested before." Tr. 305.
. Hill's first action upon approaching the car and announcing his identity as a policeman was to order the occupants out of the car. This order was repeated "three or four times," Tr. 12, along with an order to "place your hands on the dashboard." Tr. 11.
. Judge Leventhal explained his conclusion: What the police did was to act reasonably to bring a situation under control; they had no way of knowing whether the car would leave the jurisdiction, and once the occupants scattered it would be nearly impossible to reassemble them again. 389 F.2d at 314.
. One survey of drug arrests in 6 American cities (including Washington) showed that 16% of drug arrests took place when the suspects were in automobiles. Johnson & Bogolmony, supra note 29, at 538.
.See United States Department of Justice, Uniform Crime Reports for the United States (1979). The nationwide rate of assaults on police officers during 1979 was 17 per 100 officers. Id. at 302. Firearms were used in 5.5% of the assaults. Id. at 303. Four hundred two of the assaults with firearms were made on policemen investigating suspicious persons or circumstances. Id. at 304. Nine officers were killed while conducting such investigations; 21 while making arrests for crimes other than burglaries and robberies. Id. at 309. Of the 106 officers slain in 1979, 100 (94%) were slain with firearms; 50% of those killed with firearms were within 5 feet of assailants when shot. Id. at 311. Of 1,604 persons identified in connection with officer killings from 1970-1979, 17% had prior narcotics arrests. Id. at 312.
. There were dissents by Justices Marshall, Stevens and Brennan. Justice Marshall was concerned because the officer had no reason to suspect the motorist might have a gun, and there was no nexus between the reason for the stop, an expired license plate, and the order to step out of the car. Id. at 113-14, 98 S.Ct. at 334-5. Justice Stevens worried that license to order every traffic violator out of the car abandoned
"the central teaching of this Court's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence" — which has ordinarily required individualized inquiry into the particular facts justifying every police intrusion — in favor of a general rule covering countless situations. But what is most disturbing is the fact that this important innovation is announced almost casually, in the course of explaining the summary reversal of a decision the Court should not even bother to review.
Id. at 116, 98 S.Ct. at 336 (footnote omitted). Justice Stevens also countered the statistics of officer killings during traffic stops and offered evidence that it may be safer to have the occupants remain in the car. Id. at 119, 98 S.Ct. at 337. He rejected the notion that the officer should not have to "explain the reasons for his actions" according to the circumstances of each case. Id. at 122, 98 S.Ct. at 339.
. In Mimms it was the allegedly indiscriminate and unparticularized license to order citizens out of the car without relation to the offense for which they had been stopped that appeared to bother the dissenters.
. See Miles, From Terry to Mimms, The Unacknowledged Erosion of Fourth Amendment Protections Surrounding Police-Confrontation, 16 Am.Crim.L.Rev. 127 (1978).
. We must, after all, take into account the very real danger the police officers faced when making this stop. See DC Policeman Shot by Drug Suspect, Washington Post, Feb. 12, 1980, at A1, col. 4 (policemen on anti-drug detail shot while making street arrest).
. Hill also testified that prior to this point he had seen the passenger Nicky discard tinfoils, which as an experienced narcotics officer he "had reason to believe . contained possible narcotic substance," Tr. 12, and that White:
. kept fidgeting around and moving and I kept saying, "Get out of the car," and he placed — he kept his hands down. So after I observed him to remove the tinfoil item from his pocket, I kind of stepped back away from the car because I didn't know what it was at that particular point. I kept my gun trained on him, and at that point the door opened and as the door opened, the driver's side door opened, a tinfoil fell on to the street.
Tr. 12-13 (emphasis supplied).
The trial court subsequently rejected that portion of Hill's testimony that related to his ability to see White and Anderson removing tinfoil from around their waist area, Tr. 93, because, according to the trial court, he could not see that area from his vantage point (by the left front fender, looking in the windshield). In fact, however, at trial both White's and Anderson's testimony corroborated that this is precisely what happened. When they heard the police announce themselves, Anderson panicked and began tossing the tinfoil packets around the seat and floor of the car to get them out of sight. White in turn tried to brush them off of his person. Tr. 301, 326, 333.
. See LaFave, "Street Encounters" and the Constitution: Terry, Sibron, Peters, and Beyond, 67 Mich.L.Rev. 39, 77-8 (1968) (anonymous tips too unreliable and too susceptible of fabrication to justify investigative stops). Some district courts have accepted this analysis. See United States v. Calovich, 392 F.Supp. 52, 58 (W.D.Mo.1975); United States v. Pearce, 356 F.Supp. 756, 759-60 (E.D.Pa.1973), vacated and remanded per memo, 566 F.2d 1170 (3d Cir. 1970).
. The corroborated details included the driver's identification, the car's make, model, color, and license numbers, and its appearance at a particular border checkpoint.
. In United States v. Ramos-Zaragosa, 516 F.2d 141 (9th Cir. 1975), cited by the dissent, the court suppressed a sack of heroin found underneath the front seat of a car stopped on the road by officers who pointed a gun at the occupants through the police car window and told them to put up their hands, all on the basis of an anonymous tip which the court found "considerably less precise than was the description of the accused in Draper [v. U.S., 358 U.S. 307, 79 S.Ct. 329, 3 L.Ed.2d 327]." The court twice called it a "close question," carefully limited its holding to "all . the circumstances" of that case, and lamented the "poorly marked boundaries" of the law of the subject. 516 F.2d at 145. Moreover, the court held the stop an arrest — "the agents at gun point, under circumstances not suggesting fears for their personal safety, ordered the appellant and his passenger to stop and put up their hands," id. at 144. Thus the question was whether the tip supplied "probable cause," not "reasonable suspicion," which is all that is required in the instant case.
Finally, we would point out that under current case law, often a very thin — almost nonexistent — line realistically separates anonymous from "reliable" tipsters. In United States v. Tuley, supra, for instance, the court accepted as "reliable" an unnamed informant whom a DEA officer merely alleged, without giving any details, to be a "credible source." See 546 F.2d at 1271 (Godbold, J., dissenting).
. The right to stop does not include any right to frisk unless there is a particularized reason to believe the occupants are carrying weapons. It also does not include the right to search the car other than to look inside for objects "in plain view."
. See McDonald, Enforcement of Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Laws in the District of Columbia, in Appendix, Drug Abuse in America, Second Report of the National Advisory Com mission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse 668 (1973): "At higher levels, the stakes are substantially increased and there is evidence of active efforts by drug traffickers to learn the identity of informants."
. See Drug Abuse Council, The Facts About Drug Abuse 69 (1980):
In drug cases, police usually do not have victims on whom to rely. Not only are there no complainants, but everyone involved conspires to conceal the crime from the police. As a result most illicit drug offenses go entirely undetected; the percentage of violations which result in arrest are extremely low.
and National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, Drug Use in America: Problem in Perspective, 229 (1973):
Because a drug dealer and his user-victim share a community of interest, drug trafficking offenses are highly resistant to traditional law enforcement techniques.
. Experienced drug squad officers like those involved here apparently learn to discriminate among even anonymous calls. The best ones to follow up are those about transactions in progress. McDonald, supra note 49, at 620:
About 20 calls a day come from citizens . [Narcotic] Branch officers prefer to avoid investigating citizen complaints. They will assure the complainant that something will be done; and in fact, it will. All the information will be taken down and the complainant will be told to call back if he hears or sees anything further. The branch officers treat the information as useful — especially when it includes names and addresses — but they rarely follow such complaints up because the information is usually not enough to establish probable cause to search or arrest. The citizen may just "suspect something funny" is going on.
On the other hand, investigators will usually respond to a report that X is at this moment selling heroin at the comer of Y and Z streets. In this kind of situation, there is a good chance that they will be able to see a transaction.
.See United States v. Sanders, 631 F.2d 1309 (8th Cir. 1980). In this case DEA agents received a tip from a reliable informant about some narcotics couriers. The agents waited in their car until the suspects entered into their car. Without seeing anything more, the agents drove their vehicle in front of suspects' car. As an agent approached the car, announcing his identity, he noticed one man make a furtive gesture from his shirt pocket to floor. The court found both reasonable suspicion for a Terry stop and probable cause for arrest existed at that point.
Agents Thornton and Overbaugh had probable cause to arrest Sanders and Biggies. A reliable informant had provided information, giving the agents a reasonable suspicion that the meeting between Sanders and Biggies involved distribution of narcotics. Their personal observation of the meeting partially corroborated the information provided by the confidential informant. Effective law enforcement required them to follow up on this suspicion. As the agents approached Sanders and Biggies, the furtive movement of Biggies and his contemporaneous facial expression further corroborated the information provided by the informant, and the totality of information then known to the agents served to establish probable cause to make an arrest. See Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307 [79 S.Ct. 329, 3 L.Ed.2d 327] (1959).
Id. at 1312-13 (footnote omitted).
. Immediately prior to issuance of this decision, the Supreme Court held in United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 101 S.Ct. 690, 66 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981), that border patrol agents could stop a vehicle to question its occupants "about their citizenship and immigration status and the reasons for the round trip in a short time span in a virtually deserted area," id at 421, 101 S.Ct. at 697, without direct observation of or even information about any ongoing criminal activity involving the specific individuals or car stopped. Rather, the agents had stopped the vehicle because its movement was consistent with the modus operandi of "Chevron"— a hitherto anonymous smuggler of illegal aliens. In deciding whether the "articulable reasons" necessary to justify the stop existed, the Court stressed that "the totality of the circumstances — the whole picture — must be taken into account." Id. at 417, 101 S.Ct. at 695. Among the circumstances to be considered, the Court mentioned "information from police reports . and consideration of the modes or patterns of operation of certain kinds of lawbreakers"; it noted perceptively that "[fjrom these data, a trained officer draws inferences and makes deductions — inferences and deductions that might well elude an untrained person." Id. The Court concluded by emphasizing "the imperative of recognizing that, when used by trained law enforcement officers, objective facts, meaningless to the untrained, can be combined with permissible deductions from such facts to form a legitimate basis for suspicion of a particular person — and for action on that suspicion." Id. at 419, 101 S.Ct. at 695.
. We do not believe the dissent characterizes our opinion fairly. Surely it does not stand for the flat proposition that a citizen can be "forced out of a car at gun point, grabbed from behind, and 'placed on the hood of a vehicle' " when the stop is "based entirely on an anonymous tip," Diss. Op. at 59, 60, nor that "the police are now free to detain forcibly — at gun point — individuals on the basis of an anonymous tip and without observing any suspicious activity, for crimes that do not involve an immediate danger to the public-at-large or police officers." Diss. Op. at 59. White was not grabbed or placed on the hood for frisking until after the incriminating tinfoils fell out of the car, at which point even appellants concede probable cause for an arrest existed. Anderson was ordered out of the car at gunpoint and escorted to its front only after Hill had seen White make the fidgeting gesture. Up to the point where narcotics were in "plain view" the police had done no more than order appellants out of the car for questioning and take Anderson around to the front of the car. The dissent also omits any mention of the fact that the suspects, not the police, provoked the escalation in the use of force. The officers did not raise their guns until after the appellants had refused several requests to exit the car and Hill observed White make furtive hand movements. Thus, by the time the officers ordered appellants out of the car at gunpoint, they were not acting merely on an anonymous tip and observations; they were reacting at least in part to appellants' own suspicious behavior.