Opinion ID: 2390645
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Adequacy of the Description of the Seller.

Text: The trial judge was troubled by the fact that the informant's description of the seller in this case was somewhat lacking in specificity. So are we. According to Officer Walker, the radio run which he monitored described the seller as a black male, approximately 5'6, white shirt, blue jeans, with dark writing on the front of the shirt. If the informant was close enough to be able to discern that the suspect was selling drugs, one might ordinarily expect him or her to be able to identify the lettering on the shirt. Nevertheless, no information was provided as to the one fact that would make the tip distinctivethe words or letters on the suspect's clothingnor was anything said about the seller's facial features or about any other distinguishing characteristics. As a general proposition, it may be said that the greater the number of ... identifying characteristics which are available, the more likely it is that there will be grounds to arrest a person found with all or most of these characteristics. [12] LAFAVE, supra, § 3.4(c), at 741. Descriptions applicable to large numbers of people will not support a finding of probable cause. Commonwealth v. Jackson, 459 Pa. 669, 673-74, 331 A.2d 189, 191 (1975). The government argues that Officer Walker immediately ruled out all but two of the persons in the area as possible suspects, that one of those two was eliminated as soon as the lookout was rebroadcast, and that Brown was therefore the only person in the area who matched the description. But aside from the discrepancies between the lookout and Brown's appearance and the paucity of identifying characteristics, the prosecutor failed to establish that the seller would probably still have been in the area at the time of Brown's arrest. Although Officer Walker testified that he was more or less on location when he monitored the radio run, the government offered no evidence as to when the informant had called the police. We are therefore left to speculate as to how much time elapsed between the informant's call and the sighting of Brown. Logically, one would suppose that the police would move with dispatch upon receipt of a tip of this kind. Supposition, however, is no substitute for proof. [13] Street scenes of the kind before us change rapidly; the seller can be gone in a jiffy. [14] If the description in the radio transmission had been of a black male whose white shirt had O-C-E-A-N P-A-C-I-F-I-C printed on it in dark lettering, and if the officer had spotted a black male wearing such a shirt in the immediate area who otherwise fit the description, then one could reasonably conclude, in spite of the lacuna in the government's proof as to the time of the informant's call, that the suspect was probably the individual described in the lookout. Cf. White, supra, 110 S.Ct. at 2417. The government's inadequate showing could not be and was not cured, however, by the police's independent verification of the fact that there was a person in the area indicated wearing a white T-shirt, Rushing, supra, 381 A.2d at 256, and, in this case, dark pants.