Opinion ID: 2160475
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Face-to-face Informants

Text: The most reliable tip is the one relayed personally to the officer. In State v. Lykken, 406 N.W.2d 664 (N.D.1987), in a face-to-face conversation between the officer and an informant known to the officer, the informant gave the officer a description and the license number of the vehicle, and told the officer that he thought the driver might be impaired because he had seen the vehicle driving the wrong way on the highway. We held that the information provided by the tip itself was sufficient to raise a reasonable and articulable suspicion. We based our decision in part on Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972), in which the Supreme Court reached a similar holding. In Adams, an informant known to the officer approached the officer and told him that Williams, seated in a nearby car, was carrying narcotics and a gun. Based on the tip, the officer conducted a stop and frisk of Williams. Williams argued that the reasonable suspicion standard required some corroboration of the tip. The Court, relying on the facts that the officer knew the informant and the informant had come forward personally, disagreed. It stated, In reaching this conclusion, we reject respondent's argument that reasonable cause for a stop and frisk can only be based on the officer's personal observation, rather than on information supplied by another person. 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 suspect would be authorized. But in some situationsfor example, when the victim of a street crime seeks immediate police aid and gives a description of his assailant, or when a credible informant warns of a specific impending crimethe subtleties of the hearsay rule should not thwart an appropriate police response. Id. at 147, 92 S.Ct. at 1924. These cases illustrate the high end of the reliability scale: the quality of the information, provided in person by an informant known to the officer, was enough so that the quantity of the information provided by the tip alone, that the defendant was engaged in criminal activity, was sufficient to raise a reasonable suspicion.