Opinion ID: 71415
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The 19 May Stop and Search

Text: 14 Plaintiff contends (1) that Mr. B's deposition establishes a triable issue of material fact on whether Davis lied about getting a tip and (2) that the tips, if given, were unreliable. As the district court noted, however, Plaintiff presented no evidence to contradict Bertarelli's testimony about his anonymous tip. About the Davis tip, even assuming we were to consider Mr. B's deposition (which is not properly before us), 4 any conflicts in the evidence concern only minor discrepancies in the details provided by Davis and Mr. B--such as whether Mr. B knew the person to whom Plaintiff was delivering cocaine--and do not support a reasonable inference that Davis and Mr. B fabricated the entire story. 15 In addition, Plaintiff's theory of the incident is inherently incredible and could not support reasonable inferences sufficient to create an issue of fact. No evidence shows that the MPD had contact with Plaintiff before the incident or had reason to go to the pertinent location or to stop Plaintiff's car absent a tip. From this record, no reason exists to believe that, before 19 May, any member of the MPD Narcotics and Intelligence Unit even knew who Plaintiff was. 16 As for the reliability of the tips, under Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 110 S.Ct. 2412, 110 L.Ed.2d 301 (1990), an anonymous tip, corroborated by independent police work, can be sufficient to constitute reasonable articulable suspicion. In White, a police officer received an anonymous tip that Vanessa White would be leaving a particular apartment in a brown Plymouth station wagon with a broken tail light and transporting cocaine, in a brown attache case, to a particular motel. The officer and his partner watched the location and observed a brown Plymouth station wagon with a broken tail light in the parking lot. White entered the car, empty-handed, and started to drive the most direct route to the motel before she was stopped by a patrol car. The White Court noted that not every detail mentioned by the tipster was verified, such as the name of the woman or the precise apartment from which she left. Id. at 331, 110 S.Ct. at 2416. The police did, however, confirm that the woman left the particular building, got into the described vehicle and drove in the most direct route to the motel. So, the Court held that, under the totality of the circumstances, this anonymous tip, partially corroborated by independent police work, was sufficient to constitute reasonable suspicion. Id. 17 In the present case, Bertarelli's anonymous tip, corroborated both by a tip from one of his partner's confidential informants (Mr. B) and by independent police work, shows even greater indicia of reliability and gave Bertarelli and Davis an even greater basis for reasonable suspicion. The anonymous tipster indicated that Plaintiff was transporting cocaine. After a 45-minute stakeout of the exact location provided by this informant, Plaintiff, a young, black male named Riley, entered a vehicle matching the informant's description. Davis' confirming tip also gave the exact license plate number of the vehicle Plaintiff was driving. In the light of the totality of the circumstances, independent police work corroborated both the anonymous tip Bertarelli received and the confirming tip from Davis' informant and provided ample basis for reasonable suspicion.