Court Opinion

ID: 9687286
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:22:18.995018+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:25.500329
License: Public Domain

DAVID T. PROSSER, J.
¶ 58. (concurring). We are asked in this case to determine whether two police officers had reasonable suspicion to make an investigatory stop of the defendant and his companion as they sat in the front seat of a blue and burgundy-colored automobile parked behind an apartment building at 4261 North Teutonia Avenue in Milwaukee. We know that the officers did not arrive at this site by happenstance. They were responding to an informant's tip that "they're selling drugs" out of a blue and burgundy vehicle behind her apartment. Thus, the issue presented is "whether the tip, as corroborated by independent police work, exhibited sufficient indicia of reliability to provide reasonable suspicion to make the investigatory stop." Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, *665326-27 (1990). I join the mandate of the court but write separately because I do not believe this case should be analyzed as an anonymous informant case.
¶ 59. Several cases discussed in the majority opinion involve police informants who were totally anonymous. In White, the Montgomery Police Department "received a telephone call from an anonymous person." Id. at 327. The date was April 22, 1987. Id. In State v. Richardson, 156 Wis. 2d 128, 133, 456 N.W.2d 830 (1990), the La Crosse Police Department received an anonymous telephone call from a public telephone booth. The date was November 4, 1988. In Florida v. J.L., 529 U.S. 266, 268 (2000), the Miami-Dade Police received a tip from an "anonymous caller" who made a call from an unknown location. The date was October 13,1995. Id.
¶ 60. Police officials knew nothing about the identity of the three informants in these cases. Hence, the reliability of the tips they received depended upon the richness of the detail provided by the informants, the bases of their information, and the corroboration of at least some of the detail through police investigation.
¶ 61. The Supreme Court explained in White why anonymous tips must be treated with great caution:
The opinion in [Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213 (1983)] recognized that an anonymous tip alone seldom demonstrates the informant's basis of knowledge or veracity inasmuch as ordinary citizens generally do not provide extensive recitations of the basis of their everyday observations and given that the veracity of persons supplying anonymous tips is "by hypothesis largely unknown, and unknowable." This is not to say that an anonymous caller could never provide the reasonable suspicion necessary for a Terry stop.
*666White, 496 U.S. at 329 (citation omitted). The Court then concluded that when an anonymous tip provides virtually nothing to show that the tipster is honest or that the tipster's information is reliable (including the basis of the tipster's information), "something more" is required before reasonable suspicion is established. Id. (quoting Gates, 462 U.S. at 227).
¶ 62. The Court was satisfied in White that the tip and its partial corroboration established reasonable suspicion. Id. at 332. The anonymous caller spelled out in some detail that Vanessa White would follow a particular course of conduct at a specific time as she headed toward a particular destination carrying cocaine. Several of these predictions were thereafter confirmed through surveillance. The Court was impressed not only with the tip's "range of details" relating to easily obtained facts but also the prediction of future activities "not easily predicted." Id. "What was important," the Court said, "was the caller's ability to predict respondent's future behavior, because it demonstrated inside information — a special familiarity with respondent's affairs." Id.
¶ 63. When the Supreme Court took up Florida v. J.L., it was confronted with a fact situation involving an anonymous informant but no predicted future activities. Hence, the question was "whether an anonymous tip that a person is carrying a gun is, without more, sufficient to justify a police officer's stop and frisk of that person." Florida v. J.L., 529 U.S. at 268. The Court held that it was not. Id. The Court determined that the additional information required in these circumstances was information "reliable in its assertion of illegality, not just in its tendency to identify a determinate person." Id. at 272. The Court cited Professor LaFave, stressing "reliability as to the likelihood of criminal *667activity, which is central in anonymous-tip cases." Id. at 272 (citing 4 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 9.4(h), at 213 (3d ed. 1996)).
911 caller
¶ 64. Two years ago, I argued that this case is not governed by the analysis above because it is not an anonymous informant case. State v. Williams, 225 Wis. 2d 159, 189-93, 591 N.W.2d 823 (1999) (Prosser, J., concurring), vacated by Williams v. Wisconsin, 529 U.S. 1050 (2000). It is not an anonymous informant case because the informant made a 911 call in an "enhanced" 911 system. Hence, "[t]he police knew the caller's identity or could easily have discovered it because of the information provided by 911." Id. at 189. Thus, this case is close to the Court's decision in Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143 (1972), in which the tip was not reliable in its assertion of illegality but the informant, the source of the tip, increased his reliability by putting himself at risk inasmuch as his identity was clearly known.
¶ 65. My colleagues appear unwilling to draw upon the dramatic technological advances in modern law enforcement because those advances are not fully documented in the record. By contrast, I am willing to take judicial notice of facts that are beyond dispute, recognizing that the enhanced 911 system in effect in Milwaukee County in late 1995 was not in effect in all other areas at that time, or even now.
¶ 66. In 1978, the Wisconsin legislature approved legislation establishing a statewide emergency services telephone number, 911. Ch. 392, Laws of 1977 (effective May 29, 1978). The legislation defined "automatic location identification" as a "system which has the ability to automatically identify the address of *668the telephone being used by the caller and to provide a display at the central location of a sophisticated system." § 3, ch. 392, Laws of 1977 (creating Wis. Stat. § 146.70(l)(a)). The legislation defined "sophisticated system" as "a basic system with automatic location identification and automatic number identification." § 3, ch. 392, Laws of 1977 (creating Wis. Stat. § 146.70(l)(i)).
¶ 67. According to a 1997 audit by the Legislative Audit Bureau, "[a]s of May 1997, an estimated 94 percent of the State's population was receiving 9-1-1 service from one of 121 answering points being operated in the 57 counties that provide 9-1-1 service." State of Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau, A Best Practices Review: 9-1-1 Services 3 (July 1997). The audit indicated that 105 of the 121 answering points operated an "enhanced 9-1-1 system," which automatically identifies and displays the caller's telephone number and location. Id. at 4. The "sophisticated system" defined in the statutes and the enhanced system referred to in the audit are the same thing.
¶ 68. The 1997 audit states that Milwaukee County has had an enhanced system since 1989. Id., Appendix III, at 2. Establishment of an enhanced system was preceded by a county-wide referendum on 911 services in November 1986. "By nearly 8 to 1, voters said in a referendum that they wanted [Milwaukee] County to establish a 911 system, which automatically records a caller's telephone number and address at a central dispatch location, even if the caller cannot speak." 911 System Wins Big in County Referendum, Milwaukee Journal, Nov. 5, 1986, at 3B.
¶ 69. Today, an enhanced system normally provides authorities with (1) the telephone number of the telephone from which an incoming call is made, (2) the *669address of the residence or place of business where an incoming call is made, and (3) the name of the person or place of business to whom the telephone in question is registered. The third feature is equivalent to "Caller ID with Name." Because Milwaukee County had an enhanced 911 system beginning in 1989, it unquestionably was recording the phone number and address of incoming calls in late 1995.1 Whether the system also included a "Caller ID with Name" feature in 1995 has not been documented, but the 1995 Milwaukee telephone directory offered "Caller ID with Name" to residential customers, Ameritech Milwaukee Telephone Directory 1995-96 (Nov. 1995), at 6, and the 1995 Annual Report of the Milwaukee County Sheriff states that in 1995 "[provisions were made to modernize communications to include. . .state-of-the-art communications equipment, new and improved radio consoles, and upgraded communications support equipment." 1995 Annual Report of the Milwaukee County Sheriff, at 39.
¶ 70. My reading of the evidence is that when the police dispatcher received the 911 call in this case, he or she knew at a minimum the address and telephone number of the caller. Moreover, the call was recorded. This means that the police had on tape the voice of the person making a 911 telephone call from a specific address at a specific time. This caller cannot be *670described as an anonymous informant in the same sense as the callers in White, Richardson, and J.L.
¶ 71. The transcript of the call reveals that the dispatcher never asked the caller's name, address, or telephone number, implying that the dispatcher already knew most of this information. Drawing this inference is reasonable because the dispatcher replied "Um hmm" when the caller voluntarily disclosed that "I stay at 4261 North Teutonia."
¶ 72. As the majority opinion skillfully observes in ¶ 34, the caller used the terms "my house," "my apartment building," and "our apartment" in addition to the statement "I stay at 4261 North Teutonia." Had the incoming call been made from an address different from 4261 North Teutonia, the dispatcher would likely have asked the caller for an explanation.
¶ 73. The dispatcher did ask whether the caller had a description of the van, and the caller replied: "Um, hold on, I can get for you." Thereafter, the caller returned to the phone and gave a more detailed description of the vehicle. The color of the vehicle, the location of the vehicle, and the fact that more than one person was in the vehicle were either described or alluded to by the caller and later confirmed by the investigating officers. The caller reported as a contemporaneous eyewitness and answered all questions asked by the dispatcher.
¶ 74. The recorded call and its subsequent transcript show both the caller's basis of information and the caller's reliability. The fact that the police agency either knew the identity of the caller or had the means to discover the caller's identity enhances the caller's credibility. The police were in a position to go back to their source. If the information provided had turned out to be untrue, the police would have been able to *671follow up and confront the caller, demand an explanation, and pursue criminal charges.
¶ 75. It is a violation of Wis. Stat. § 946.41(1) to "obstruct[ ]" a police officer by "knowingly giving false information to the officer. . .with intent to mislead the officer in the performance of his or her duty." Wis. Stat. § 946.41(2)(a).2 This is the type of statute applauded by the Supreme Court in Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. at 147 (citing Conn. Gen. Stat. § 53-168 and stating "the informant might have been subject to immediate arrest for making a false complaint had [the officer's] investigation proved the tip incorrect").
¶ 76. From the outset, officials understood the possibility that the 911 system could be used to make false reports. The legislature created a monetary penalty for false reports in the initial legislation. § 3, ch. 392, Laws of 1977. The legislature added criminal pen*672alties in 1987.1987 Wis. Act 27, § 1836gr. In 1995, Wis. Stat. § 146.70(10)(a) (1995-96) read:
Any person who intentionally dials the telephone number "911" to report an emergency, knowing that the fact situation which he or she reports does not exist, shall be fined not less than $50 nor more than $300 or imprisoned not more than 90 days or both for the first offense and shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than 5 years or both for any other offense committed within 4 years after the first offense.
A criminal penalty for false reporting in a 911 call existed for eight years before the 911 call in this case.
¶ 77. The enhanced 911 system increased the likelihood of enforcing these penalties. Leverett F. Baldwin, the former emergency government services director of Milwaukee County, now Milwaukee County Sheriff, said in 1988 that the new 911 system was expected to eliminate most prank calls because the caller's telephone number and address would be recorded and would be easy to track down. Ralph D. Olive, Single Number May Call for Help, Milwaukee Journal, Jan. 18,1988, at 3B.
¶ 78. Florida has a criminal penalty for false 911 calls similar to that of Wisconsin. In United States v. Gibson, 64 F.3d 617, 625 (11th Cir. 1995), the court observed: "The state' of Florida provides a significant deterrent against reporting false information to its law enforcement agencies and officers by making such acts punishable by law. Fla. Stat. Ann. § 365.171(16) (West 1995) (false '911' calls); Id. § 817.49 (false reports of commission of crimes to law enforcement officers). This deterrent increases the odds that an anonymous tip is legitimate." (Emphasis added.) Justice Anthony Ken*673nedy cited the Florida statutes in his concurrence in Florida v. J.L., declaring:
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 location of the telephone used by the informant. Voice recording of telephone tips might, in appropriate cases, be used by police to locate the caller. It is unlawful to make false reports to the police. . .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.
Florida v. J.L., 529 U.S. at 276 (Kennedy, J., concurring).
¶ 79. Professor LaFave argues that this analysis is insufficient:
[I]t seems that the Williams concurrence ends one step short; it stresses that the police were aware of these characteristics of their 911 system, but surely that in and of itself is unimportant, for if the Williams caller deserves to be viewed as not anonymous and thus more reliable than the White informant, then surely the question is the informer's perception that his or her identity could easily be determined by the police and that false information might lead to criminal prosecution. And thus the ultimate question. . .is whether in the locale in question there exists such widespread public awareness of the characteristics of the 911 system and of criminal sanctions for false information that it is permissible for the police to presume that each 911 caller possesses such information.
*6744 LaFave, Search and Seizure § 9.4(h), at 64 (Supp. 2001) (footnote omitted).
¶ 80. This analysis deserves a response in the factual context of this case.
¶ 81. First, a Milwaukee resident observed what she thought was criminal conduct in progress in an alley behind her apartment building. She picked up the telephone to inform police, dialing the emergency number (911) provided in bold three and five-sixteenths inch type on the inside front cover of her telephone book.3 She reported her conclusions to a dispatcher. She answered all the questions posed by the dispatcher and voluntarily offered her address. Normally, we commend this sort of conscientious conduct on the part of a citizen.
¶ 82. Second, the dispatcher believed the caller. The dispatcher had the opportunity to hear the caller's voice. The. dispatcher asked questions and received direct, polite answers. The dispatcher confirmed that the caller was calling from the address she said she was. The dispatcher then radioed Squad 73R with the succinct message that "somebody's dealing drugs from a blue and burgundy Ford Bronco" in an alley at 4261 North Teutonia. The public expects a dispatcher like Emergency Operator 62 to make an immediate good faith judgment in response to a 911 telephone call, whether the issue at hand is a health emergency, a fire, or a crime in progress. That is what this dispatcher did. The dispatcher's performance was reasonable.
¶ 83. Third, the two officers sent to North Teutonia did not know the source of the drug complaint. They were not able to interrogate the caller. They were required to rely upon the dispatcher, quickly *675follow up the complaint, and attempt to corroborate the information as best they could. The officers proceeded to the site and confirmed that a blue and burgundy vehicle was parked in an alley behind 4261 North Teutonia. They saw the vehicle "from quite a distance" but ran the risk of being seen themselves if they stopped to observe. Consequently, they drove around the block and approached the vehicle cautiously for further investigation. This conduct was reasonable. The officers did exactly what the public expected them to do.
¶ 84. This case, then, raises important issues about the operation of the 911 system as well as issues about search and seizure. Today, there is widespread public understanding of the 911 system. "In our modern society we are trained, almost from birth, that we should telephone 911 to summon help in the event of a medical emergency." Jeffrey D. Hickman, Note, It's Time to Call 911 for Government Immunity, 43 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 1067, 1067 (1993). "It is estimated that 99% of adult Americans living in an area serviced by a 911 system know to dial 911 in the event of an emergency; even children as young as three years old can be trained to dial 911." Id. at n.2 (citing David Foster, 'Help Officer, My Souffle is Falling . . .' Non-Emergencies Clog 911 Lines, L.A. Times, Mar. 15, 1992, at Al).
¶ 85. In Wisconsin the Department of Public Instruction has for years encouraged public schools to train children to use 911 for emergency referrals, beginning in the first grade. Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, A Guide to Curriculum Planning in Health Education, Table 1 (Curriculum Progress Chart) (1985). The Department recommends that young children go through the experience of dialing the emergency phone number. Moreover, the Department *676suggests that students in fourth grade develop a list of telephone numbers for emergency contacts. Id. This kind of early training is not likely confined to Wisconsin, and, along with parental instruction, explains the remarkable stories of small children calling 911 to report fires, crimes, and health emergencies.
¶ 86. The emergency number 911 has become ingrained in our popular culture.4 For example, it was featured in a nationally syndicated television program, Rescue 911, which aired weekly on the CBS television network in the early 1990s and once ranked twelfth in the Nielsen ratings.5 A special report in Ladies' Home Journal in 1995 asserted that Rescue 911 "has probably done more than anything else to raise our expectations of what would happen should we have to call the nationally recognized emergency number." Paula Lyons, Before You Call 911: Is the Emergency Number the Lifesaver It Should Be?, 112 Ladies' Home J. 60 (May 1995). "Every state — though not every region in each state — has systems (called enhanced 911) that automatically provide the dispatcher with the caller's *677phone number and address, through a device similar to caller ID." Id. at 66.
¶ 87. Public knowledge of 911 emergency calls was reinforced in the murder trial of O.J. Simpson. Simpson was charged with murdering his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman on June 12, 1994. The case was the subject of unprecedented national exposure and television coverage until Simpson was found not guilty on October 3,1995. One of the key pieces of evidence in the case was the tape of a 1993 911 telephone call from Nicole Brown Simpson to police reporting domestic abuse. The tape was repeatedly discussed and played during the lengthy proceedings.6
¶ 88. One of O.J. Simpson's attorneys, Gerald Uelmen, described the initial appearance of the tape in his book, Lessons From The Trial 21 (1996):
On Wednesday, June 22, two days after Simpson's arraignment, the airwaves were filled with explosive excerpts from 911 emergency telephone calls made to police by Nicole Brown Simpson in both the 1989 incident and an October 1993 incident in which Simpson broke down a door. Every television news broadcast in America led off with audio recordings of the calls, with a rolling transcript and photos and video clips of Nicole Brown Simpson. Her sobbing voice was heard saying, "he's back," "I think you know his record," and "he's crazy." The 911 tapes had the desired effect. Before they were aired, public opinion polls were reporting that more than 60 percent of the American population thought Simpson was probably innocent. After the 911 tapes, the polls showed that 60 percent thought that *678he was probably guilty. The only problem, of course, was that the admissibility of the tapes as evidence was yet to be determined, and the only potential jurors who hadn't heard the tapes at least a half dozen times were those who lived in caves or trees.
¶ 89. The 911 call in this case occurred less than one month after the conclusion of the O.J. Simpson trial. One would be hard pressed to argue that by November 1995 the overwhelming majority of the American people did not understand that a 911 call is recorded and that it usually provides information about the source of the call. In any event, the caller here voluntarily gave her address. It would also be hard to argue that Wisconsin citizens do not understand that they are not free to initiate false statements to 911 dispatchers without suffering adverse consequences. The 911 system enjoys substantial public support. It is a system that citizens expect to depend upon in their own emergencies. It is not a system that a thinking person would seek to undermine. Milwaukee police were entitled to presume in 1995 that 911 callers knew how the 911 system worked and that they could not make false calls to 911 without risking prosecution.
¶ 90. The question of whether this investigatory stop was supported by reasonable suspicion is not an overly technical exercise. Richardson, 156 Wis. 2d at 140. Rather, it is a question about "common sense," id. at 139 (citation omitted), "along with reasonable inferences and deductions which a reasonable officer could glean" from "the cumulative detail" of this situation. Id. at 142. Leaning firmly on a 911 tip, with all its attendant ability to identify callers, was entirely reasonable and within common sense in the "cumulative detail" of this case.
*679absence of license plates
¶ 91. When they arrived at the scene and spotted the vehicle, Officers Johnny Norred and Phillip Hen-schel drove past the apartment building and then turned west on Roosevelt Drive. Eventually, they entered the alley at the point where they thought their squad car would be concealed. They drove through the alley, coming up to the front of a Chevy Blazer. There was no front license plate on the vehicle.
¶ 92. Like 29 other states and the District of Columbia, Wisconsin requires two license plates on a motor vehicle.7 For more than 20 years, there have been efforts in the Wisconsin legislature to move from two license plates to one license plate. According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, "the major objection to the single license plate proposal has been expressed by law enforcement officials. They contend that the front license plate has value because it allows identification of oncoming and parked vehicles."8
¶ 93. In this case, there were no plates on the automobile. Under the circumstances, the primary concern of the officers would have been identifying the vehicle, not ticketing the driver for a motor vehicle violation. From the point of view of the officers, the suspected drug vehicle had been stripped of the standard means of identifying it. The absence of license plates added to the evidence which permitted the officers reasonably to conclude in light of their training *680and experience that criminal activity might be afoot. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 30 (1968).
¶ 94. Police routinely view missing plates as unusual enough to warrant attention. See United States v. Sowers, 136 F.3d 24 (1st Cir. 1998) (missing front plate and troubled exhaust system led officer to stop car found to contain cocaine); United States v. Murray, 89 F.3d 459 (7th Cir. 1996) (missing rear license plate led police to stop driver found to have crack cocaine and handgun within car); United States v. Mitchell, 82 F.3d 146 (7th Cir. 1996) (missing front plate led officer to investigate driver found to have a loaded semi-automatic pistol inside vehicle within easy reach); United States v. Faulkner, 488 F.2d 328 (5th Cir. 1974) (sufficient nexus found between stop for missing front plate and police discovery of counterfeit bills in vehicle); United States v. Scott, 878 F. Supp. 968 (E.D. Texas 1995) (stop based on lack of visible license plate reasonable); United States v. $64,765,000 in United States Currency, 786 F. Supp. 906 (D. Ore. 1991) (missing plate on parked vehicle constituted reasonable suspicion for Terry stop); People v. Ryan, 672 N.E.2d 47 (Ill. App. Ct. 1996) (missing front plate prompted stop in which driver was found to be transporting marijuana); People v. Williams, 640 N.E.2d 981 (Ill. App. Ct. 1994) (missing front plate led to legal stop); People v. Ramirez, 618 N.E.2d 638 (Ill. App. Ct. 1993) (search following stop based on missing license plates led to arrest and weapons search).
¶ 95. The leading case in Wisconsin is State v. Griffin, 183 Wis. 2d 327, 329, 515 N.W.2d 535 (Ct. App. 1994), review denied, 520 N.W.2d 88 (Wis. 1994), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 950 (1994), in which the court of appeals held that the absence of license plates, and reasonable inferences that can be drawn from that fact, *681provide reasonable suspicion sufficient to justify an investigatory stop of a motor vehicle. In addition, in State v. Mata, 230 Wis. 2d 567, 576, 602 N.W.2d 158 (Ct. App. 1999), the court of appeals ruled a weapons search following a stop of a car with no license plates was properly based upon probable cause. The court there did not find the need to address the validity of an investigatory stop for lack of license plates, nor apparently did the defendant. Id. at 568-76. Earlier this term, this court considered a case in which a van was stopped because the "van had no front license plate." State v. Matejka, 2001 WI 5, ¶ 3, 241 Wis. 2d 52, 621 N.W.2d 891. The validity of the stop in that case was not questioned by this court or the defendant, Matejka. See id. at ¶ 36 (addressing only defendant's argument about consent to search, not the validity of the stop). Apparently, the notion that a missing license plate permits an investigatory stop of a motor vehicle has become so well established that defendants and courts accept it.
¶ 96. In this case, the police investigated a tip that people were selling drugs out of a vehicle parked in an alley behind 4261 North Teutonia Avenue. They cautiously approached the vehicle. The absence of license plates on that vehicle, obstructing all possibility of running a license check on the vehicle without first dealing with its occupants, added significantly to the reasonable suspicion for an investigatory stop.
¶ 97. Reasonable suspicion is a smaller quantum of evidence than probable cause. Reasonable suspicion is all that is required for an investigatory stop because the temporary seizure of a person in an investigatory stop is less than the complete and lasting seizure of a person in an arrest.
*682¶ 98. In my view, under the totality of the circumstances, the two officers here had reasonable suspicion to make an investigatory stop of Roosevelt Williams. They were acting on a tip from a known or readily identifiable informant who had put herself at risk of prosecution for any false statements to police. The informant said she was observing a crime in progress. The informant's assertions were partially confirmed by the dispatcher and partially corroborated by officers when they arrived at the scene four minutes later. The officers then found a vehicle without a front license plate, with two occupants, one of whom created fear for the officers because of the position of his arm. I agree with a great deal of the majority's opinion but find it more accurate and compelling to analyze this case as one that does not involve an anonymous informant. Accordingly, I concur in the mandate.

 At the time of this incident, cellular phone calls did not provide this information. When such calls were received, the dispatcher would have to ask the caller for identification if such information were not offered. State of Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau, A Best Practices Review: 9 — 1—1 Services 7 (July 1997). The dispatcher in this case did not ask for any form of identification or location. The caller did not volunteer her home address until well into the conversation.

 State v. Griffith, 2000 WI 72, ¶ 65, 236 Wis. 2d 48, 613 N.W.2d 72 ("[I]f a passenger chooses to answer [police questioning] but gives the officer false information, the passenger can be charged with obstructing an officer in violation of Wis. Stat. § 946.41(1)."); Peters v. State, 70 Wis. 2d 22, 29, 233 N.W.2d 420 (1975) ("[T]he statute permits conviction for obstruction of an officer under circumstances where efforts to intentionally mislead an officer may be involved_"); State v. Caldwell, 154 Wis. 2d 683, 688, 454 N.W.2d 13 (Ct. App. 1990) (Section 946.41(2) "embodies a legislative determination that 'knowingly giving false information to the officer with intent to mislead him in the performance of his duty' constitutes an 'obstruction' as a matter of Wisconsin law."); see also Wis — JI Criminal 1766A (entitled "Obstructing an Officer: Giving False Information"); Wis — JI Criminal 1766 ("To obstruct an officer" is the first element of this offense, which "means that the conduct of the defendant prevents or makes more difficult the performance of the officer's duties").

Ameritech Milwaukee Telephone Directory 1995-96 (Nov. 1995).

 The rap music group "Public Enemy" scored a hit with a single entitled 911 Is a Joke on an album that reached the top ten Billboard album chart in 1990. See Neil Drumming, Public Enemy, in 20th Century A. . .Z, at http:// www.billboard-online.com/atozlplpublicenemy.asp (last visited Mar. 8,2001). 911 Is a Joke criticized officials for alleged slow response time to 911 calls. See Public Enemy, 911 Is a Joke, on Fear of a Black Planet (Def Jam Records 1990) (lyrics available at http://www.public-enemy.com/lyrics/lyrics/911-is-a-joke.php) (last visited Mar. 8,2001). Unresponsive 911 systems have been sued. See, e.g., Chicago Pays $825,000 To Estate of Woman Who Died After 911 Responded Late, 83 Jet 24 (April 12,1993).

 See Nielsen Ratings 1990-1995, at http://www.angelfire.com/ny2/televisioncity/9095.html (last visited Mar. 8, 2001).

 Marcia Clark & Teresa Carpenter, Without a Doubt 79 (1997); Christopher A. Darden & Jess Walter, In Contempt 365 (1996); Jeffrey Toobin, The Run of His Life 262 (1996).

 See Wis. Stat. §§ 341.12(1) and 341.15(1). See also American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, The Fast Track to Vehicle Services Facts, A Motor Vehicle Regulations and Procedures Information Guide 83 (1999).

 Cheryl Mcllquham, State of Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, Issue Paper #864, 1997-99 Budget, Single License Plate 2 (May 22,1997).