Court Opinion

ID: 9783025
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 19:36:55.135658+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:19.002220
License: Public Domain

ORME, Judge
(dissenting):
¶ 36 I respectfully dissent from the majority’s conclusion that the police officers in this case had the required reasonable, articulable suspicion to question Alverez about drugs after approaching him in the context of a level two encounter.1 It follows that I cannot *818agree the ensuing search of Alverez’s person was constitutional. I would reverse the trial court’s denial of Alverez’s motion to suppress and remand with instructions to grant the motion.
¶ 37 The majority concludes that the officers had the required reasonable, articulable suspicion that Alverez had engaged, was engaging, or was about to engage in criminal activity to warrant Alverez’s detention to question him about drugs. See State v. Pena, 869 P.2d 932, 940 (Utah 1994). Under the majority’s view, the articulable factual basis the officers had for suspecting that Alverez was involved in illegal drug-related activity is supported mainly by two pieces of information that originated from sources outside of the officers’ own observations.2 First, the officers had “information” that drug transactions had been taking place at the condominium complex where they had observed Alverez, two days in a row,' make brief visits to the same area of the complex. Second, the officers had “information” that Alverez’s vehicle had possibly been involved in drug transactions. However, because the “information” upon which the officers based their suspicions originated outside of the officers’ own observations, and because the State failed to develop any articulable factual basis substantiating this “information,” the information does not provide a legally cognizable factual basis for the officers’ suspicions about Alverez. Thus, on the record before us, the officers were simply not justified in stopping and questioning him about drugs.
¶ 38 While “[a]n investigative stop may survive the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures if performed by an officer who objectively relies on information, bulletins, or flyers received from other law enforcement sources,” it is also well settled that “the legality of a stop based on information imparted by another will depend on the sufficiency of the articulable facts known to the individual originating the information ... [that is] received and acted upon by the investigating officer.” State v. Case, 884 P.2d 1274,1277 (Utah Ct.App.1994) (emphasis in original). See also State v. Kohl, 2000 UT 35,¶¶ 13-15, 999 P.2d 7 (concluding State produced adequate evidence to show police dispatch was based on sufficient articulable facts to justify stop); State v. Bruce, 779 P.2d 646, 650-51 (Utah 1989) (allowing for “reliance on a bulletin issued by other police officers” when bulletin “was issued by officers possessing ‘a reasonable suspicion justifying a stop’ ”); State v. Humphrey, 937 P.2d 137, 141-42 (Utah Ct.App.1997) (in considering whether information outside of officer’s own observations forms part of factual basis to support vehicle stop, court analyzed “both the content of the information and its reliability”).
¶ 39 In Case, an officer received a dispatch call directing him to a specific area to investigate a possible car prowl or car burglary. See 884 P.2d at 1275. The dispatcher described the suspect as a male in a white tee shirt, possibly Hispanic, with a “chunky” build. Id. Based on that information, the officer stopped a vehicle leaving the area that was carrying a passenger that appeared to fit the description. See id. During the course of the officer’s stop, he detected an odor of alcohol on the breath of the vehicle’s driver, whom he subsequently arrested for driving while under the influence of alcohol. See id. The driver claimed that the officer, acting on the radio dispatch, lacked a reasonable suspicion to stop his car and that any evidence obtained during the stop was illegal. See id. The trial court denied the driver’s motion to suppress the evidence, but this Court reversed the denial of the driver’s motion. See id. at 1278. Because the State failed to establish any reasonable, articulable suspicion underlying the issuance of the bulletin, *819no such suspicion supported making the stop. See id. One was left to speculate as to the source of, or the reason for, the dispatcher’s instruction to the investigating officer. See id. In Case, this court held that “[mjerely providing descriptive information to an officer about whom to stop, by itself, is not enough to justify the stop if there are no articulable facts pointed to which establish ivhy a stop was to be made.” Id. (emphasis in original).
¶ 40 Much like the situation in Case, the officers in this instance may or may not have been justified in relying on their “information,” depending on its basis. Unfortunately, the State wholly failed to detail what the information was and how these officers came to receive it. See id. at 1276. Thus, the State failed to establish that the information about the condominium complex and about Alverez’s vehicle was based on reliable artic-ulable facts. At the suppression hearing, the State was required to outline the factual basis known to the individual or entity that originated the “information” about the condominium complex and Alverez’s vehicle, and it was required to show that some legally artic-ulable suspicion prompted the transmittal of the information in the first place. See id. at 1277-78 n. 5 (stating that “the State becomes obligated, albeit after the fact, to show that legally sufficient articulable suspicion prompted the issuance of the flyer or dispatch in the first place”). The State simply failed in its burden at the suppression hearing in this case.
¶ 41 Reasonable suspicion cannot be justified by an officer’s reliance on some sort of amorphous, unexplained “information” received from some other, undisclosed source. Therefore, in a situation like the instant one, the “reasonable suspicion” inquiry is one step removed from the typical inquiry that focuses on the articulable factual basis behind a police officer’s own observations and inferences that give rise to his suspicions of illegal activity. Instead, the focus is on the articu-lable factual basis behind the “information” that an officer receives from another source if it is to provide the legal basis for reasonable suspicion about an individual.
¶ 42 The officers in this case began their initial observation of the condominium complex solely because of the unexplained “information” they had about drug transactions taking place in that area. Likewise, they only took an interest in Alverez because of the “information” they had that his vehicle had possibly been involved in drug transactions.3 In fact, after asking Alverez if he knew his vehicle was uninsured, the very next thing the officer said to him was that his vehicle was suspected of being involved in drug transactions. Then, the officers asked Alverez if he was carrying any drugs and if they could look in his mouth. Without the “information” tying Alverez to illegal drug transactions, the remaining circumstances the officers relied on to justify questioning Alverez about his involvement in drug trafficking, as well as to justify the subsequent warrantless search of Alverez’s mouth, wholly fail to provide an articulable factual basis for the officers’ actions.4
*820¶ 43 The only circumstances left to justify any encounter between Alverez and the officers was the officers’ knowledge that Alver-ez’s vehicle was uninsured, the officers’ observations of the picture of Jesus Malverde and the water bottle in Alverez’s vehicle, Alverez’s two visits to the complex, and Al-verez’s nervous behavior when confronted by police. Such circumstances, however, do not give the officers the required reasonable suspicion to detain Alverez and question him about drugs.

. "While the required level of suspicion is lower than the standard required for probable cause ... the same totality of facts and circumstances approach is used to determine if there are sufficient 'specific and articulable facts' to support reasonable suspicion.” State v. Case, 884 P.2d *8181274, 1276 (Utah Ct.App.1994) (citations omitted). "[T]he State bears the initial burden for establishing the articulable factual basis for the reasonable suspicion necessaiy to support a[ level two] investigative stop.” Id.

. In reviewing the totality of the circumstances presented by this case, the majority opinion appropriately acknowledges that several of the circumstances relied on by the officers as giving rise to their suspicions about Alverez were properly given little weight by the trial court. For example, the trial court accorded little weight to the facsimile of Jesus Malverde, “The Narco Saint,” which the officers observed in Alverez’s vehicle, as well as the bottle of water they observed in the vehicle’s console.

. The pivotal role of the underlying factual basis for the mysterious information can easily be understood with a couple of examples. If the ‘‘information” was a radio report from a narcotics officer who had been working undercover, and who had participated in controlled buys at the condominium complex and from a person who had retrieved the drugs from the vehicle Alverez was driving, there would be a sound basis for the information, and the suspicions of the officers who confronted Alverez would be deemed warranted. Just the opposite is true if the "information” was (1) a report from one of the officers’ wives that she had golfed with a friend whose husband used to work as a realtor and he had always said there was "a lot of hanky-panky in the condos and apartments south of 21st South” and (2) an admonition from the shift sergeant that “Hispanic men driving around with a water bottle in the console is gonna mean drugs 90% of the time.” The problem, then, is a failure of proof by the State at the suppression hearing. Not all “information” passed along to police officers is of equal validity. The State had the burden to explain what this "information” was and where it came from. Whether or not it constituted a reasonable, articulable basis for suspicion is simply not known in the absence of such proof.

. Without the "information” about Alverez’s vehicle or the condominium complex, his two repeat visits to the same complex are relatively innocuous. A dutiful nephew with a limited lunch break might make a brief, daily visit to his invalid aunt’s condominium, just to check in on her. That visit by itself would not justify the *820reasonable suspicion that he is involved in some type of criminal activity at the condominium complex. Nevertheless, if the same type of brief visit to a condominium complex was coupled with reliable information that the targeted individual is a known drug dealer and that the complex is a drug haven, it might more appropriately give rise to reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. The key inquiry in this context, however, would be about the articulable, factual basis behind the "information” that he is a drug dealer and that the condominium complex is a drug haven.