Court Opinion

ID: 9714445
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:37:37.577421+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:26.087254
License: Public Domain

MACK, Associate Judge,
dissenting:
Today the majority justifies a Terry1 stop on the basis of an anonymous tip that alleged criminal activity. It does so despite the fact that nothing connected with the receipt of that tip or observed by arresting officers thereafter gave that tip any indicia of reliability so as to justify a forcible stop and seizure. In my view the trial court, in granting a motion to suppress, properly held that an illegal stop2 made by officers tainted all subsequent evidence gathered by the police in their investigation.
I.
I briefly recount the relevant facts which form the basis of my disagreement with the majority’s holding.
At 10 o’clock on the morning in question, a detective in a police cruiser, and two uniformed police officers in a scout car, responded to a radio run based on information provided by an anonymous tipster who had refused to identify himself. The detective testified, for the government, that the broadcast stated that there was a man, sitting in an orange Volkswagen, selling handguns at 23rd and Savannah Streets, S.E. The detective arrived at the described location within fifteen seconds. There he saw a orange Volkswagen, with two black males sitting in the front seat. The detective parked directly behind the Volkswagen with his “red light” flashing, alighted, approached the Volkswagen on the driver’s side, and identified himself as a police officer. He told the man in the driver’s seat to place his hands on the steering wheel and the passenger (identified as appellee) to place his hands on the dashboard. The detective confirmed that he had seen no movements by the men in the car: “I saw individuals ... and I responded. I took immediate action before they had a chance to do anything else, like turn around and shoot at me.” After the discovery of a gun in a bag found in the car, appellee was interrogated as to the ownership of the bag, car, and gun, and was formally arrested.
The detective further testified that when the scout car with its two uniformed officers parked behind his cruiser in less than *1096a minute after his own arrival, appellee alighted from the Volkswagen and walked toward the back of the car where he was confronted by the two officers. [This version of events was somewhat in conflict with that given by one of the officers, called by the defense, who testified that when the scout car arrived on the scene the Volkswagen was not occupied but both “subjects” were standing outside.] In any event, the detective opened the Volkswagen door for the driver to alight, frisked him, and took him to the rear of the car where appellee stood with an officer. In the meantime, one of the officers approached the passenger side of the Volkswagen and saw a gym bag approximately one-foot by two or three-feet large on the seat where appellee had been sitting. The top zipper of the bag was open, and a gun rested on top of clothes packed therein.
On these facts the trial court granted appellee’s motion to suppress physical evidence on the ground that the police lacked the reasonable articulable suspicion which is the basis for a lawful Terry stop.3 The court held that the policeman did not have a right to stop the car, and because of the taint of an unlawful stop, they had no right to frisk the passengers, search the car, or question the passengers. I agree with the trial court that, under the guidelines enunciated in Terry and Adams v. Williams,4 there was no reasonable suspicion to warrant the police action taken here.
II.
My dissent is prompted by the fear that Terry has been applied too often without a proper focus upon its rationale. Today the majority carries that erosion one step further. It correctly articulates the appropriate standard of review: we must decide whether the informant’s tip justified a Terry stop or was “completely lacking in indi-cia of reliability, [and] would either warrant no police response or require further investigation before a forcible stop of a suspect would be authorized.” Adams v. Williams, supra, 407 U.S. at 147, 92 S.Ct. at 1924. Having recognized this, however, the majority strains factual circumstances (without, I may add, being in a posture to weigh credibility), to give reliability to a tip lacking reliability for Fourth Amendment purposes. It is reasonable to believe, says the majority, that because a described car was where it was reported to be by a faceless “informer,” the men in the car were selling guns and were therefore armed and dangerous; the majority equates corroboration of innocent details with corroboration that criminal activity is afoot. The implications of this reasoning are disturbing.
At the outset, it might help to remind that Terry did not involve an anonymous tip. The narrowly defined, bedrock principle in Terry is that a police officer, who makes a permissible stop based upon a reasonable articulable suspicion (there based upon his own observations)5 may conduct a frisk for weapons for his protection. Indeed, the classic Terry scenario is a street encounter where the police officer is face-to-face with a suspect and has to make a number of immediate decisions. The purpose of Terry is certainly not served by bolstering an unreliable allegation with the observation of one or more innocent details; rather, a Terry stop is a protective-preventive measure in the face of a reliably reported or observed activity suggesting an on-going crime:
[W]here a police officer observes unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the persons with whom he is deal-*1097mg may be armed and presently dangerous, where in the course of investigating this behavior he identifies himself as a policeman and makes reasonable inquiries, and where nothing in the initial stages of the encounter serves to dispel his reasonable fear for his own ... safety, he is entitled for the protection of himself ... to conduct a carefully limited search of the outer clothing of such persons in an attempt to discover weapons which might be used to assault him.
392 U.S. at 30, 88 S.Ct. at 1884 (emphasis added). The validity of an investigatory stop must substantially meet the two-prong test that is inherent in Terry. First, the officer must observe unusual conduct and it must be apparent that “criminal activity is afoot.” It is only then, after a right of confrontation is established through a reasonable articulable suspicion, that he (or she) is entitled to conduct a protective frisk for his (or her) own protection. Implicit in Terry is the concept of lawful confrontation — there must be reasonable articulable suspicion to justify a stop. Justice Harlan’s concurrence, in Terry, speaks directly to this issue:
[I]f the frisk is justified in order to protect the officer during an encounter with a citizen, the officer must first have constitutional grounds to insist on an encounter, to make a forcible stop.... If and when a policeman has a right instead to disarm such a person for his own protection, he must first have a right not to avoid him but to be in his presence .... I would make it perfectly clear that the right to frisk in this case depends upon the reasonableness of a forcible stop to investigate a suspected crime.
Id. at 32-33, 88 S.Ct. at 1885-86 (Harlan, J., concurring).
In the circumstances of the instant case, it is undisputed that the officers observed no activity suggesting an on-going crime. The reasonableness of articulable suspicion therefore must hinge upon the indicia of reliability in the informant’s tip. The Supreme Court in Adams v. Williams, supra, found enough of an indicia of such reliability where 1) the informant was known to the officer personally and had provided him with information in the past; 2) the informant came forward personally to give information that was immediately verifiable at the scene, and as such could have been subject to immediate arrest for a false complaint had the tip proven incorrect — all circumstances which the Court noted constituted “a stronger case than obtains in the case of an anonymous telephone tip.” 407 U.S. at 146, 92 S.Ct. at 1923.
By contrast, in the instant case, we have nothing more than an anonymous telephone tip.6 We have nothing corroborating that tip except a description of a car parked *1098in a certain location. The trial court correctly concluded:
If you put it all together, all you had was an anonymous tip that somebody was selling guns out of a car. They [detective and policemen] go there and they see this car, which is the only Volkswagen sitting there at the corner. But, there was no hesitation, there was no indication of anybody standing around the car which would serve to corroborate the tip. There was just absolutely nothing but a car sitting there.... I know that the case law does indicate that innocent corroborative circumstances may be sufficient to warrant a Terry -type seizure or Terry -type stop, but if you are going to use innocent circumstances such as there was a Volkswagen there, an orange Volkswagen ... if you are going to use innocent observations to amass data necessary for articulable suspicion, then you need stronger veracity on the other end of the spectrum [emphasis added].
The trial court’s reference to veracity is both telling and instructive. Constitutionally speaking, there must be reliability at one end of the spectrum or verification at the other end. It is a troubling thought that an informant, who refuses to provide an identity can, at will, undermine the protections of the Fourth Amendment. Here there was every reason for the police to investigate, but the police did not investigate; they seized, frisked, searched, arrested, and then asked questions. All of this was done before the police had reasonable grounds to suspect that criminal activity was afoot, much less probable cause to arrest. In the context of Adams, “the central issue ... is whether the informant’s information is so reliable and complete that it makes past, present or pending criminal conduct sufficiently likely to justify a stopping of the designated person for investigation.” 3 LaFave, SEARCH and Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment § 9.3(e) at 475 (2d ed. 1987) (emphasis added). Here, the informant’s information was both unreliable and incomplete — there was no description of the suspect, no indication whatever as to the modus operandi of the alleged criminal transaction, and no information as to the identity or location of the informant:
Even the lesser intrusion of a stopping for investigation should not be permitted when the so-called corroboration is of nothing more than “information available to any passerby or resident on the street,” for in such instances the facts do not “demonstrate that the anonymous informant had any special familiarity with the affairs of” the suspect.
Id. at 484. All we have is the color of a car, its location, and an allegation which was not corroborated by the police when they arrived on the scene. There is nothing here to suggest that the allegation of a crime could not have been readily manufactured, or that an improperly motivated party doing so could be held accountable for a false report. Our sanction, therefore, of the police conduct in this case can bring us dangerously close to inviting intrusions based on nothing more substantial than inarticulate hunches. See Terry, supra, 392 U.S. at 22, 88 S.Ct. at 1880.
Finally, I am unpersuaded by the majority’s attempt to garner support from the conclusion that “the anonymous tip in the instant case provided no less information than such tips in other cases in which this court has upheld Terry stops.”7 The cases, relied upon to reverse the finding of the trial court in the instant case, are distinguishable either as instances that involve risk-taking face-to-face street encounters between police and citizens or as presenting information more reliable than the bare bones tip in the instant case. Thus, in United States v. Mason, 450 A.2d 464 (D.C.1982), there was an anonymous tip that a man was standing at a specified corner and dressed in a specified manner carrying a bag with a gun. We held this to be a Terry stop situation where a police officer must make an immediate decision to take steps for his own protection. In Ma*1099son, however, the officer first confronted the described individual with the information the officer had just received; the bag which the citizen carried (and which contained marijuana) was not opened until Mr. Mason placed it on the ground at his feet; Mason was searched incident to his arrest. Significantly, in Mason our court, while relying on United States v. McClinnhan, 212 U.S.App.D.C. 368, 660 F.2d 500 (1981)8 perceptively observed, “[t]he unique circumstances under which each case arises in this area of the law makes the term ‘binding precedent’ a misnomer.” United States v. Mason, supra, 450 A.2d at 466.
I agree that there is no binding precedent and no justifiable reason to reverse the trial court. I would affirm.

. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968).

. The assertion of authority by the police is what actually constitutes a stop for Terry purposes. See Hall, John Wesley, Search and Seizure § 10:19 at 332 (1982) (vehicle stops will usually involve some assertion of police authority (¿a, use of sirens and lights).

.The trial court focused its analysis on the lesser standard of reasonable suspicion rather than probable cause. The court noted: "[w]hat I am saying is that there was not even articula-ble suspicion under Terry to approach the car, because even though the government was relying on probable cause, if I had found articulable suspicion, it could have been upheld under that.”

. 407 U.S. 143, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972).

. It is an exaggeration for the majority to characterize the "burglary casing” activity observed by the experienced officers in Terry as "innocent."

. LaFave cites numerous cases which illustrate the tendency of the state courts to hold unreasonable, because of inadequate corroboration, stops based upon an anonymous tip: Lachs v. State, 366 So.2d 1223 (Fla.App.1979) (emphasizing that police cannot stop on basis of anonymous tip, but that no such problem in this case because police acted on "a telephone complaint from an identified citizen ... who was an actual eyewitness to a crime”); State v. Temple, 65 Haw. 261, 650 P.2d 1358 (1982) (anonymous phone call stating person had gun in defendant’s vehicle not grounds for stop, as it "failed to rise above the level of unsubstantiated and conclu-sionary hearsay’); Jackson v. State, 157 Ind. App. 662, 301 N.E.2d 370 (1973) (information from unknown source that defendant carrying a gun not grounds for stop “absent anything whatsoever to corroborate the information”); People v. De Bour, 40 N.Y.2d 210, 386 N.Y.S.2d 375, 352 N.E.2d 562 (1976) (anonymous call that black man in bar with red shirt had gun; court says anonymous tips "are of the weakest sort since no one can be held accountable if the information is in fact false’’); State v. Lesnick, 84 Wash. 2d 940, 530 P.2d 243 (1975) (”[t]he fact that anonymous tipster accurately identified the defendant’s vehicle is not such corroboration or indicia of reliability as to make reasonable the officers’ action”). 3 LaFave. Search and Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment § 9.3 (e) at 482 n. 319 (2d ed. 1982); see also State v. Hobson, 95 Idaho 920, 523 P.2d 523 (1974) (McQuade, J., dissenting) ("anyone can call the police, describe an automobile and its owner and allege possession [of a weapon] with the result that the described person will be pulled over, required to identify himself, interrogated about criminal behavior, and the automobile subjected to a visual search”). These cases make it clear that while "indicia of reliability” is a difficult concept to define, much more is needed than the color of a vehicle, its location, and an unverified allegation.

. The Court in Adams, supra, made an observation which it would be well for an appellate court to remember: "Informants’ tips like all other clues and evidence coming to a policeman ori the scene may vary greatly in their value and reliability. One simple rule will not cover every situation.” 407 U.S. at 143, 92 S.Ct. at 1921.

. In United States v. McClinnhan, supra, (an anonymous tip described a man carrying a sawed-off shotgun in a black briefcase; here the tip itself suggested the dangerousness of the situation and that the weapon was immediately accessible). The court stated; “We are not upholding today a warrantless search for anything other than an immediately-accessihle dangerous weapon.... We are not considering a warrant-less search based upon an anonymous tip that is not corroborated_” Id. at 373, 660 F.2d at 505. See also Lawson v. United States, 360 A.2d 38 (D.C.1976) (informant was eye witness and suspect was not only carrying a pistol but “he made motions which looked as though he was trying to hide something”); Galloway v. United States, 326 A.2d 803 (D.C.1974), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 979, 95 S.Ct. 1981, 44 L.Ed.2d 471 (1975) (informant was an eyewitness to a rapidly-moving street occurrence); United States v. Walker, 115 Daily Wash.L.Rptr. 1433 (D.D.C. July 13, 1987) (even where informant gave additional information such as suspect's name, license plate number, and alleged that drugs and stolen property were on the scene, court held that “[t]hese facts either alone or in combination do not create the slightest suspicion of illegality" — mere corroboration of obvious details is not enough); cf. Groves v. United States, 504 A.2d 602 (D.C.1986) (eyewitness informant identified himself and called police twice alleging that the driver of a specific car at specific location was armed) (Mack, J., dissenting and citing Whiteley v. Warden, 401 U.S. 560,91 S.Ct. 1031, 28 L.Ed.2d 306 (1971)) (“[b]ut the additional information acquired by the arresting officers must in some sense be corroborative of the informer’s tip that the arrestees committed the felony or ... were in the process of committing the felony”).