Court Opinion

ID: 9516525
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 23:44:23.779796+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:40:28.633229
License: Public Domain

BECK, Judge,
concurring:
I join the majority and add the following. I believe that the officers, in the absence of exigent circumstances, should have attempted to secure a warrant after their receipt of the information. Whether they would have been successful, without further corroboration, is another question. See Commonwealth v. Edmunds, 526 Pa. 374, 586 A.2d 887 (1991). Further, I do not believe, as argued by the Commonwealth, that the stop here can be viewed as an investigative stop under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). I sympathize with a police officer’s difficulty, as was testified to at the suppression hearing, in daily receiving a variety of tips about many different persons within his area of patrol. However, the purpose underlying Terry stops is to assist police officers in taking necessary, swift action after an on-the-spot observation (or, at least, a recent tip) of suspicious behavior, not to provide an alternate method of search and seizure where police are too busy to conduct surveillance and secure a warrant. If the officers had acted promptly to corroborate the tip and, further, to investigate appellee, a Terry stop may have been proper under the rationale of Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 110 S.Ct. 2412, 110 L.Ed.2d 301 (1990) and Commonwealth v. Ogborne, 410 Pa.Super. 164, 599 A.2d 656 (1991).