Court Opinion

ID: 9534356
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:38:51.698765+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:30:20.056248
License: Public Domain

Justice LOHR
concurring:
I concur in the opinion of the majority of this court, which affirms a ruling of the district court suppressing evidence on the basis that it was acquired as a result of a constitutionally impermissible stop of a van driven by the defendant, Lisa George. As the majority opinion explains, the stop violated the defendant’s constitutional protections against unreasonable seizures because “at the time they stopped the van the officers did not possess sufficient specific and articulable facts to support a reasonable suspicion that criminal activity had occurred, was occurring, or was about to occur.” Maj. op. at 368; see U.S. Const, amend IV (proscribing unreasonable searches and seizures); Colo. Const, art. II, § 7 (same). I write separately in light of Chief Justice Vollack’s dissenting opinion to explain why in my view, People v. Melgosa, 753 P.2d 221 (Colo.1988), provides no assistance in resolving this case.
I.
The central issue in the present case is whether the quantity and quality of information supplied by an anonymous informant, taken together with the extent to which that information was corroborated by the police officers’ observations, supported the constitutionally necessary reasonable suspicion to believe that criminal activity had occurred, was occurring, or was about to occur. The standards for evaluating whether a tip by an anonymous informant, as supplemented by corroboration of some of the information in that tip, is sufficient to create reasonable suspicion were set forth in our decision in People v. Garcia, 789 P.2d 190 (Colo.1990), and, for Fourth Amendment purposes, shortly thereafter were extensively developed in Mr. Justice White’s opinion for the majority of the United States Supreme Court in Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 110 S.Ct. 2412, 110 L.Ed.2d 301 (1990). The majority opinion in the present case properly and correctly applies those standards. Maj. op. at 369-71.
People v. Melgosa, 753 P.2d 221, in which we reversed an order suppressing evidence obtained as a result of an investigatory stop, was decided in 1988, prior to both Garcia and White. It involved a police dispatch report that a possible “burglary” of a motor vehicle was in progress at a specified location and that a blue van was possibly involved in the *373break-in.1 There is no suggestion in Melgo-sa that the source of the information related in the police dispatch report was an anonymous tip or that such information was otherwise of questionable reliability. Thus, the standards for evaluating reasonable suspicion based on information supplied by an anonymous tipster were not at issue in Melgosa. In Garcia, 789 P.2d 190, decided by this court two years after Melgosa, we specifically addressed the standards applicable when the source of the information on which the police officers rely is an anonymous tip. In Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 110 S.Ct. 2412, 110 L.Ed.2d 301, decided shortly after Garcia, the United States Supreme Court thoroughly discussed those standards and the rationale on which they are based. Alabama v. White and Garcia, therefore, supply the appropriate standards and rationale for determining reasonable suspicion based on an anonymous tip, and our decision in Melgosa provides no assistance in resolving the case now before us.
II.
For the additional reasons set forth above, I concur in the majority opinion affirming the order of the district court suppressing evidence obtained as a result of the unconstitutional stop of the defendant’s van.
ERICKSON, J., joins in this concurrence.

. The facts in Melgosa are more fully set forth in the majority opinion, maj. op. at 371-72, and in Chief Justice VoIIack's dissenting opinion, Vol-lack, Ch. J., dissenting op. at 376 and 376 n. 3.