Court Opinion

ID: 9526425
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:17:11.857765+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:19:45.999915
License: Public Domain

R.S. Smith, J. (dissenting).
It is settled that neither an anonymous tip unconfirmed by subsequent events (Florida v J.L., 529 US 266 [2000]; People v William II, 98 NY2d 93 [2002]) nor a person’s evident wish to avoid contact with the police (People v May, 81 NY2d 725 [1992]) is alone enough to justify “a reasonable suspicion that a particular person has committed, is committing or is about to commit a felony or misdemeanor,” and thus to permit “a forcible stop and detention of that person” (People v De Bour, 40 NY2d 210, 223 [1976]). Today, the Court goes a step further, holding that a combination of the two—an anonymous tip and avoidance of contact with the police—is not enough. I would not take this step, because I think it limits too strictly the ability of police officers to make the common sense, spur-of-the-moment judgments that street encounters demand and that are essential to achieving a proper balance between individual rights and law enforcement.
The rules that neither an anonymous tip nor the avoidance of police officers can alone create reasonable suspicion are not *502intuitively self-evident. Indeed, they are a departure—justified, the courts have decided, by valid policy reasons—from a simple, commonsense interpretation of “reasonable suspicion.” In common sense, of course it is reasonable for a police officer to suspect that a person who an anonymous caller says is committing a crime may indeed be committing one; it would be unreasonable to conclude, or to assume, that the anonymous caller was telling the truth, but it is not unreasonable to want to look into the possibility. Equally clearly, any reasonable police officer will become suspicious when a person, on seeing the police officer, promptly decides to travel in the opposite direction; there are no doubt many perfectly legitimate reasons for wanting to shun contact with the police, but it is still reasonable to suspect the existence of a reason that is not legitimate.
Nevertheless, the courts do not allow police officers to detain someone with no more basis than an anonymous tip or avoidance of the police, and have artificially defined “reasonable suspicion” in a way that prohibits such detentions. I imply no criticism of the decisions that establish these rules. They are based on important interests that compete with society’s interest in efficient law enforcement. In the case of the anonymous tip, if reasonable suspicion could be founded on that alone, it “would enable any person seeking to harass another to set in motion an intrusive, embarrassing police search” or detention, while concealing his or her identity (Florida v J.L., 529 US at 272). In the case of a person who avoids the police, to make that without more a basis for “reasonable suspicion” would unacceptably abridge that person’s “right ‘to be let alone’ and refuse to respond to police inquiry” (People v Holmes, 81 NY2d 1056, 1058 [1993] [citation omitted]).
While I accept the reasons that have led courts to hold that a police officer’s suspicion based on either of these two grounds is not reasonable, it does not logically follow that suspicion is unreasonable when both grounds exist together. At that point, it seems to me, the reasons to be suspicious are powerful enough that society’s interest in efficient law enforcement should prevail. Thus, in this case, when Officers Racioppo and Molinaro observed both that defendant matched the description the anonymous caller had given of a man with a gun, and that he began to walk away at the sight of the police, the possibility that he did indeed have a gun deserved to be investigated, even at the cost of a temporary interference with his liberty. It was possible, of course, based on what the officers knew, that defen*503dant was the innocent victim of a spiteful caller trying to harass him, and that he was also among those innocent people who prefer to exercise their “right to be let alone” rather than talk to the police, but I cannot bring myself to blame the officers for suspecting that the truth might be otherwise.
Accordingly, I would affirm the order of the Appellate Division.
Judges G.B. Smith, Ciparick, Graffeo and Read concur with Chief Judge Kaye; Judge R.S. Smith dissents and votes to affirm in a separate opinion in which Judge Rosenblatt concurs.
Order reversed, etc.