Deciding to Detain Based on Anonymous Tips

This post is only offered as a discussion topic only and does not represent legal advice. Officers must refer to the laws in their own State as well as their agency's policies, which can be more restrictive on officers that the law requires.

Scenario: While working patrol at 4A.M., an officer receives a call from an anonymous person saying that two people were behind a local business "scoping the place out." The officer arrives at the location and sees an occupied vehicle across the street. The officer orders the driver to walk backwards to them and handcuff him while he's down on his knees. A short time later, the officer discovers he's a newspaper delivery driver and not involved in any crime, so they let him go.

Did the officer violate his constitutional rights by detaining him?

Answer: That was one of the issues in the civil case Gutierrez v. City of Arlington from 2023. In this case, the United States District Court in Washington addressed whether the officers had reasonable suspicion to justify detaining the woman. They said, "An anonymous tip alone seldom demonstrates the informant's basis of knowledge or veracity. That is because ordinary citizens generally do not provide extensive recitations of the basis of their everyday observations and an anonymous tipster's veracity is...largely unknown and unknowable." "But under appropriate circumstances an anonymous tip can demonstrate sufficient indicia of reliability to provide reasonable suspicion to make an investigatory stop."

In this case, the court determined that officers DID NOT have reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigatory stop of this person. Some of the reasons they gave for this conclusion included: 1) Officers only had an anonymous and unverified tip. 2) There was no evidence the tip was reliable and the officers did not make an attempt to verify it. 3) The officers did not have articulable suspicion that this person being detained was engaged in the reported crime 4) The crime reported was only a misdemeanor so it had little governmental interest. 

Just receiving a call for service is not enough to establish reasonable suspicion to detain a person, especially if its from an anonymous caller. Officers must consider whether enough information exists to articulate reasonable suspicion that the person they're detaining is involved in a crime before making the detention.