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Floyd v. City of Crystal Springs11/24/1999
from investigating a reported complaint of reckless driving would thwart a significant public interest in preventing the mortal danger presented by such driving.
. The felony/misdemeanor distinction cited in the cases urged by Floyd is not the correct test by which to evaluate whether an investigative stop is reasonable. The question is not whether a driver is suspected of a felony or misdemeanor, but whether a law enforcement officer acts reasonably in stopping a vehicle to investigate a complaint short of arrest. This Court stated in Singletary, 318 So. 2d at 876:
Police activity in preventing crime , detecting violations, making identifications, and in apprehending criminals may be divided into three types of action: . . . (2) Investigative stop and temporary detention: To stop and temporarily detain is not an arrest, and the cases hold that given reasonable circumstances an officer may stop and detain a person to resolve an ambiguous situation without having sufficient knowledge to justify an arrest . . . .
. Though Floyd argues otherwise, the circumstances under which Officer Palmer stopped Floyd were clearly reasonable, and Floyd clearly had "reasonable suspicion, grounded on specific and articulable facts" as required by this Court in Floyd, 500 So. 2d at 992. Floyd argues that the stop was unreasonable because Officer Palmer received a dispatch based on a complaint from a third party.
. Reasonable cause for an investigatory stop may be based on an officer's personal observation or on an informant's tip if it bears indicia of reliability. Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. at 147, 92 S.Ct. at 1924. Reasonable suspicion is dependent upon both the content of the information possessed by the detaining officer as well as its degree of reliability. Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 330, 110 S.Ct. 2412, 2416, 110 L.Ed. 2d 301 (1990). Both factors - quantity and quality - are considered in the "totality of the circumstances." Id. Here, Officer Palmer received a very specific description of Floyd's vehicle, the precise location of the car, and information regarding exactly what was complained of, that is, reckless driving at a high rate of speed. The report came to Officer Palmer over his radio from the dispatcher. Officer Leflore testified that the complaint came from a named source who had given him information in the past. This was certainly enough to satisfy both the quantity and quality requirements.
. A case from the Texas Court of Appeals is precisely on point. In State v. Sailo, 910 S.W.2d 184 (Tex. App. 1995), while police officers were making a traffic stop, a private citizen drove up and informed police officers that he had seen a possible drunk driver approaching the scene. The informant described the suspect as driving a small, white Toyota pickup truck and stated that the vehicle was approaching the officers. The informant drove off before the officers could take down the informant's name. The officers stopped the vehicle described by the informant even though neither had seen the vehicle commit any traffic violations. The driver was eventually arrested after failing field sobriety tests.
. The driver argued on appeal that the investigative stop was unlawful because the information provided by the unidentified informant was not an adequate ground for the officers to form a reasonable suspicion that criminal activity was occurring. The court noted that a tip by an unnamed informant of undisclosed reliability standing alone will rarely establish the requisite level of suspicion necessary to justify an investigative detention, and that " here must be some further indicia of reliability, some additional facts from which a police officer m
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