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McChesney v. State10/20/1999
stances test to situations involving a confidential informant=s tip, we consider: A(1) the sufficiency of the information set forth in the informant=s tip; (2) the prediction of future activity or events by the informant; and (3) some corroboration of the current and predicted future events by the police officers.@ Goettl, 842 P.2d at 554. Frederick v. State, 981 P.2d 494, 497 (Wyo. 1999).
Given the totality of the circumstances in this case, which included the description of the vehicle driven by McChesney; the location and direction of travel; the discovery by the officer of a vehicle matching that description; the arrival of that vehicle within a predictable time frame; and the clear statement of aberrant driving that could be perceived as reckless, the officer had sufficient reasonable suspicion to accomplish an investigatory stop.
It is right to consider the policy factors that are involved in an issue such as this. Those factors were captured plainly by the Kansas Court of Appeals in State v. Tucker, 19 Kan.App.2d 920, 878 P.2d 855, 858 (1994), when the court said:
This case involves the ever-changing equation used to balance the rights of an individual to be free from unwarranted intrusions of his or her freedom of movement and right to privacy with the right of the public to be protected from unreasonable danger. This equation and the balance change with the facts presented. It is clear that, when the focus of the stop or search is a mobile automobile, the requirements to justify a stop or search or arrest are lessened.
That court also said:
We must apply that balancing test in the instant case. A motor vehicle in the hands of a drunken driver is an instrument of death. It is deadly, it threatens the safety of the public, and that threat must be eliminated as quickly as possible. An investigatory or safety stop of a suspected drunken driver is a minimal intrusion upon that driver=s freedom of movement and privacy. Id. at 861.
A telling analogy can be drawn to the decisions of several jurisdictions that have justified brief investigatory stops in cases involving anonymous tips of suspects carrying deadly weapons. United States v. Clipper, 973 F.2d 944, 951 (D.C. Cir. 1992), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 1070 (1993) (police may take into account Ahazards that the illegal use of firearms presents to officer and citizens alike.@); United States v. Bold, 19 F.3d 99, 104 (2 nd Cir. 1994), cert. denied, 517 U.S. 1250 (1996) (information from anonymous informant sufficient for stop of person suspected of gun possession even though corroboration is of present rather than future events); United States v. DeBerry, 76 F.3d 884, 886 (7th Cir. 1996) (A rmed persons are so dangerous to the peace of the community that the police should not be forbidden to follow up a tip that a person is armed, and as a realistic matter this will require a stop in all cases.@). See generally, 4 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure ' 9.4(h) (3 rd ed. 1996). An automobile in the hands of a drunk or otherwise irresponsible driver is as lethal as a firearm, and, indeed, deserves the same attention from officers.
We previously have made a distinction between a citizen informant and a police informant, and have suggested that courts ordinarily deem citizen informants to be presumptively reliable sources of information. Borgwardt v. State, 946 P.2d 805, 807 (Wyo. 1997). An anonymous tip does not permit verification of the honesty or reliability of the citizen informant. In the instance of a telephone call, however, the disclosure of the identity of the caller does not add substantially to the honesty or reliability of the information because the officer must react be
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