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McChesney v. State10/20/1999
fore there is any opportunity to verify the identity, honesty, or reliability of the citizen informant. If the caller is involved in a prank or a vendetta, a false name could be given, and the law enforcement personnel would have no way of determining the validity of the identity within the response time. I understand that there are occasions in which law enforcement officers may act improperly, but I have difficulty in making an assumption, not warranted on this record, that they will submit false reports to justify investigatory stops. What the officer did in this instance was corroborate by observation the caller=s description of the car, a red Mercury with temporary plates; a particular location, eastbound on I-90 traveling towards Gillette; and its arrival within the time frame consistent with the location of the subject vehicle when the call was made. Reliability based upon identification of the informant who offers the information is not an exclusive determinant with respect to the question of reasonable suspicion. The content of the tip is a critical factor, and the level of danger that the tip alludes to is particularly important. State v. Pully, 863 S.W.2d 29, 32 (Tenn. 1993).
In Kaysville City v. Mulcahy, 943 P.2d 231 (Utah.App.), cert. denied, 953 P.2d 449 (Utah 1997), the Court of Appeals of Utah was confronted with a case very similar to this case. The citizen informant had given a name to the dispatcher in Kaysville City, but the opinion does not say that the name of the informant was passed on from the dispatcher to the officer. The Utah Court of Appeals offered a very incisive analysis of such cases, but perhaps the most persuasive aspect of this opinion is this language:
e supplement and clarify our analysis with pertinent principles from the numerous other states addressing facts more on point with those of this caseBthe overwhelming majority of which have upheld the stops involved in those cases as supported by reasonable suspicion. Id. at 235.
Several of the cases relied upon by the Utah Court of Appeals involved anonymous reports.
Circumstances such as those found in this case demand that the danger to the public if the driver is left alone be weighed against the interest of the individual in personal liberty. Certainly the individual is concerned, and justifiably, with an Aintrusion upon cherished personal security * * *.@ Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 25, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1882, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). The duty of the officer is to concern himself with protection of the public from the hazards associated with intoxicated drivers. The dangers that are associated with driving while intoxicated are well documented by the number of deaths that occur on our highways and the social concern over innocent lives that are lost each year. These factors clearly impact the State of Wyoming.
One method of analyzing reasonableness is to consider what action would be responsible under the circumstances. Any responsible parent, given the same information as this officer was given about the driving of a teenager, albeit the information was furnished anonymously, would sit down with the youngster for a Discussion. That would be a responsible response by the parent. Like that parent, the officer in this case had A>specific and articulable facts and rational inferences which [gave] rise to a reasonable suspicion that [McChesney] ha committed or may [have been] committing a crime,=@ based upon a totality of the circumstances. Frederick, 981 P.2d at 497 (quoting Wilson v. State, 874 P.2d 215, 220 (Wyo. 1994)). That reasonable suspicion justified the relatively minor inconvenience suffered by McChesney in the investigatory stop, even assuming he had done not
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