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Slocum v. State

5/10/2004

6 L.Ed.2d 254 (2000). For example, information provided by these types of informants may exhibit sufficient indicia of reliability if it provides details correctly predicting a subject's "not easily predicted" future behavior, or if it provides other details which police corroborate as showing similar inside information about the subject's affairs. Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. at 332, 110 S.Ct. 2412; Britton v. State, 220 Ga.App. 120, 121- 122, 469 S.E.2d 272 (1996). In the present case, the information given to the police by the 911 caller was insufficient, without more, to provide the police with reasonable suspicion to stop the SUV driven by Slocum to investigate whether its occupants were involved in the reported assault. Regardless of whether we assume the information was provided by an identified victim of a crime with presumed reliability or an anonymous caller with no presumed reliability, it provided only a bare assertion that a white male had assaulted the caller and that a dark colored SUV was somehow involved. Even if we assume that the officers could rationally infer from this information that the assailant was in a dark colored SUV, the caller did not give a detailed description of the SUV, nor did the caller say the SUV was headed in a certain direction or was even in the area of the pay phone when the call was made. Moreover, when the police arrived at the pay phone, the caller was not there, so the officers were unable to obtain any additional information. The State points out that, after the officers stopped the SUV, they obtained evidence at the stop that a woman in the SUV was the 911 caller who reported the assault. However, even if the information provided in the 911 call was proved correct after the stop, it does not follow that the officers had reasonable suspicion to make the stop. "The reasonableness of official suspicion must be measured by what the officers knew before they [made the stop]." Florida v. J. L., 529 U.S. at 271, 120 S.Ct. 1375. The information on which the officers acted to stop *339 the SUV provided them with no more than a general suspicion or hunch that the occupants of a dark colored SUV traveling with other traffic on a major thoroughfare in the general area might be involved in the reported assault. Vansant, 264 Ga. at 321, 443 S.E.2d 474. Because the officers stopped the SUV without the reasonable suspicion necessary to justify an investigative stop, the stop was an unreasonable intrusion under the Fourth Amendment, and the trial court erred by denying Slocum's motion to suppress. Judgment reversed.

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