Can Police Pull You Over Based on an Anonymous Call?
Interesting question and answer over at masslive.com: “Can police use tip to stop a motorist? It depends”.
The answer implies that it is assuming an anonymous 911 call about an erratic driver who the caller suspects may be drunk or driving dangerously.The answer is correct that the police can’t stop you based entirely on a tip. Typically if they get a call about a dangerous driver on the roads, after locating the car, they follow for a while to independently verify and corroborate that the driver is doing something that warrants a stop, whether it is speeding, reckless driving (negligent operation), or driving that could be a suspected OUI.
The answer in the article suggests that the police can pull you over if the tip suggests your driving could be an “imminent threat to life and property”. This argument is absolutely beatable in court. We’ve won cases where the police only had an anonymous tip, and the charges were dismissed.
The remedy for this, from the Commonweath’s view is for the tip not to be anonymous. If the prosecutors can find the person who made the call, and bring them into court as a witness to describe what they saw, then this can be enough reason to make the stop legal, even if the police didn’t witness any bad driving.
But this can be hard to do. Even if the person who called in the tip to the police left his or her name, he or she can be tough to find, and tougher to get to show up in court on the day of the trial. We have beaten cases where the case was dismissed because the witness that predicated the stop didn’t show up in court.
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