Justin Michael Slocum was found guilty in a bench trial of driving a vehicle under the influence of alcohol. The evidence relied upon by the State to support the DUI conviction was obtained after police stopped the vehicle Slocum was driving to investigate whether the occupants were involved in an assault reported in a 911 telephone call from a pay phone near the stop. Slocum appeals claiming the trial court should have granted his motion to suppress the evidence supporting the conviction because the information given in the call failed to provide police with reasonable suspicion to make the stop. For the following reasons, we agree and reverse.
The record shows that a female called 911 at night from a pay phone near an intersection on a major thoroughfare in Hall County reporting that she had been assaulted by a white male and that a dark colored sport utility vehicle (SUV) was involved. The record is not clear as to whether the 911 caller identified herself to the operator. However, the record shows that the police officers who made the stop had no information as to the identity of the woman or the man; when or where the assault occurred; how the SUV was involved; or any other information identifying the SUV. When police arrived at the pay phone to investigate the report, they found no one there, but they saw a dark colored Ford Explorer SUV about a block away traveling on the thoroughfare from the area in light traffic conditions. Police briefly followed the SUV and noticed the outline of two heads visible in the vehicle, although they could not determine if they were male or female. They observed no traffic or other offenses, but activated the patrol car’s blue lights and stopped the SUV solely to investigate whether the SUV and its occupants had any connection to the reported assault. At the bench trial, the State produced evidence collected pursuant to the stop showing that Slocum was driving the SUV while under the influence of alcohol in violation of OCGA § 40-6-391 (a).
Even if there is no probable cause to arrest for a traffic or other offense, the Fourth Amendment allows police to stop a vehicle to investigate a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.
Vansant v. State,
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.,
Judgment reversed.