OPINION
{1} Under the United States and New Mexico Constitutions, a police officer, before executing a traffic stop, must be aware of individualized, particularized, and articulable facts that support a belief that a violation is occurring in his presence. If the only facts are that the officer runs a license plate check to ascertain whether a vehicle is insured and the computer indicates no more than that the insurance status is “unknown,” the officer possesses insufficient facts from which to form a reasonable suspicion that would support a traffic stop. The evidence the State presented later to the district court that the Motor Vehicle Department’s (MVD) statistics could correlate unknown insurance status with being uninsured cannot serve as а proxy to supply evidence of the officer’s knowledge at the time he made his decision. The district court having held otherwise, we reverse.
I. BACKGROUND
{2} The facts in this case are simple and undisputed. Joann Yazzie (Defendant) was driving a vehicle on November 23, 2010, when Officer James Rempe entered its license plate number into the mobile data terminal (MDT) in his police car, which informed him that Dеfendant’s vehicle insurance status was “unknown.” He then executed a traffic stop. Defendant entered a conditional plea in the magistrate court for driving under the influence, reserving the question of whether her stop was based on reasonable suspicion and, upon her conviction, appealed her case de novo to the district court. In the district court, the State stiрulated that “the only basis for the stop in this case was Officer Rempe’s receiving information from [MVD] that. . . the status of the vehicle’s insurance was unknown.” In the district court, Defendant again moved to have her stop ruled unconstitutional because the officer lacked sufficient facts to justify seizing her.
{3} It appears that the State’s strategy in this case was to establish grounds for proving the meaning of “unknown” insurance status. At the beginning of the suppression hearing, the prosecutor stated that the State sought a witness from the MVD to testify about what “unknown” insurance status would mean in order to quell a recurring issue. The district court agreed and stated:
I think the State’s looking for this expert based on my previous decisions that insurance unknown just doesn’t cut it to me. I think it needs to be more, and I think the State’s following my prеvious directive that if they don’t have more, I’m going to be suppressing these stops.
The State called a witness from the MVD, who testified that there was a high likelihood that “unknown” insurance status may mean “uninsured.” From this evidence, the district court concluded that “[gjiven the 80% to 90% chance that the owner of a vehicle with an unknown insurance status has not yet obtained evidence of financial respоnsibility for the vehicle, it was reasonable for Officer Rempe to suspect that. . . Defendant did not have evidence of financial responsibility for her vehicle as she drove it on November 23, 2010.” Defendant does not contest the MVD witness’s opinion regarding the likelihood that unknown status correlates with uninsured vehicles, but asserts that the correlation is irrelevant to the central question of whether the officer had reasonable suspicion at the time of the stop. No evidence was ever presented to the court as to what the officer suspected, or did not suspect, about “unknown” insurance status. The district court held the stop to be constitutionally valid, and Defendant appealed.
II. DISCUSSION
{4} A rubric
A. “Known Knowns”
1. Standard of Review
{5} Our review of the denial of a motion to suppress presents us with a mixed question of law and fact. State v. Urioste,
2. Standard for an Investigative Stop
{6} “Article II, Section 10, of the New Mexico Constitution and the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution control the validity of investigative stops.” State v. Anaya,
{7} “[T]he State has the burden to establish reasonable suspicion to stop the motorist. If the State fails in its burden, the stop is unconstitutional.” State v. Gonzales,
{8} In this case, we determine whether the district court’s findings are supported by substantial evidence, and we furthеr evaluate the sufficiency of the evidence to demonstrate whether, at the time of the stop, .Officer Rempe had sufficient knowledge that Defendant was, at that time, committing a violation of the insurance statute. “When a case is assigned to a general calendar, the factual basis for the issues must be contained in the record of proceedings made below.” State v. Jensen,
3. Officer Rempe’s Basis for the Stop
{9} Owing to the stipulation of counsel and the lack of any testimony by Officer Rempe, we know that the officer’s sole basis for the traffic stop was the information on his MDT, indicating that • the status of Defendant’s insurance on the vehicle was unknown. The officer also filed a probable cause statement with the criminal complaint in the magistrate court that states: “I ran a vehicles license plate ... on my MDT. I stopped the vehicle because the insurance returned ‘unknown.’ I made contact with [Defendant].” The returned information known to the officer did not provide any specific articulable facts to support a suspicion that Defendant was committing a crime. Dixson,
4. MVD Statistics
{10} We can see from the record that this case was preceded by many successful suppression motions by defendants in other cases regarding stops based on “unknown status” from which the State had concluded that it needed evidence from the MVD supporting the proposition that “unknown” equates with “uninsured.” The MVD employee’s testimony and the State’s Exhibit 1 both support thе district court’s finding of a strong correlation between “unknown” and “uninsured.” We have previously stated that “ ‘[speculation’ is the act of theorizing about a matter in which evidence is not sufficient for certain knowledge.” Bufalino v. Safeway Stores, Inc.,
B. “Known Unknowns”
1. Defendant’s Insurance Status at the Time of the Stop
{11} Onr law is quite clear that “[bjefore a police officer makes a traffic stop, he must have a reasonable suspicion of illegal activity.” Anaya,
{12} No evidence in the record indicates any reason for Officer Rempe to check Defendant’s license plate in the first place, or whether the officer made any inferences from what he saw on his MDT that night. Again, we have previously held that information “that the license plate number on the car [is] not on file with the [MVD] fails to establish a reasonable suspicion” concerning a motorist. Hudson,
2. Officer Rempe’s Knowledge of the Meaning of “Unknown”
{13} The State cannot establish beyond a supposition that Officer Rempe’s actual knowledge of what “unknown” meant “may have been based [on] his personal experience of the correlation between ‘unknown’ status and inability to produce proof of insurance.” The State’s argument is not supported by evidence in the record. See Muse v. Muse,
{14} The evidence fails to show that Officer Rempe knew of any statistical probabilities concerning “unknown” insurance status. Because the State, owing to the parties’ stipulation, never presented evidence that the officer observed Defendant commit a traffic violation that caused him to stop her vehicle, or that he had any prior knowledge, training, or experience that “unknown” status generally correlated with a vehicle being uninsured, the State’s arguments fail. Any assumption that the statistics were meaningful to the officer was based on speculation and does not support a determination that his stop was reasonable.
{15} We conclude that based on the lack of evidence in the record regarding Officer Rempe’s basis for the stop, he had no articulable reason to believe Defendant had committed a crime. The officer’s stop of Defendant was not constitutionally authorized. See Dixson,
C. “Unknown Unknowns” ■
{16} This case still leaves unanswered whether any police officer knows enough by virtue of “unknown” insurance status to effect a valid arrest. But even if an officer does know the MVD statistics indicating that 80% to 90% of all vehicles that register as “unknown” are uninsured, this still fails to provide objective individualized evidence regarding any individual vehicle and whether that particular vehicle is uninsured. The fact that MVD chooses “unknown” over “uninsured” in its printouts and data transmissions to officers demonstrates the limits of confidence required to effect a traffic stop. We decline in this case to accept the State’s invitation to hold that general statistical probabilities objectively establish particularized suspicion. See State v. Gage R.,
III. CONCLUSION
{17} Officer Rempe’s lack of knowledge of any facts particular to Defendant’s vehicle insurance decides this case. The evidence shows only that the officer knew that Defendant’s insurance status was “unknown” and that he did not possess additional facts or reasonable inferences to objectively supply reasonable suspicion for her seizure. Because that “unknown” status was the sole basis of the stop, the stop was not constitutionally valid. Furthermore, even if evidence was presented that the officer was aware of the statistics establishing a correlation between “unknown” insurance status and lack of insurance, such knowledge of general probabilities without more fails to provide the requisite objective individualized evidence of lack of insurance that would support a traffic stop. We reverse the district court’s denial of Defendant’s motion to suppress evidence and remand this case for further proceedings in the district court consistent with this Opinion.
{18} IT IS SO ORDERED.
Notes
‘Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knоwns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.” Department of Defense News Briefing - Secretary Rumsfeld & Gen. Myers, Presenter: Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld (February 12, 2002) available at http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx7tran scriptid=2636 (last visited July 8,2014).