ARREST FROM 911 TIP WAS PROPER, HIGH COURT RULES

Madison - Milwaukee police officers properly acted on an anonymous but
detailed 911 call when they searched and arrested Roosevelt Williams in
a 1995 drug case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The 4-3 decision came in a case that made it to the U.S. Supreme Court,
and then was sent back to the state for further review. After taking a
second look at Williams' case, the state high court underscored its
previous ruling.

The question in the case was whether police, acting on an anonymous tip,
needed to independently observe suspicious activity before stopping and
searching Williams.

"The state has met its burden of showing that the investigatory stop of
Williams was justified - that there was reasonable suspicion," Justice
N. Patrick Crooks wrote in the majority opinion.

The nation's high court had erased the state Supreme Court's original
ruling after a Florida case last year in which justices ruled that an
anonymous tip that a person is carrying a gun was not sufficient basis
for police to stop and search the suspect.

In the Florida case, the high court found that the unidentified tipster
did not have knowledge of criminal activity.

Crooks, however, found the Williams case was significantly different,
with the 911 caller in the Milwaukee case providing far more information
than the "bare-boned" information provided in the Florida case.

The court was sharply divided, with Justices William Bablitch, Ann Walsh
Bradley and Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson casting doubt on the
reliability and knowledge of the 911 tipster and the legality of the
officers' search.

Williams was arrested on Nov. 2, 1995, in the parking lot of an
apartment building in the 4200 block of N. Teutonia Ave. after someone
in the building complained to a 911 dispatcher of drug dealing by two
men out of a blue and burgundy Ford Bronco.

Two police officers arrived about four minutes later and saw two men in
a blue and burgundy Chevy Blazer. One officer testified that he noticed
Williams had his hand behind the passenger seat and feared he might have
a gun.

In a search of the vehicle, officers found marijuana and crack cocaine.

But Williams argued that police violated his Fourth Amendment rights by
conducting an improper search, and the state Court of Appeals ruled that
police must independently observe suspicious behavior before they act on
a tip from a citizen informant.

Crooks, however, said that because of the tip and what police observed,
"Officers reasonably suspected that criminal activity was afoot."

The majority noted that the tip, unlike the one in the Florida case, was
detailed and the informant provided police enough information that her
identity might have been disclosed.

"Risking one's identification intimates that, more likely than not, the
informant is a genuinely concerned citizen as opposed to a fallacious
prankster," Crooks wrote.

Crooks said that police found the scene much as it was described and
noted that the suspect's reach behind the seat and the lack of license
plates on the vehicle also may have raised suspicions. Crooks said the
tip was an eyewitness account and was "plainly so much more than a than
a 'bare-boned' tip."

"A reliable tip, such as this one, provided information of substantial
quality," Crooks added.

In addition, the justices found that police were justified in conducting
a protective search of the vehicle because Williams' hand was concealed
from view when officers approached.

"The officers were reasonable in fearing for their safety and executed a
limited search of the vehicle to quell that fear," Crooks wrote.

Agreeing, Justice David Prosser said that Milwaukee police were entitled
to presume that 911 callers knew that they could not make false
statements to dispatchers without risking prosecution. Prosser said the
informant believed she was watching a crime in progress.

"Normally, we commend this sort of conscientious conduct on the part of
a citizen," Prosser said. "Officers did exactly what the public expected
them to do."

Bablitch, Bradley and Abrahamson disagreed. Bablitch wrote that nowhere
in the 911 call is there evidence that the caller saw criminal activity.

"The only detail provided by the caller in this case is a description of
a parked vehicle that she observed through her apartment window,"
Bablitch said. "Corroboration of these few facts does not bring
reliability to the caller's allegation of criminal activity."

Instead, Bablitch said the caller assumed a crime was taking place, and
disputed the majority's contention that the informant put her identity
on the line.

"The record does not tell us if 50 people or 500 people lived at this
address," Bablitch wrote. "As a result, no greater veracity or
reliability can be attributed to the caller in this case than to any
other nameless, unknown informant."