WHAT EVIDENCE DO POLICE NEED FOR A SEARCH?

Court Hears Two Cases On People's Right To Be Free From Unreasonable
Searches.

WASHINGTON

Police in Miami receive an anonymous tip identifying three teenagers
standing at a bus stop outside a pawn shop. The tipster says that one boy,
wearing a plaid shirt, is carrying a concealed gun.

Police officers arrive at the bus stop within six minutes, see the three
teens, including one in a plaid shirt, and frisk all three.

The police discover a gun in the pocket of the plaid-shirted teen. He is 16,
far too young to legally possess a gun in Florida, let alone a concealed
handgun. But the gun charges against him are eventually thrown out by state
court judges.

Today, the US Supreme Court is considering whether the police acted properly
by safeguarding the community from a teenager carrying a concealed pistol,
or whether those same police officers violated the minor's Fourth Amendment
right to be free from unreasonable searches.

It is an issue that is taking on a heightened sense of urgency in
communities across the nation concerned about violent juvenile crime,
including deadly assaults like the attack at Columbine High School in
Colorado last year.

It also comes at a time of increasing public distrust of the police and
their tactics, as evidenced by the massive corruption uncovered within the
Los Angeles Police Department and the recent trial of four New York
policemen on charges that they gunned down an unarmed man they thought was
carrying a gun.

At the heart of the Miami case is the legal question of whether an anonymous
tip is reliable enough to justify police frisking a suspect.

The law is clear that a frisk is justified when police obtain information
that supports the essence of the tip and independently bolsters a reasonable
suspicion that a crime is under way.

But what is not clear is whether a frisk is justified if police can only
verify innocent details - such as a plaid shirt - contained in the tip.

Defining Reasonable Suspicion

Such innocent details do not in any way confirm ongoing illegal activity.
But some legal analysts say verifying innocent details can help support the
overall veracity of the tip, and that can create enough reasonable suspicion
to justify a frisk.

Friend-of-court briefs have been filed in the case by various police and
crime-victims organizations and the attorneys general of 33 states urging
the court to overturn the Florida judges and allow such searches.

On the other side, a coalition of civil libertarians, civil rights
advocates, and the National Rifle Association is urging the court to uphold
the Florida rulings.

"We have a case here that is going to test the court's willingness to stand
up for the Fourth Amendment," says James Tomkovicz, a law professor and
Fourth Amendment expert at the University of Iowa College of Law in Iowa
City.

How the high court resolves the Florida case will provide police officers
with much-needed guidance in how to respond to anonymous tips.

In some cases, the tip may prove false, and a hasty frisk would subject an
innocent person to unwarranted embarrassment, fear, and possible injury.

In other cases, police may have only moments to act to prevent a violent
crime. "Officers who receive an anonymous tip that an individual of a
particular description is carrying a bomb outside of a courthouse, or is
concealing an automatic pistol outside a school, cannot ignore the potential
threat of violence when, upon arriving at the location, they find the
described individual at the scene," says the US solicitor general's brief in
the case.

Both the Florida Attorney General's Office and the US Justice Department are
urging the justices to take what they say is a common-sense approach to the
issue. Law-enforcement officials on the scene must have the flexibility to
assess, on a case-by-case basis, the potential for the immediate and lethal
use of a weapon by a suspect, they say.

Not everyone agrees with this approach. "It isn't really an all-or-nothing
choice that if you don't act now on the tip someone is going to die," says
Mr. Tomkovicz. In the majority of cases, police retain the ability to
observe suspects and conduct an independent investigation before moving in.

"The fact that a tip mentions a gun simply does not demonstrate that the tip
is reliable," writes Harvey Sepler, an assistant public defender in Miami
who is arguing the boy's case. He says police must investigate further to
build a reasonable suspicion of a crime.

"Police across the country receive anonymous information every day. When
those tips merit further investigation, police have little trouble
determining whether or not the tip justifies a stop or arrest," Mr. Sepler
says. "They may not, however, decide to start frisking people whenever the
word 'gun' is used."

To Squeeze Or Not To Squeeze

Also today, in a second Fourth Amendment case, the Supreme Court is
considering whether a federal agent violates the constitutional privacy
rights of bus passengers when he squeezes soft-sided luggage in the overhead
compartment in a random attempt to detect illicit drugs.

Steven Bond argues that his drug-smuggling conviction should be overturned
because the agent in his case had no reasonable suspicion, probable cause,
or consent to squeeze his bag.

The agent working at a checkpoint on the Texas-Mexico border detected a
"brick-like object" in Mr. Bond's suitcase. He obtained permission from Bond
to search inside the bag, where he found a 1.3-pound block of the illegal
drug methamphetamine.

Lawyers for the government argue that once Bond placed his bag in the common
overhead compartment he no longer retained a reasonable expectation of
privacy. As a result, the agent did not need a warrant to squeeze Bond's
luggage while searching for contraband, they say.