529 U.S. 266 (2000)
On October 13, 1995, an anonymous caller reported to the Miami-Dade Police that a young black male standing at a particular bus stop and wearing a plaid shirt was carrying a gun, although the record contains no audio recording of the tip and reveals nothing about the informant.1 Sometime after the police received the tip, two officers were instructed to respond and arrived at the bus stop about six minutes later, where they observed three black males just hanging out at the location.2
One of those individuals was respondent J. L., who matched the description by wearing a plaid shirt, but the officers had no independent reason to suspect any of the three of illegal conduct, saw no firearm, and noted that J. L. made no threatening or unusual movements.3 One officer then approached J. L., directed him to place his hands on the bus stop, conducted a frisk, and seized a gun from his pocket, while the second officer frisked the other two men, against whom no allegations had been made, and found nothing.4
At the time of the frisk, J. L. was ten days shy of his sixteenth birthday and faced charges under state law for carrying a concealed firearm without a license and possessing a firearm while under the age of eighteen.5 He moved to suppress the gun as the fruit of an unlawful search, and the trial court granted the motion, but the intermediate appellate court reversed before the Supreme Court of Florida quashed that decision and held the search invalid under the Fourth Amendment.6
The State of Florida sought review in the United States Supreme Court, noting that the decision conflicted with rulings from other courts that had upheld similar searches, and the Court granted certiorari to address the issue.7
Whether an anonymous tip that a person is carrying a gun is, without more, sufficient to justify a police officer’s stop and frisk of that person?8
An anonymous tip that a person is carrying a gun is not, without more, sufficient to justify a police officer's stop and frisk of that person.9 To justify a Terry stop, the tip must exhibit sufficient indicia of reliability, such as the correct prediction of the suspect's future movements or other details demonstrating the informant's knowledge of concealed criminal activity, as established in Alabama v. White.10
No. The anonymous tip in this case provided only a description of J. L.'s location and appearance at the bus stop, without any predictive information about his future actions or any other indicia of the informant's reliability or basis of knowledge.11
Under the standard from Terry v. Ohio and Alabama v. White, the tip lacked the moderate indicia of reliability necessary to support reasonable suspicion for the investigatory stop and frisk.12
The anonymous tip was insufficient to justify the stop and frisk of J. L.13
Related opinions on this issue
Joined by The Chief Justice
Justice Kennedy, joined by the Chief Justice, concurred in the judgment.14 He agreed that the Court's decision was correct on the record created at the suppression hearing because the anonymous tip provided no basis for assessing the informant's credibility. Kennedy observed that an anonymous telephone tip differs from direct police observation in that the reviewing court cannot judge the credibility of the informant, rendering the risk of fabrication unacceptable.15
He suggested that other features, such as repeated calls from the same voice about ongoing criminal activity or face-to-face tips from an unnamed informant, might provide sufficient reliability to justify police action in appropriate circumstances.16 Additionally, Kennedy noted that technological developments like instant caller identification and voice recording could lend reliability to anonymous tips by allowing police to trace informants, although these matters await future cases.17