Anonymous tip of suspicious but not criminal activity is not reasonable suspicion

Samuel Schirer won in State v. Chapman, No. 111,572 (Kan. October 21, 2016), obtaining reversal of a Sedgwick County identity theft conviction. The decision turned on a search of a car, and discovery of evidence which resulted in the prosecution. Officers were responding to a dispatch about a suspicious character call in the middle of a snowy night and officers found a car matching the description given. The KSC reviewed several cases related to circumstances argued to amount to reasonable suspicion. The KSC agreed with dissenting-COA-Judge Buser that the facts in this case were lacking:

Judge Buser was correct that the facts of McKeown are much more similar to the facts of this case. In McKeown, law enforcement responded to an anonymous tip that a green pickup truck was parked near a residence on a road in a rural area and that the tipster could not determine what the unfamiliar pickup was doing in that location. Although the behavior reported was suspicious, it was not criminal. By the time law enforcement arrived, the truck had moved. This court decided that a stop of the pickup, which by then was proceeding down the roadway in a lawful manner, was not supported by reasonable suspicion. 

Results in other jurisdictions back up the McKeown reasoning that a tip of suspicious but not criminal activity is not enough to support reasonable suspicion. 

Judge Buser's preferred holding in this case also is reinforced by his observation, despite no emphasis upon it from the parties or the district court, that the tip in this case was anonymous. 

The KSC agreed that the anonymity of the tip in this case was important:  

We need not elaborate further in this case on the law governing evaluation of tip reliability. We note only that counsel and district judges in future cases should take care to perform such an evaluation in their analysis of the totality of the circumstances supporting the existence of reasonable suspicion for a car stop.

Because the stop was not legal, the KSC remanded with directions to grant Mr. Chapman's motion to suppress.