-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- Privacy Concerns - http://www.angelfire.com/biz/privacyconcerns/index.html .c The Associated Press By RICHARD CARELLI WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court sharply curtailed police power to rely on anonymous tips to stop and search people. The unanimous ruling Tuesday was a victory for civil rights organizations but a police group said the nation's streets may become more dangerous. The court said Miami police acted unlawfully when in 1995 they searched and arrested a juvenile for carrying a gun after an anonymous telephone caller said someone matching his description had a concealed weapon. ``The question is whether an anonymous tip ... is, without more, sufficient to justify a police officer's stop and frisk of that person,'' Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court. ``We hold that it is not.'' She said such ``bare-bone tips'' generally do not give police the reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct needed to justify the type of stop-and-frisk search the nation's highest court has allowed for the last 32 years. The court's unanimity caught some legal experts by surprise. Over the past two decades, a series of conservative-led rulings dramatically narrowed protections offered by the Constitution's Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable police searches and seizures. ``This was a slam-dunk victory for individual rights,'' said James Tomkovicz, a University of Iowa law professor who represented the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups in a friend-of-the-court brief attacking searches based on anonymous tips. ``The court made clear it is not going to sacrifice personal privacy whenever the magic word 'firearm' is mentioned,'' he said. ``That message was made even more emphatic by the fact the court was unanimous.'' The liberal groups had attracted an unlikely ally - the National Rifle Association, whose friend-of-the-court brief had urged the justices to protect ``the peaceful carrying of a firearm.'' But the National Association of Police Organizations reacted angrily. ``We are disappointed and, frankly, baffled by the court's decision,'' said Robert Scully, the group's executive director. ``As a consequence of this ruling, the danger to law enforcement officers and the general public will significantly increase, and we fear that more officers and more members of the public will be assaulted and murdered,'' he said. In the Miami case, a youth identified in court records only as J.L. was arrested as a result of an anonymous tip that three black youths were standing outside a pawn shop and that the one in a plaid shirt was carrying a gun. The court ruled that the search of J.L. violated his Fourth Amendment rights and, as a result, the seized gun cannot be used as evidence against him. The decision upheld a Florida Supreme Court ruling that had suppressed use of the gun as evidence. Ginsburg made clear the ruling also covers anonymous tips about people carrying illegal drugs. But the decision stopped short of saying whether anonymous tips can spark lawful police searches when ``the danger alleged ... might be so great as to justify a search even without a showing of reliability.'' For example, Ginsburg wrote, a report of a person carrying a bomb would not necessarily be judged by the same standard. Police also might get more leeway ``where the reasonable expectation of Fourth Amendment privacy is diminished, such as airports and schools,'' she said. The fact that police found the gun on J.L. held little sway with the court. ``That the allegation ... turned out to be correct does not suggest that the officers prior to the frisks had a reasonable basis for suspecting J.L. of engaging in unlawful conduct,'' Ginsburg said. ``The reasonableness of official suspicion must be measured by what the officers knew before they conducted their search.'' Allowing such searches ``would enable any person seeking to harass another to set in motion an intrusive, embarrassing police search of the targeted person simply by placing an anonymous call,'' the court said. On the Net: For Florida vs. J.L: http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct; click on ``this month's decisions.'' AP-NY-03-28-00 1551EST -- Kathleen He who would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. - Thomas Paine This signature was made by SigChanger. 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