I have been encountering a situation where a reporting party calls in a suspicious person they see in a cul de sac and then the officer identifies the car and pulls them over immediately. (before seeing any traffic violation).

How often are people seeing this same kind of thing?

What did you tell your officers? Judge?

I talked to John Stride about it and the case law seems clear that there is no reasonable suspicion here. Should that really be the law when it is so obvious to anyone in the know that they are smoking pot.

What happens when they are actually concealing a body or something, that evidence doesn't come in?

Someone help me out with the name of the case...it was a case in the last year or so regarding a DWI stop at a drive through where the driver was just acting oddly smiling at a couple and then driving around and smiling again (something like that). I think it was a Denton County case that went up on appeal. It might be helpful to you under these circumstances for establishing reasonable suspicion.

Baldwin v. State 606 S.W.2d 872
Adams v. Williams 407 U.S. 143
State v. Cantu 253 S.W. 3d 236
Livingston v. State 739 S.W. 2d 311

The smiling case was Derichswiler, not sure of the spelling. It established that there doesn't have to be reasonable suspicion of a particular crime, but you still need RS of something.

Thanks - my memory was a bit fuzzy.

If you have previous cases that you may or may not have had dismissed, can the officer not use his knowledge of those cases to help establish RS? We have a particular cul-de-sac in town that every single time folks have been found down there they were doing something illegal, the nice thing about this cul-de-sac is that it is in a neighborhood in which parking is not allowed on the streets (by ordinance) because the streets are narrow.

Another reason to include dispatch/call-takers in training sessions. In the Derichsweiler case, the State ultimately prevailed based upon the information the caller provided to dispatch; despite the fact that dispatch didn't forward all of their known information to the responding officer.

If your caller can provide additional information (seen vehicles there before, vehicle owners don't live on the cul de sac, smelled burning marijuana, etc..) THAT can be a big help.

As Barry mentioned above, if your officer knows the vehicles normally seen in that area, has prior contact with people/vehicles that were smoking weed or otherwise engage in criminal activity, etc. that may help the officer get RS.

OR - Teach your officers: Follow the vehicle for 1/2 mile; they're bound to commit a traffic violation. The resulting pre-text stop is then fine.