Commonwealth v. Morales, 106 Mass. App. Ct. 270 (Mass. App. Ct. 2025)

The Appeals Court of Massachusetts affirmed a defendant’s motion to suppress involving an anonymous tip saying they saw a person who had waved a gun. The court stated in relevant part:

“Here, the motion judge found that the anonymous witness’s basis of knowledge was adequately established because the witness saw the person with the firearm firsthand and gave a detailed description of the person to the dispatcher. However, because the police corroborated only innocent details that were observable by any bystander, and because the tip did not provide any predictive details of the person’s behavior or of any criminal activity that was about to occur, the motion judge concluded that the Commonwealth could not establish that the witness’s tip was sufficiently reliable, and therefore the tip could not supply the police with reasonable suspicion necessary to stop the defendant.

. . . .

Because Dunn and Shelley made no observations of a gun or suspicious handling thereof before stopping the defendant, the police were unable to corroborate the witness’s tip in its assertion of potential illegality — namely, the unlawful possession of a firearm or the use of a firearm in a threatening manner. Thus, the tip alone was inadequate to furnish the police with reasonable suspicion to stop the defendant. See Sertyl, 101 Mass. App. Ct. at 840.

. . . .

Because the reliability of the anonymous tip was not established and the tip did not describe criminal activity, we are constrained to conclude that the police did not have reasonable suspicion to justify stopping the defendant. The police, of course, could have investigated the tip by, for example, surveilling the defendant or approaching him without immediately seizing him, to see how he would have reacted. We conclude only that police could not command the defendant to “stop” on the basis of the tip alone. Thus, the judge’s order allowing the defendant’s motion to suppress is affirmed.”