Legal Question in Administrative Law in California

Re: Citation by Animal Control Officer

The officer could write a ticket, but it would not stand up in court unless the officer and informant appeared to testify.

A police officer can legally stop a motorist only if the facts and circumstances known to the officer support at least a reasonable suspicion that the driver has violated the Vehicle Code or some other law.

The basic law of California is that citizen informants are to be considered trustworthy unless there is reason to believe otherwise, and therefore a citizen's report to an officer that the citizen has observed, or has been the victim of, a crime provides sufficient reasonable suspicion to justify a detention and citation.

The California Supreme Court has set forth the standard governing citizen informants. �It may therefore be stated as a general proposition that private citizens who are witnesses to or victims of a criminal act, absent some circumstance that would cast doubt upon their information, should be considered reliable. This does not, of course, dispense with the requirement that the informant-whether citizen or otherwise-furnish underlying facts sufficiently detailed to cause a reasonable person to believe that a crime had been committed and the named suspect was the perpetrator .... In short, probable cause will not be provided by conclusionary information or anonymous informants, but neither a previous demonstration of reliability nor subsequent corroboration is ordinarily necessary when witnesses to or victims of criminal activities report their observations in detail to the authorities.� People v. Ramey (1976) 16 Cal.3d 263.

Any limitations on arrest would be grounded in the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which bans unreasonable searches and seizures. Therefore, an officer, be it a U.S. Marshal or the county animal control officer, cannot detain and cite a "suspect" without reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed. However, as the above quotations show, an officer is entitled to form reasonable suspicion based upon the report of a citizen informer if the report is credible in most respects. The prosecution must still prove the cited person's guilt in court if the person appears to defend himself or herself.