IL: Investigative alert based on an underlying finding of PC satisfies 4A

A Chicago PD investigative alert based on an underlying finding of probable cause satisfies the Fourth Amendment and the state constitution. Prior case law is overruled. People v. Clark, 2024 IL 127838, 2024 Ill. LEXIS 836 (Dec. 19, 2024):

[*P62] When Officers Kinney and O’Neill were assigned the investigative alert on July 22, 2013, the detectives investigating the shooting had probable cause to arrest defendant, as provided by Hardaway’s statements that, shortly after he heard gunshots, defendant, Barker, and Lynom entered his car and said they had committed the shooting and believed Lynom had killed someone. See People v. Gocmen, 2018 IL 122388, ¶ 19 (“probable cause exists when the facts known to the officer at the time are sufficient to lead a reasonably cautious person to believe that the arrestee has committed a crime,” which is “not proof beyond a reasonable doubt or even that it be more likely than not” that the person committed a crime); see also Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91 (1964) (constitutionality of arrest depends upon whether, at the moment arrest was made, officers had probable cause to make it); Grant, 2013 IL 112734, ¶ 11 (probable cause to arrest is based on what police knew “at the time of the arrest”). As noted by the appellate court, defendant did not dispute on appeal that the officers had probable cause to arrest. The fact that the information was shared with Officers Kinney and O’Neill by way of an investigative alert does not invalidate the arrest. As the Seventh Circuit has explained:

“[The] police often act on each other’s instructions. An all points bulletin or wanted flyer induces an officer to arrest someone about whom he knows nothing beyond the instruction to make an arrest. Whether the arrest is lawful depends on the information available to the police collectively; if the person issuing the radio bulletin or authorizing the wanted poster had probable cause to do so, the facts need not be present to the mind of the person making the arrest.” Gordon v. Degelmann, 29 F.3d 295, 300 (7th Cir. 1994).

[P63] In sum, Bass and Smith erred in holding that arrests pursuant to investigative alerts automatically violate the Illinois Constitution. Those cases failed to identify any valid basis for departing from lockstep construction. This court has already held that the difference between “affidavit” in our search and seizure clause and “Oath or affirmation” in the fourth amendment was not a reason to depart from lockstep. See Caballes, 221 Ill. 2d at 291-92. Moreover, Bass and Smith did not identify any “state tradition and values as reflected by long-standing state case precedent” (id. at 314) that would justify a departure. Indeed, state case precedent demonstrates that this court has long recognized the validity of warrantless arrests based on probable cause. Thus, just as defendant’s arrest did not violate the fourth amendment, it also did not violate the search and seizure clause of the Illinois Constitution. And once it is accepted that warrantless arrests for felonies do not violate the Illinois Constitution, there is no basis to hold that arrests pursuant to investigative alerts violate the Illinois Constitution. As Justice Mason noted, when the police already have the right to make a warrantless arrest for a felony, “there is no apparent reason why *** the use of an investigative alert gives them any untoward advantage.” Bass, 2019 IL App (1st) 160640, ¶ 120 (Mason, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Smith is hereby overruled.