The fellow officer rule and the officer assistance statute in Florida: separate assessments of probable cause.

• Author: Lee, Robert W.

Constitutional principles proscribe the ability of law enforcement officers to make arrests. Warrantless arrests are particularly scrutinized to ensure that the rights of citizens are protected. To effectuate a lawful arrest of any type requires a determination at some point that probable cause exists to make the arrest. Frequently, however, a single officer is unable to provide firsthand evidence of the total circumstances giving rise to probable cause. The officer must instead rely on other officers to put the entire puzzle together. Moreover, an officer often must rely on ordinary citizens to assist in effectuating lawful arrests.

These scenarios are more readily apparent when one considers a few common specific examples. For instance, in Florida a police officer generally is not permitted to arrest a person for a misdemeanor committed outside of the officer's presence. Frequently, however, an officer may observe some of the elements of the offense, while a partner observes the remaining elements. Or, in other cases, an officer may observe the misdemeanor, but may be in the process of arresting another individual. As a result, the officer may then request another officer to come to the scene to make one of the arrests. If the general rule pertaining to misdemeanors applied, both arrests by the second officer would be unauthorized. However, in both cases in Florida, these arrests would in fact be lawful as explained in this article.

To facilitate the necessary work of police officers, various legal principles have developed, consistent with Fourth Amendment requirements, which assist in the determination of probable cause. In particular in Florida, two principles are frequently relied upon by courts when analyzing whether probable cause exists to make an arrest: the "fellow officer" rule and the "officer assistance" statute. However, attorneys presenting these arguments to the courts often confuse the two and fail to understand the parameters and proper use of each. This confusion likely arises out of the fact that under certain factual scenarios, the two rules will overlap in application. Nevertheless, Florida law recognizes each rule as being distinct, and, under many circumstances, totally unrelated to each other.

The Fellow Officer Rule

The "fellow officer" rule permits an officer to rely upon information supplied by fellow officers when making an arrest.[1] This doctrine is not statutory in origin; rather, it has its basis in the United States Supreme Court decision of Whiteley v. Warden, 401 U.S. 560 (1971). Here, the Supreme Court held that "police officers called upon to aid other officers in executing arrest warrants are entitled to assume that the officers requesting aid offered the magistrate the information requisite to support an independent judicial assessment of probable cause."[2] The Florida Supreme Court considered the fellow officer rule in Johnson v. State, 660 So. 2d 648 (Fla. 1995). The court more broadly recognized the rule as one by which "information shared by officers investigating a crime is imputed to any one of their number, even those from different agencies working together."[3] The court further recognized that the fellow officer doctrine was "sweeping" in its application, but subject to any limitations imposed by federal Fourth Amendment analysis.[4]

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