dissenting:
Pared to its essential facts, this case involves two police officers who, acting solely on an anonymous tip, blocked the appellants’ car, approached the appellants with guns drawn, and ordered them out of their automobile at gunpoint. The police officers acted without probable cause; they acted without having observed any suspicious circumstances; and they acted without having any reliable information about the appellants, who were unknown to them. The police officers never had specific reasons to fear for their safety: they observed nothing that would indicate potential violence; the tipster had said nothing about weapons; the appellants were not suspected of committing any violent crime; the appellants were in plain view of the officers at all times; and the appellants never attempted to flee. Despite this, the officers asked no questions of the appellants before ordering them to get out of their car at gunpoint.
This case arose in the inner-city of Washington, D. C. One wonders whether police officers, acting on an anonymous tip, would accost well-to-do residents in one of the affluent suburbs near Washington (where drug peddling is known to be prevalent), in the same manner that they accosted the appellants here. It is doubtful.1
*47There are admittedly a host of conflicting judicial precedents among the various courts of appeals dealing with “search and seizure,” “arrest,” and “stop and frisk.” Nevertheless, this is not a “close case,” as the majority suggests, if one focuses on the applicable constitutional guárantee and carefully considers the Supreme Court decisions construing the Fourth Amendment. As the Supreme Court noted in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 15, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1876, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), the
courts still retain their traditional responsibility to guard against police conduct which is overbearing or harassing, or which trenches upon personal security without the objective evidentiary justification which the Constitution requires. When such conduct is identified, it must be condemned by the judiciary and its fruits must be excluded from evidence in criminal trials.
In my view, this case presents a situation of police conduct that “must be condemned” as violative of fundamental civil liberties guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.
While it is true, as the majority opinion notes, that we do not live in an “antiseptic world,” we do live in a nation governed by certain inviolate constitutional principles. The application of these principles may not always admit of easy solutions; nevertheless, this should not justify a diminution of individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
The core claim in this case is that, based only on an anonymous tip, basic civil liberties have been sacrificed at the hands of coercive police behavior. At stake is the interest of the individual to be free from “unreasonable” governmental seizures. This is not a case involving any significant interest of the Government in seeing that the police carry out their official duties effectively and safely. The police officers had an opportunity to place the appellants under surveillance. There was no threat of imminent danger, and there was no threat that appellants might flee; the seizure was unreasonable because there was insufficient justification for it.
It might be argued that this is a case where the convenience of governmental operations conflicts with basic civil liberties. However, since it does not seem possible to accommodate each side, I am firmly convinced that we must decide the case in favor of individual liberty. Accordingly, I dissent.
I. THE FACTS
Although the majority opinion sets out the pertinent facts in this case, a brief recitation of them is necessary to highlight my principal Fourth Amendment concerns, and to clarify some potentially misleading statements made in the majority opinion.
In the early evening of September 11, 1979, Detective Hill received an anonymous telephone tip describing with some detail an individual called “Nicky.” The tipster described a Ford LTD that Nicky had parked, and a different car (an Oldsmobile) that he had driven away. The tipster told the detective that “when they came back [in the Oldsmobile], they would have drugs on [sic] their possession.” Tr. 6.2
The detective did not know the tipster, and the tipster “was not an informant who had previously given ... information which had proven reliable.” Tr. 32. Furthermore, the source did not reveal to the detective how he had acquired his information, and the detective did not ask. Id. At no time did the source, who had given a detailed description of Nicky and the two cars, suggest that Nicky, or any other occupants of the car, would be armed.
Detective Hill and his partner, Detective Sanchez-Serrano, drove to the place where Nicky was to return with the drugs. At approximately 7:45 p. m. the Oldsmobile drove up. Detective Hill recognized neither the Oldsmobile nor its occupants from his previous investigative work. Tr. 34-35. The detectives observed no suspicious circumstances, and could point to no factors that would lead them to fear for their safety in this case.
*48After the Oldsmobile parked, the detectives drove alongside. Sanchez-Serrano got out and approached the passenger side of the Oldsmobile. Hill drove a few feet further and got out, approaching the driver’s side.
The detectives did not look inside the car or question its occupants. Instead, Hill issued a series of commands, ordering the occupants, White and Anderson, to keep their hands in plain sight and to get out of the car immediately. Up to this point the officers noticed no suspicious circumstances. Although Hill testified that he spoke in a moderate tone, Tr. 41, his partner testified that Hill “yelled” the orders. Tr. 53.
Hill had his service revolver drawn and trained on the driver, White, when he ordered him to “get out of the vehicle.”3 When White finally got out of the car, a “tinfoil” fell from the car to the ground. Tr. 13.4 Sanchez-Serrano also approached the car with his revolver drawn. When the passenger, Anderson, got out of the car, the detective took him to the front of the car and “placed [him] on the hood of the vehicle.” Tr. 54. Up to this point, Sanchez-Serrano had not seen any evidence of illegal activity.
After White was out of the car, Hill grabbed White by the back of his pants and returned his gun to his holster. He picked up the tinfoil and, believing that it contained narcotics, formally placed White under arrest, handcuffing him. Tr. 13. While Sanchez-Serrano watched the two appellants, Hill searched the car and found additional tinfoils inside. After handcuffing White, Hill searched him, finding more tin-foils but no weapons. Anderson also was unarmed.
During the suppression hearing, Hill testified that he was concerned that the. appellants might be armed. Tr. 17. This concern was based not on facts specifically related to this case, but on his twelve years experience as an officer, during which he had made over a thousand arrests in which “a substantial number of those situations, the people [he] arrested were armed, or [he] had reason to be concerned about [his] safety.” Id5
II. SUPREME COURT DECISIONS DEFINING THE “STOP AND FRISK” DOCTRINE
As the majority opinion recognizes, appellants White and Anderson were “seized” by the police well before they were formally placed under arrest at the hood of the car. Assuming that probable cause for arrest existed after Detective Hill examined the tinfoil that fell from the car, the issue for *49this court is whether any seizure that took place before that moment offended the Constitution. The questions before the court are whether the initial detention amounted to an arrest without probable cause, and if not, whether it nonetheless constituted an “unreasonable seizure.”
The starting point for any discussion of an unconstitutional detention must be the Fourth Amendment, which provides in part that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, ... against unreasonable .. . seizures, shall not be violated.”6 Because the amendment does not use the word “arrest,” but refers to “seizures,” any discussion of arrest and lesser seizures derives entirely from the case law. Consequently, a brief review of the Supreme Court’s holdings on “seizures” is useful to set out a doctrinal framework.
The seminal Supreme Court case discussing seizures, Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 5. Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968),7 dealt with “the role of the Fourth Amendment in the confrontation on the street between the citizen and the policeman investigating suspicious circumstances.” Id. at 4, 88 S.Ct. at 1871. In Terry a detective observed three men apparently “easing” a store for a robbery. The detective approached the men, identified himself, asked for their names and, fearing that the would-be robbers may have had guns, patted their outer clothing for weapons. The detective discovered that two of the three men were carrying guns.
The Supreme Court affirmed the petitioner’s conviction for carrying a concealed weapon. The Court reasoned that since the Fourth Amendment does not forbid all searches and seizures, but only unreasonable ones, the issue is “whether in all the circumstances of this on-the-street encounter, [the petitioner’s] right to personal security was violated by an unreasonable search and seizure.” Id. at 9, 88 S.Ct. at 1873.
The reasoning in Terry made clear that a “stop and frisk” is a “seizure” and is thus governed by the Fourth Amendment. “It must be recognized that whenever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has ‘seized’ that person.” Id. at 16, 88 S.Ct. at 1877. However, the Court made clear that a seizure occurs only when some police coercion is used: “Obviously, not all personal intercourse between policemen and citizens involves ‘seizures’ of persons. Only when the officer, by means of physical force or show of authority, has in some way restrained the liberty of a citizen may we conclude that a ‘seizure’ has occurred.” Id. at 19 n.16, 88 S.Ct. at 1879 n.16.8
The Court held that the weapons search, which of necessity involved a seizure of the petitioner, was legitimate so long as the “officer is justified in believing that the individual whose suspicious behavior he is investigating at close range is armed and presently dangerous to the officer or to others.” Id. at 24, 88 S.Ct. at 1881. The officer’s belief would be justified only if “a reasonably prudent man in the circumstances would be warranted in the belief that his safety or that of others was in danger.... And in determining whether the officer acted reasonably in such circumstances, due weight must be given, not to his inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or ‘hunch,’ but to the specific reasonable inferences which he is entitled to draw from the facts *50in light of his experience.” Id. at 27, 88 S.Ct. at 1883 (footnote and citations omitted). At another point, the Court in Terry stated that the “officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion.” Id. at 21, 88 S.Ct. at 1879 (footnote omitted).
As a later case noted, Terry departed from traditional Fourth Amendment analysis in two respects. First, Terry “defined a special category of Fourth Amendment ‘seizures’ so substantially less intrusive than arrests that the general rule requiring probable cause to make Fourth Amendment ‘seizures’ reasonable could be replaced by a balancing test.” Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 208, 210, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 2255, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979). Second, the Court approved “this narrowly defined less intrusive seizure on grounds less rigorous than probable cause, but only for the purpose of a pat-down for weapons.” Id.
In a companion case to Terry, Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968), the Court applied the new “stop and frisk” rule. In Sibron an officer watched the appellant as he spoke with several narcotics addicts in a restaurant.9 The officer approached Sibron and asked him to step outside, telling Sibron “you know what I’m after.” Sibron mumbled something in reply and reached into his pocket. The officer also reached into Sibron’s pocket, discovering several packets of heroin.
The Court reversed Sibron’s conviction for unlawful possession of heroin on the basis of the newly announced Terry rule: “If Patrolman Martin lacked probable cause for an arrest, however, his seizure and search of Sibron might still have been justified at the outset if he had reasonable grounds to believe that Sibron was armed and dangerous.” Id. at 63, 88 S.Ct. at 1903. Holding that the officer never had reasonable grounds to believe Sibron to be armed,10 the Court found it unnecessary to decide at what point a seizure had taken place — i. e., whether at the request to go outside or during the search of the appellant’s pocket.
The police officer is not entitled to seize and search every person whom he sees on the street or of whom he makes inquiries. Before he places a hand on the person of a citizen in search of anything, he must have constitutionally adequate, reasonable grounds for doing so.
Id. at 64, 88 S.Ct. at 1903.
The Supreme Court elaborated on the Terry stop and frisk rule in Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972). In that case, a person approached a police officer he knew and told the officer that the petitioner, who was seated in a nearby car, was carrying drugs and had a gun in his waistband. The officer approached the petitioner’s car and asked him to open the door. When the petitioner rolled down the window, the officer reached inside the car and removed a gun from petitioner’s waistband. The officer then arrested the petitioner for unlawful possession of a gun.
In discussing the meaning of Terry, the Court stated that a “brief stop of a suspicious individual, in order to determine his identity or to maintain the status quo momentarily while obtaining more information, may be most reasonable in light of the facts known to the officer at the time.” Id. at 146, 92 S.Ct. at 1923. Furthermore, “the policeman making a reasonable investigatory stop should not be denied the opportunity to protect himself from attack by a hostile suspect.” Id. Thus, the Court identified two legitimate purposes behind a forcible stop, short of an arrest: to “maintain the status quo” and to protect the officer during the brief investigation. Nothing in *51Adams permits even a brief search except a need, based on articulable facts, to protect the officer.
The Court in Adams affirmed the petitioner’s conviction, finding that the officer had acted reasonably. First, the “informant was known to him personally and had provided him with information in the past. This is a stronger case than obtains in the case of an anonymous telephone tip.” Id. (emphasis added).11 Second, the “informant here came forward personally to give information that was immediately verifiable at the scene.” Id.12 The Court explicitly distinguished tips “completely lacking in indicia of reliability” from reliable ones — “for example, when the victim of a street crime seeks immediate police aid and gives a description of his assailant, or when a credible informant warns of a specific impending crime.” Id. at 147, 92 S.Ct. at 1923.13 When the petitioner rolled down his window instead of stepping out of his car, the threat of the gun was even greater, and the policeman’s “limited intrusion designed to insure his safety ... was reasonable.” Id. at 148, 92 S.Ct. at 1924.14
United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975), involved a “pure” stop — that is, a seizure not involving a protective search like the one in Terry. In that case, federal Border Patrol officers stopped a car sixty-five miles from the Mexican border because the occupants of the car looked like Mexican nationals. The officers asked the occupants to indentify themselves and to justify their presence in this country. After discovering that some of the occupants were Mexican nationals not legally in this country, the officers arrested the occupants of the car.
The Supreme Court struck down the driver’s conviction for violations of the Immigration and Nationality Act, holding that the officers did not have sufficient grounds to stop the car in the first place. The Court reaffirmed the principles set forth in Terry, stating that whenever “ ‘a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has “seized” that person’ ... and the Fourth Amendment requires that the seizure be ‘reasonable.’ ” Id. at 878, 95 S.Ct. at 2578, quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 16, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1877, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968).15 The test of reasonableness depended on a balancing of the public interest and “the interference with individual liberty that results when an officer stops an automobile and questions its occupants.” Id. at 879, 95 S.Ct. at 2579. Although the Court found this intrusion to be “modest,” such a stop was permissible “only *52if [the officers] are aware of specific articulable facts, together with rational inferences from those facts, that reasonably warrant suspicion that the vehicles contain aliens who may be illegally in the country.” Id. at 884, 95 S.Ct. at 2581 (footnote omitted).16 In short, such a stop — even absent the search for a weapon — can be made only if the Terry standards are met. As the Court noted in Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 52, 99 S.Ct. 2637, 2641, 61 L.Ed.2d 357 (1979), absent a reasonably warranted suspicion of criminal activity, “the balance between the public interest and [the individual’s] right to personal security and privacy tilts in favor of freedom from police interference.”
Two conclusions can be drawn from Brignoni-Ponce. First, the police can stop a vehicle if they have reasonable suspicion to believe criminal activity is afoot, even though the person stopped presents no danger to the officer or anyone else. Second, the scope of legitimate police activity during a stop is narrowly limited to brief questioning.17 Consequently, Brignoni-Ponce implicitly reenforces the Terry holding that frisks — which are an additional intrusion beyond the stop — are not permitted unless the officer reasonably fears for his safety.18
A very recent Supreme Court case, United States v. Cortez, - U.S. -, 101 S.Ct. 690, 66 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981), has reaffirmed the principles set forth in BrignoniPonce. In Cortez, Border Patrol officers found several sets of human footprints in the desert near the Mexican border. The footprints, plus other evidence, indicated to the officers that several groups of people had travelled north from the Mexican border to a U.S. Highway on weekend nights during clear weather. In each set of prints was a distinctive shoeprint of a chevron design. From this consistent marking, the officers concluded that an individual wearing shoes making those markings had been illegally leading Mexican nationals across the international border.
Based on their own direct observations of likely criminal activity, the officers set up surveillance of the area on the next clear weekend night. Having calculated the approximate transit time of a vehicle from their vantage point to the suspected pickup point (where the footprints ended), the officers observed vehicles traveling toward the pickup point and returning at a later time. Since the footprints had indicated that groups of eight to twenty people were illegally crossing the border, the officers focused their attention on vans, campers and the like.
After waiting for several hours, the officers observed one vehicle that aroused their suspicion because of its transit time, travel *53route and size. They stopped the vehicle, and after a consent search of the truck, discovered Mexican nationals illegally in this country. The sole issue before the Supreme Court was whether the stop was legal under Terry standards.
Citing Brignoni-Ponce, the Court held that “[b]ased upon [the totality of the circumstances] the detaining officers must have a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity.” Id. at-, 101 S.Ct. at 694. While the police may rely on their training and experience in reaching reasonable inferences from the facts before them, the facts “must raise a suspicion that the particular individual being stopped is engaged in wrongdoing.” Id. As Justice Stewart stated in a concurring opinion, “the Border Patrol Officers had discovered an abundance of ‘specific and articulable facts’ which, ‘together with rational inferences from them’ entirely warranted a ‘suspicion that the vehiclef] contained] aliens who [might] be illegally in the country.” Id. at 4103 (Steward, J., concurring) (quoting United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 884, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 2581, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975)).
A significant development in the Fourth Amendment law covering citizen-police confrontations occurred in Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 98 S.Ct. 330, 54 L.Ed.2d 331 (1977). In Mimms, an officer stopped Mimms’ car after he noticed it was being operated with an expired license plate. After approaching the car, the officer demanded that Mimms get out of the vehicle. Once Mimms was out of the automobile, the officer saw a bulge at Mimms’ waist, frisked him, and discovered a loaded revolver. Mimms was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon and an unlicensed firearm.
The Supreme Court affirmed the convictions, basing its per curiam opinion on the Terry and Brignoni-Ponce standards of reasonableness. Since there was no issue that the initial stop was reasonable — no one disputed that the car was being operated unlawfully — the Court’s analysis focused on “whether the order to get out of the car, issued after the driver was lawfully detained, was reasonable and thus permissible under the Fourth Amendment.” Id. at 109, 98 S.Ct. at 332. Even though there was nothing suspicious about the driver’s behavior, the Court considered the safety of the officer weighty enough to justify the incremental intrusion in ordering the driver out of the car. The Court expressly noted that
we do not hold today that “whenever an officer has an occasion to speak with the driver of a vehicle, he may also order the driver out of the car.” We hold only that once a motor vehicle has been lawfully detained for a traffic violation, the police officers may order the driver to get out of the* vehicle without violating the Fourth Amendment’s proscription of unreasonable searches and seizures.
Id. at 111 n.6, 98 S.Ct. at 333 n.6.19
III. THE MEANING OF “ARREST” UNDER THE FOURTH AMENDMENT
The foregoing review of Supreme Court cases demonstrates that the Court’s emphasis has been on fleshing out the stop and frisk doctrine first articulated in Terry. In fact, in only one case since Terry has the Court made even a modest attempt to delineate the differences between an arrest and a less intrusine stop. The distinction between an arrest and a stop is crucial in many cases, however, for an arrest can be made only on probable cause, while a stop is proper under the more relaxed “reasonable suspicion” standards of Terry.
Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979), is the one case in which the Court took the occasion to explain the legal distinctions between an arrest and a Terry stop. In Dunaway, the police acted on a tip to “pick up” the petitioner and bring him to police headquarters *54for questioning about a robbery and homicide. After some interrogation the petitioner made inculpatory statements and sketches.
The state conceded that the police had no probable cause to arrest the petitioner when they brought him to the station. Instead, the state characterized the police action as less than an arrest, “and therefore permissible under the Fourth Amendment because the police had a ‘reasonable suspicion’ that petitioner possessed ‘intimate knowledge about a serious and unsolved crime.’ ” Id. at 207, 99 S.Ct. at 2253. The Supreme Court rejected this argument and reversed the petitioner’s conviction, reasoning that the police had arrested the petitioner without probable cause to do so.
The Court in Dunaway reaffirmed the general rule that an. “arrest” may be made only on probable cause. Terry standards, by contrast, were applicable to intrusions that are “so much less severe than that involved in traditional ‘arrests.’ ” Id. at 209, 99 S.Ct. at 2254. “The narrow intrusions involved in [Terry and its progeny] were judged by a balancing test rather than by the general principle that Fourth Amendment seizures must be supported by the ‘long-prevailing standards’ of probable cause, ... only because these intrusions fell far short of the kind of intrusion associated with an arrest.” Id. at 212, 99 S.Ct. at 2256 (citation omitted). In other words, any detention greater than requests for identification or an explanation of suspicious circumstances “must be based on consent or probable cause.” United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 882, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 2580, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975).
In Dunaway, the Court found the seizure to be “in important respects indistinguishable from a traditional arrest.” 442 U.S. at 212, 99 S.Ct. at 2556. First, the petitioner “was not questioned briefly where he was found.” Id. Second, he was never informed that he was free to go and, in fact, would have been restrained had he tried to leave. Third, even though the police did not tell the petitioner that he was under arrest, such an omission “obviously [does] not make petitioner’s seizure even roughly analogous to the narrowly defined intrusions involved in Terry and its progeny.” Id. at 212-13, 99 S.Ct. at 2256-57. The Court feared that to measure the seizure in Dunaway under the Terry standards “would threaten to swallow the general rule that Fourth Amendment seizures are ‘reasonable’ only if based on probable cause.” Id. at 213, 99 S.Ct. at 2256.
IV. ANALYSIS OF THIS CASE UNDER EXISTING CASE LAW
1. The “Arrest” Without Probable Cause
An examination of the facts before us indicates that the police action fell somewhere between the arrest in Dunaway and the classic Terry stop approved in cases like Terry and Adams. After spotting the Oldsmobile, and without noticing any suspicious circumstances, the officers partially blocked the appellants’ car, making it difficult for them to leave. Getting out of their car, the officers approached each side of the Oldsmobile with guns drawn, ordering the appellants to keep their hands in sight and to get out of the car. Before that moment the officers had asked the appellants no questions about their identity or their activity. The officers had not inspected the car, and they had seen no evidence of unlawful activity. After White left the car, Detective Hill holstered his gun, grabbed White from behind, and took him to the front of the car. Detective Sanchez-Serrano, meanwhile, had “placed [Anderson] on the hood of the vehicle.”
Viewed in its totality, I submit that this scenario is closer to an arrest than a less intrusive stop. This conclusion derives from the limited nature of Terry stops, which are narrow exceptions to the usual Fourth Amendment standards. See Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 146, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 1923, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972) (brief stop may be reasonable to determine individual’s identity or to “maintain the status quo momentarily”); Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 212, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 2256, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979) (Terry stops fall “far short of the kind of intrusion associated with an ar*55rest”); Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 93, 100 S.Ct. 338, 343, 62 L.Ed.2d 238 (1979) (Terry “created an exception to the requirement of probable cause, an exception whose ‘narrow scope’ this Court ‘has been careful to maintain’ ”). In order to avoid the stricter probable cause standards, such seizures must be considerably less intrusive than a traditional arrest.
In the present case, by contrast, it is difficult to imagine what the police would have done differently in arresting the appellants. ' The appellants were taken from their car at gunpoint,20 and forcibly led to the front of the car. They were asked no questions. Rather than maintaining the status quo, the officers escalated the confrontation until enough evidence had been produced to justify an arrest.
While the circuits are by no means unanimous, several appellate courts have held that under circumstances similar to those posed here, the use of drawn guns may escalate a seizure to an arrest, thus requiring probable cause in United States v. Lampkin, 464 F.2d 1093, 1095 (3d Cir. 1972), the court said that
it seems evident that, under the circumstances before us, the arrest was effectuated at the instant the agents, with guns drawn, halted appellant and informed him of who they were. At that instant he was under the control of the officers who had demonstrated an intention to take him into custody under their authority as government agents. There was absolute restraint of appellant which was abundantly clear to him.
Other courts have rendered similar holdings. See United States v. Troutman, 458 F.2d 217 (10th Cir. 1972) (the arrest was effective when the officers pulled over the burglary suspects and approached the car with drawn weapons); United States v. Larkin, 510 F.2d 13, 14 n.1 (9th Cir. 1974) (“a confrontation with a vehicular blockade and drawn weapons cannot be equated with an investigative detention”); United States v. Strickler, 490 F.2d 378, 380 (9th Cir. 1974) (“we simply cannot equate an armed approach to a surrounded vehicle whose occupants have been commanded to raise their hands with the ‘brief stop of a suspicious individual in order to determine his identity or to maintain the status quo momentarily while obtaining more information’ which was authorized in Williams”).
The majority fails in its attempt to justify the excessive police force used in this case by arguing that police must be prepared for any eventuality. Although the detectives testified that they feared the appellants might be armed, they could point to no facts to support their hunch in this case.21 Even the majority concedes that statistics show that the vast majority of drug suspects arrested are not armed at the time of arrest. Ante at 35 n.29. In this case, the anonymous tipster, who gave detailed information about the appellants, made no mention of guns or weapons. In *56addition, there was nothing to indicate that the appellants had a record of violent crimes. Moreover, the police behavior in this case belies their purported concern about their safety. The record reveals that after White got out of the car, but before Hill had frisked him for weapons, Hill holstered his gun in order to pick up the tinfoil.22 Rather than a means to protect himself or maintain the status quo, the drawn weapon was a tool to place the appellants under absolute restraint.
In many ways the present case parallels United States v. Ramos-Zaragosa, 516 F.2d 141 (9th Cir. 1975), in which the police had received a detailed tip that the defendants were transporting drugs. The police stopped the defendants at gunpoint and ordered them out of their vehicle. The court held that the defendants had been arrested:
The arrest was completed when the appellant and his passenger complied with the order to get out of the pickup. The encounter of the agents and the appellant and his passenger was an arrest, as opposed to an investigatory stop, because the agents at gun point, under circumstances not suggesting fears for their personal safety, ordered the appellant and his passenger to stop and put up their hands.
Id. at 144.
Under certain circumstances, force may be necessary to effect a stop. As stated in United States v. Thompson, 558 F.2d 522, 524 (9th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 914, 98 S.Ct. 1466, 55 L.Ed.2d 504 (1978):
A police officer attempting to make an investigatory detention may properly display some force when it becomes apparent that an individual will not otherwise comply with his request to stop.
In Thompson the police drew their guns only after the van “began to move and then suddenly lurched forward.” Id. In the present case, there was no factual basis to believe the appellants were armed, and there was no evidence that they sought to escape detention.
By contrast, in many of the cases cited by the majority, the suspects were reportedly armed or sought to evade detention thus making necessary some show of force. See United States v. Diggs, 522 F.2d 1310, 1314 (D.C.Cir.1975), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 852, 97 S.Ct. 144, 50 L.Ed.2d 127 (1976) (agents stopped “the three appellants, at least two of whom had been armed during the bank robbery”); United States v. Richards, 500 F.2d 1025 (9th Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 420 U.S. 924, 95 S.Ct. 1118, 43 L.Ed.2d 393 (1975) (the appellants had loaded a rifle on their plane; the agents drew their weapons only when the appellant would not shut off the engine of the plane as it was about to take off); United States v. Bull, 565 F.2d 869 (4th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 946, 98 S.Ct. 1531, 55 L.Ed.2d 545 (1978) (one of the parties wore a jacket on a warm summer night, alerting the officer to the possibility of a concealed weapon); United States v. Maslanka, 501 F.2d 208, 213 n.6 (5th Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 912, 95 S.Ct. 1567, 43 L.Ed.2d 777 (1975) (officer drew gun only after stopping appellants following a five-mile, high-speed chase; also, the court found that probable cause existed before the stop).
The point is that under the circumstances in this case — the drawn guns, the order to exit with hands in plain sight, a suspected crime not necessarily involving violence, and the complete absence of any evidence of weapons — the police activity far exceeded any reasonable definition of an investigative stop. Since current Fourth Amendment doctrine recognizes only two types of seizures — “stops” and “arrests” — I conclude that the police arrested the appellants before they saw the drugs.
In Dunaway the petitioner was taken involuntarily to a police station, but this surely is not a condition essential to a finding of an “arrest.” Nor is it necessary for a police *57officer to expressly declare an intention to “arrest” in order for full Fourth Amendment protections to apply. Indeed, in Dun-away, the Court cited Brignoni-Ponce for the proposition that:
The officer may question the driver and passengers about their citizenship and immigration status, and he may ask them to explain suspicious circumstances, but any further detention or search must be based on consent or probable cause.
442 U.S. at 212, 99 S.Ct. at 2256 (emphasis in original). At another point in the opinion, the Dunaway Court noted that
detention for custodial interrogation — regardless of its label — intrudes so severely on interests protected by the Fourth Amendment as necessarily to trigger the traditional safeguards against illegal arrest.
442 U.S. at 216, 99 S.Ct. at 2258.
In the present case, the conduct of the police looks more like the “detention for custodial interrogation” forbidden by Dunaway, than the significantly less obtrusive stop permitted by Terry. Because, as the Government concedes, there was no probable cause for arrest, the arrests were therefore illegal, and the appellants’ motion to suppress evidence should have been granted.
2. The “Unreasonable” Stop
Even if the initial seizure in this case did not amount to an arrest, this court must nonetheless decide whether the seizure meets the standards set forth in Terry and subsequent cases. For the reasons set out below, I conclude that the police did not have sufficient legal justification for stopping the appellants and that, consequently, the police conduct violated the Fourth Amendment. Furthermore, even if some sort of stop was justified under the circumstances, the scope of the seizure in this case plainly exceeded permissible bounds.
The starting point for our analysis is Terry, which requires a reviewing court to balance the public interest in the investigative seizure against the resulting interference with individual liberty. A seizure falling short of an arrest is permissible under the Fourth Amendment “only if [the officers] are aware of specific articulable facts, together with rational inferences from those facts, that reasonably warrant suspicion” that the appellants are engaged in illegal activity. United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. at 884, 95 S.Ct. at 2581.
Because the police observed no suspicious activity, the only possible basis for the seizure in the present case is the anonymous tip. However, because of the informant’s anonymity, the informant was unknown to the police and, so far as the officers knew, the tipster had not previously given them reliable information. Moreover, the informant did not tell the police how he or she acquired the information about the appellants. The only indication that the tip was reliable was the corroboration of entirely innocent details of the appellants’ activity.23
The present case contrasts sharply with the facts and the language of Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972), in which the Supreme Court held that the police acted justifiably on an informant’s tip in stopping and frisking a man seated in a car. In the opinion, the Court pointed to three factors to support its holding. First, the “informant was known to [the officer] personally and had provided him with information in the past.” Id. at 146, 92 S.Ct. at 1923. In the present case, the anonymous tipster was, of course, unknown to the police and had not provided them with information in the past. As the Court emphasized, Adams presented a “stronger case than obtains in the case of an anonymous telephone tip.” Id. Thus, the Court has expressly distinguished the present case from Adams.
*58Second, the Court emphasized that the reliability of the tip in Adams was enhanced because the tipster personally approached the officer to report a possible crime; the tipster could have been arrested if he had given the officer a false report. In the present case, the informant — because he was anonymous — could not have been arrested or questioned closely about his information. Third, the Court considered the police action to be reasonable in part because the officer was acting alone, at night, in a high crime area, and with a suspect who was reportedly armed.24 Almost the opposite situation existed in the present case. There was not one officer present, but two; it was not night, but dusk, and because the dome light of the car was on, the area was well lighted; there was no evidence offered at the suppression hearing to indicate that the police were in a high crime area; and there was no evidence, even from the informant, that these appellants were armed. Thus, while the tip in Adams provided reasonable suspicion, meeting the Terry standards, the anonymous tip in this case simply is not reliable enough to permit the wholesale invasions of personal liberty that occurred.
Moreover, the present case is quite unlike United States v. Cortez, - U.S. -, 101 S.Ct. 690, 66 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981). In Cortez, the Court upheld a stop made only after the police directly observed evidence of criminal activity and had circumstantial evidence linking the petitioners to that activity. The majority opinion here refers to Cortez, see ante at 45-46 n.53, but it omits entirely any reference to the second of the two tests enunciated by the Supreme Court: i. e., that police observations and analyses of available data “must raise a suspicion that the particular individual being stopped is engaged in wrongdoing.... ‘[Tjhis demand for specificity in the information upon which police action is predicated is the central teaching of this Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.’ ” Id. at-, 101 S.Ct. at 695, quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21 n.18, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1879 n.18, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) (emphasis in Cortez). “Based upon [the totality of the circumstances] the detaining officers must have a particularized objective basis for suspecting the particular stopped of criminal activity.” Id. The majority opinion’s oblique reference to Cortez does not illuminate the central dispute in this case. Cortez involved neither an anonymous tip nor the use of excessive force — the central issues in the present case. Instead, Cortez concerned the reasonableness of police conduct in response to their own observations of criminal activity. Moreover, even though Cortez is factually distinct from the present case, the broad legal holdings in Cortez are entirely consistent with our conclusion about the legality of the stop of White and Anderson.
In Cortez the police were able to point to specific factual observations indicating both that criminal activity had taken place and that the petitioners were implicated. In the present case, by contrast, the police observed no suspicious activity and relied solely on an anonymous tip. It is precisely because the officers had no particularized basis for suspecting White and Anderson of criminal activity that I differ with the majority. Quite unlike the Border officers in Cortez, the police in this case had observed nothing to believe that criminal activity was afoot, let alone that the appellants were involved. Instead, they acted solely on an anonymous tip — which was vague as to critical details concerning the crime itself. There was simply no particularized, objective basis to suspect the appellants were violating the law.
Several circuit courts that have had to decide whether a tip can meet the Terry standards for a stop have attached great weight to the difference in reliability presented by an anonymous tip versus one given face-to-face to police. In United States v. Sierra-Hernandez, 581 F.2d 760 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 936, 99 S.Ct. 333, 58 L.Ed.2d 333 (1978), an unknown, *59untested tipster told police of a truck carrying drugs at a specific place. The police stopped the truck and after a consent search found the drugs. The court upheld the appellant’s conviction, finding the tip to be reliable enough to justify a stop: the place identified by the tipster was in the past a known point for smuggling drugs, the tip was detailed and the tipster could have been made available for further questioning if the officer had judged it necessary.
The court in Sierra-Hernandez noted that: “Unlike a person who makes an anonymous telephone call, this informant confronted the agent directly.... The informant was in a position to be held accountable for his intervention.” Id. at 763. See United States v. Gorin, 564 F.2d 159, 160 (4th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1080, 98 S.Ct. 1276, 55 L.Ed.2d 788 (1978) (although the original tip was anonymous, the police later spoke face-to-face with the tipster before stopping the appellant. The “detectives could have identified the informant for further questioning or testimony at trial”); United States v. Unverzagt, 424 F.2d 396 (8th Cir. 1970) (upheld a stop based on a tip given by known informants); United States v. Perez-Esparza, 609 F.2d 1284 (9th Cir. 1979) (upheld stop based on known, reliable informant); United States v. Jones, 599 F.2d 1058 (9th Cir. 1979) (stop upheld because appellants had been convicted of a similar theft, and police received a tip from an identified citizen informant, as well as from an anonymous source); United States v. Andrews, 600 F.2d 563 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 878, 100 S.Ct. 166, 62 L.Ed.2d 108 (1979) (although the stop was based on an anonymous tip, it involved some indicia of criminal activity verifiable by the police: the informant stated that the drugs were to be delivered to an individual the police recognized as a known drug dealer).
In a case that strongly parallels our own, United States v. McLeroy, 584 F.2d 746 (5th Cir. 1978), police stopped and later arrested the appellant based on an anonymous tip that he might have a stolen car and a sawed-off shotgun. The informant gave the appellant’s name, the license tags of the car, and the address where it was parked. The court found the stop unreasonable since the “record contains nothing about the informant’s identity or reliability. Nor does it shed any light on the informant’s basis for asserting that the information contained in the tip was accurate.” Id. at 748. The court found the corroboration to be “so slight that it created no justification for believing that the informant was ‘relying on something more substantial than a casual rumor.’ Reasonable suspicion requires more than this minimal corroboration of innocent details.” Id. (citation omitted).
The point, of course, is not that all courts have adopted a per se rule prohibiting police from acting on anonymous tips. Rather, the concern here is that under the majority’s holding the police are now free to detain forcibly — at gunpoint — individuals on the basis of an anonymous tip and without observing any suspicious activity, for crimes that do not involve an immediate danger to the public-at-large or police officers.
As Professor Wayne LaFave has aptly stated:
[T]he anonymous information ordinarily raises a possibility, but not a substantial possibility, of criminal conduct. But, in this context the word “substantial” takes on special importance; whether the possibility is great enough to justify stopping the suspect who appeared as predicted may well depend upon the nature of the crime.... Action on the basis of anonymous information, then, should be allowed only in cases involving the risk of “serious personal injury or grave irreparable property damage” ....
LaFave, “Street Encounters” and the Constitution: Terry, Sibron, Peters, and Beyond, 67 Mich.L.Rev. 39, 78 (1968). As LaFave noted, the police need not ignore the information — they should begin surveillance. But there is no basis for a seizure.
It is also necessary to step back from the majority’s detailed case analysis — which the majority virtually admits is inconclusive— *60to gain some perspective on the consequences of its holding. Even if a stop were justified under these circumstances, the majority’s opinion has drained all meaning from the command in Terry that an investigative seizure be “reasonably related in scope to the justification for [its] initiation.” 392 U.S. at 29, 88 S.Ct. at 1884. For now, absent any suspicious circumstances observed by the police, and based entirely on an anonymous tip, the police can at gunpoint drag someone from his car and forcibly place him on the hood of the car — all of this to ascertain his identity and “maintain the status quo momentarily.” Recall that in the present case the appellants did not attempt to flee, nor did they attempt to resist the officers or refuse to answer any questions.25 Moreover, the defendants were not suspected of committing a violent crime. I respectfully submit that to allow this result is to indulge a strained and perverse reading of Terry.
Rather than making a limited intrusion, the police officers in this case immediately and forcibly detained the appellants, distorting the concept of a Terry stop beyond recognition. If a stop was justified, the police could have approached the car, and asked for identification and for other details. Had the appellants attempted to leave, force may have been justified. Under the circumstances, however, the seizure was not “reasonably related in scope” to its justification. The wholesale invasion of the appellants’ personal security exceeded the permissible bounds of a stop based on these facts.
V. CONCLUSION
One final concern about the majority’s opinion must be mentioned, for it highlights the broad extent of the holding in this case and illustrates the significant differences in our viewpoints regarding the enforcement of Fourth Amendment rights. In the conclusion, the majority opinion states that the stop “would at most have involved temporary inconvenience.” Ante at 45. This conclusion, in my mind, is completely at odds with the facts of this case. Being forced out of a car at gunpoint, grabbed from behind, and “placed on the hood of the vehicle” constitute, to my mind, not temporary inconvenience, but gross intrusions into the appellants’ personal security.26 Had the police in fact performed a limited Terry stop, perhaps the majority’s sanguine assessment of this case would be justified. Because I cannot agree with the majority’s view of either the nature of the police conduct, or its justification, I believe the court has failed in its duty
to guard against police conduct which is overbearing or harassing, or which trenches upon personal security without the objective evidentiary justification which the Constitution requires.
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. at 15, 88 S.Ct. at 1876. Accordingly, I dissent.
. The majority opinion seems to assume that “the plight of the ‘inner city’ resident” is somehow different from that of the suburban resident living in areas where drug peddling is prevalent. Ante at 36 n.34. The basis for this assumption is difficult to comprehend. Although the Washington Post article is an interesting statement about the problem of drugs in the city, it certainly does not suggest that the problem is unique to the city. Most importantly, the Constitution cannot be read to have a suburban gloss, resulting in inferior constitutional protections for inner city residents.
. “Tr.” refers to the transcript of the hearing of the motion to suppress evidence.
. .The Government recognizes that “[ajlthough the record is not completely clear concerning the exact point at which Detective Hill drew his revolver ... it is clear that he had it out before the car doors were opened.” Brief for Appellee United States at 4 n.3.
. Detective Hill also testified that he saw both Anderson and White remove a tinfoil from their pockets before they got out of the car. Detective Sanchez-Serrano saw nothing of this sort. Tr. 63. The trial court specifically rejected Hill’s testimony that he saw narcotics while the appellants were still in the car. Tr. 93.
Because the judge rejected this testimony, and the majority does not expressly find the trial court’s finding clearly erroneous, the majority’s discourse on Hill’s testimony at trial concerning what he saw in the car is completely irrelevant. See ante at 39-40 n.44. Our review of the trial court’s denial of the motion to suppress must be based only on the evidence presented at the suppression hearing and not on the evidence presented at trial. While the majority seems to acknowledge formally this limitation on the scope of our review, its apparent regret over not being able to use Hill’s trial testimony is disturbing. One hopes that the majority’s decision in this case was not influenced by record material not properly reviewable by this court.
. In an apparent attempt to bolster its conclusion that the police acted reasonably in drawing their guns, the majority identifies the neighborhood where the arrest took place as a “high crime area.” See ante at 36 n.34. There is absolutely no evidence in the transcript of the suppression hearing to support such a statement. The majority’s use of trial testimony in this matter, as with Hill’s trial testimony as to what the detective saw in the car, see note 4, supra, is simply not permissible in reviewing the' trial judge’s denial in this case. Consequently, I proceed on the basis of the suppression hearing transcript, which provides no evidence that the appellants were arrested in a high crime area.
. U.S.Const. amend. IV.
. Before Terry, the term “arrest” was generally equated with the term “seizure.” The standard to test the legality of a seizure was probable cause, and no lesser standard was permitted. See generally Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 208, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 2254, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979). In light of subsequent legal developments beginning with Terry, however, little reliance can be placed on these early pronouncements.
. As this court noted in United States v. Wylie, 569 F.2d 62, 67 (D.C.Cir.1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 944, 98 S.Ct. 1527, 55 L.Ed.2d 542 (1978):
But police-citizen communications which take place under circumstances in which the citizen’s “freedom to walk away” is not limited by anything other than his desire to cooperate do not amount to “seizures” of the person, and consequently may be initiated without a reasonable, articulable suspicion, much less probable cause.
. Sibron was actually two cases consolidated for argument. In this dissent we discuss only the first one.
. In fact, the Court noted at one point that “the officer [did not] ever seriously suggest that he was in fear of bodily harm and that he searched Sibron in self-protection to find weapons.” Id. at 46, 88 S.Ct. at 1894 (footnote omitted).
. These two factors make Adams readily distinguishable from the present case, which involved an anonymous phone call.
. The Court found this fact significant since, under Connecticut law, the informant would have been subject to arrest for knowingly giving a false report. In the present case, the anonymous tipster was in no such danger, thus leaving the present tip without the extra quantum of credibility found in Adams.
. Thus, the present case seems to fall somewhere between these two extremes. Other facts relevant to the Adams case, and which distinguish the present one, include that the petitioner was reported to be carrying a concealed weapon, and was seated in a high crime area at 2:15 a. m. On this basis, the police officer “had ample reason to fear for his safety.” Id. at 148, 92 S.Ct. at 1924 (footnote omitted). In the present case there is no evidence that the appellants were armed or that the area was a “high crime area.” See note 5, supra.
. One lesson that can be drawn from Adams is that an occupant of a vehicle, like a pedestrian, may be subject to a stop and frisk. In Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 653, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 1395, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979), the Court made this point explicitly: “stopping an automobile and detaining its occupants constitute a ‘seizure’ within the meaning of [the Fourth and Fourteenth] Amendments, even though the purpose of the stop is limited and the resulting detention quite brief.”
. Thus, even though the police action may be for the narrowest of purposes, it may amount to a seizure. In Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 50, 99 S.Ct. 2637, 2640, 61 L.Ed.2d 357 (1979), the Court wrote that “[w]hen the officers detained appellant for the purpose of requiring him to identify himself, they performed a seizure of his person subject to the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.”
. In order to give the Government some guidance, the Court listed several “factqrs [that] may be taken into account in deciding whether there is reasonable suspicion to stop a car in the border area,” id. at 884, 95 S.Ct. at 2581, including the characteristics of the area in which they encounter a vehicle, information about recent illegal border crossings, the driver’s behavior, and the appearance of the vehicle. The Court also held that while the apparent nationality of the occupants may be a relevant factor in deciding to stop a car, that factor alone could not provide “reasonable suspicion” sufficient to justify a stop. Id. at 886-87, 95 S.Ct. at 2582-83.
. In Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 99 S.Ct. 2637, 61 L.Ed.2d 357 (1979), the Court specifically declined to decide “whether an individual may be punished for refusing to identify himself in the context of a lawful investigatory stop which satisfies Fourth Amendment requirements.” Id. at 53 n.3, 99 S.Ct. at 2641 n.3. In Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 210 n.12, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 2255 n.12, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979), however, the Court quoted with apparent approval a statement from Justice White’s concurring opinion in Terry. “Of course, the person stopped is not obliged to answer, answers may not be compelled, and refusal to answer furnishes no basis for an arrest.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 34, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1886, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) (White, J., concurring).
. This point was driven home in Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 100 S.Ct. 338, 62 L.Ed.2d 238 (1979), in which the Court struck down the conviction of the appellant, who was searched during a drug raid in a bar. “The initial frisk of Ybarra was simply not supported by a reasonable belief that he was armed and presently dangerous, a belief which this Court has invariably held must form the predicate to a patdown of a person for weapons.” Id. at 92-93, 100 S.Ct. at 343 (footnote omitted).
. Mimms made clear, however, that a protective search was permissible only if the officer had articulable reasons to believe that the suspect was armed and presently dangerous. See id at 111-12, 98 S.Ct. at 333-34.
. It seems academic to worry whether the police were pointing their weapons directly at appellants or not. Any reasonable person, seeing drawn guns, would feel under the same absolute custodial restraint, wherever the officers’ guns were pointed.
. The majority opinion makes repeated reference to the fact that the appellant White fidgeted momentarily before getting out of the car, as if to suggest that the police reasonably had their guns drawn. See, e. g., ante at 34 and 35 n.31. In fact, the trial judge found that Sanchez-Serrano drew his gun, not in response to suspicious activity, but because Hill drew his gun. “The police approached the vehicle. According to Officer Hill, he had his gun drawn but not pointed and Officer Sanchez said that he pulled his gun out when he saw Officer Hill draw his gun.” Tr. 92. Moreover, although Hill asserted that he had a general “concern” for his safety, he did not testify that he drew his gun because of White’s fidgeting. Hill testified that:
A: I might have had it out, I’m not certain at this point [when he initially approached the car], but there did come a time when I did have it out, yes.
Q: But you’re not certain when that time was?
A: It was during the time that I approached the car and prior to getting out of the car. That’s correct.
Tr. 21. There is absolutely nothing in the testimony of Hill to indicate that he saw anything, as he approached the appellants’ car, to cause him to fear for his safety.
. The majority claims that the record “makes clear” that Sanchez-Serrano was “covering” White when Hill holstered his gun and picked up the drugs. See ante at 32 n.16. In my view, there is no way that the record of testimony at the cited pages can be read to support what the majority suggests.
. It is also significant that the tipster, who otherwise gave a detailed description, did not say or imply that the appellants would be armed. Moreover, before the seizure the police observed nothing to indicate that the appellants were armed. As I observed earlier in this opinion, the police could point to no facts indicating that they faced a dangerous situation. In fact, a search of the appellants turned up no weapons.
. In addition, the officer in Adams, unlike the detectives in the present case, did not approach the vehicle with his gun drawn.
. The majority opinion repeatedly emphasizes the possibility of escape as a justification for the police action in this case. See, e. g., ante at 45 (asserting that the appellants were in a position to move away). This emphasis is at odds with the testimony of Detective Hill, who said that it would have been difficult to move the car. Tr. 19. At the suppression hearing the police themselves did not indicate that they believed that the appellants were considering fleeing, and they testified that they had seen no evidence of flight. Tr. 37. The majority’s resort to speculation about possible motives for the police conduct in this case only strengthens the conclusion that the police conduct was unreasonable.
. The majority opinion seeks to deny its apparent holding that an anonymous tip can justify the police action in this case when it states that Anderson was seized “only after Hill had seen White make the fidgeting gesture.” See ante at 46 n.54. In fact, Sanchez-Serrano had seen nothing suspicious to justify forcibly putting Anderson on the hood of the car.