420
Syllabus
justify highway stops without individualized suspicion, see, e. g., Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U. S. 444. Moreover, the context here (seeking information from the public) is one in which, by definition, the concept of individualized suspicion has little role to play, and an information-seeking stop is not the kind of event that involves suspicion, or lack thereof, of the relevant individual. In addition, information-seeking highway stops are less likely to provoke anxiety or to prove intrusive, since they are likely brief, the questions asked are not designed to elicit self-incriminating information, and citizens will often react positively when police ask for help. The law also ordinarily permits police to seek the public's voluntary cooperation in a criminal investigation. That the importance of soliciting the public's assistance is offset to some degree by the need to stop a motorist—which amounts to a "seizure" in Fourth Amendment terms, e. g., Edmond, supra, at 40—is not important enough to justify an Edmond-type rule here. Finally, such a rule is not needed to prevent an unreasonable proliferation of police checkpoints. Practical considerations of limited police resources and community hostility to traffic tieups seem likely to inhibit any such proliferation, and the Fourth Amendment's normal insistence that the stop be reasonable in context will still provide an important legal limitation on checkpoint use. Pp. 424-427. (c) The checkpoint stop was constitutional. In judging its reasonableness, hence, its constitutionality, this Court looks to "the gravity of the public concerns served by the seizure, the degree to which the seizure advances the public interest, and the severity of the interference with individual liberty." Brown v. Texas, 443 U. S. 47, 51. The relevant public concern was grave, as the police were investigating a crime that had resulted in a human death, and the stop advanced this concern to a significant degree given its timing and location. Most importantly, the stops interfered only minimally with liberty of the sort the Fourth Amendment seeks to protect. Viewed objectively, each stop required only a brief wait in line and contact with police for only a few seconds. Viewed subjectively, the systematic contact provided little reason for anxiety or alarm, and there is no allegation that the police acted in a discriminatory or otherwise unlawful manner. Pp. 427-428.
202 Ill. 2d 1, 779 N. E. 2d 855, reversed.
Breyer, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined, and in which Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg, JJ., joined as to Parts I and II. Stevens, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which Souter and Ginsburg, JJ., joined, post, p. 428.
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