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In most cases I’ve seen. Once an individual has been charged and arrested. LEO have the right to sea...
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You cannot search as part of a tow. You can inventory the contents. You can search the immediate area around the driver or anything in visibility sight.
Inventories are not searches but they are admissible.
It’s absolutely a search - it’s a trespass upon property. It’s just a recognized exception to the warrant requirement and requires no probable cause. Semantic arguments like that don’t fool the courts, nor will you lose the fruits of a lawful inventory search if you use the word “search” in your report, unless your prosecutors are morons.
Our DA was very specific. A search is a search for contraband or evidence. An inventory is a list of items in the car.
With a search warrant, I can break locks; with an inventory, I cannot. There are many issues between the two, and the language had to be very precise. They did not like people who used inventories as an excuse to perform a search rather than get a warrant.
Technically the motor vehicle exception doesn’t prevent you from entering locked compartments or even locked boxes as long as your department policy expressly says you can inventory items in locked containers. There is case law surrounding this. Colorado vs Bertine and Florida vs Wells
Since the charge was dui in the example. I can’t start cracking locked cases to look for drugs and guns.
When you performing an a search because of an arrest, I can look for that crimes and not all crimes.
Been retired for awhile, so maybe things have changed but we could just start ripping the car apart for a mere dui.
You are performing an inventory of any and all property inside that vehicle to maintain that it was inside that vehicle at the time you inventoried it. Nobody commits more theft than a tow truck driver . You’re doing the owner a favor
Edit: apologies I think I misread your comment slightly to mean that prosecutors would fumble the case if you say search lol
Maybe your jurisdiction is different but we differentiate pretty hard where I work between inventories and searches, so the semantics are kinda important
Inventories can lead to searches if something giving PC is found but outside of that I’m basically just documenting anything inside that can’t go to the impound lot. Case law out of my district has also supported this. I can’t go into any areas that would constitute a search, and I’m only doing inventory to mark valuable items, etc.
I’ve chastised many an officer for stating they will “search” a vehicle after something like driving without a license
It’s all semantics. An inventory is a search. That’s why you articulate in your report the type of searching your conducting. Ie consent search, search incident to arrest, wingspan search, pc search or an inventory search for valuables.
Calling it an inventory vs inventory search is the same thing.
It may have changed since I retired, but inventories were not searches. We could not go into a locked container or many other areas. That required a search warrant. Inventories are just the ability to identify and list the objects. A search is to find evidence and contraband.
See Arizona v. Gant | 556 U.S. 332 (2009) | Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center
Police may search a vehicle incident to a recent occupant’s arrest only if the arrestee is within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search or it is reasonable to believe the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest. When these justifications are absent, a search of an arrestee’s vehicle will be unreasonable unless police obtain a warrant or show that another exception to the warrant requirement applies. The Arizona Supreme Court correctly held that this case involved an unreasonable search. Accordingly, the judgment of the State Supreme Court is affirmed.
This is actually incorrect. Gant doesn’t require both circumstances be met, it only requires one of the two circumstances to be met. If the occupants have access to the vehicle OR it’s reasonable to believe that evidence of the crime may be in the vehicle.
Yes I would agree that a search is a search. We don’t play word games where I am.
Also, you can only inventory if that’s SOP. We don’t inventory tows, but inventorying seizures is in policy.
We have to inventory anything in our possession. Also, it had to be an inventory and not an excuse to search.