Tag: Search and Seizure: Page 13

Patrol

No Explanation Required

In your search warrant affidavits, your reports, and your testimony you have to lay out the basis of your suspicions and justify every detention, arrest, search, seizure, entry, and use of force.

August 31, 2008

Patrol

Fourth Amendment Supremacy

Evidence discovered during a search incident to an arrest supported by PC is not suppressible in the majority of state courts.

May 31, 2008

Patrol

How to Tell When You Need a Search Warrant

The general rule-of-thumb is to try to get a warrant whenever possible. On the other hand, if you can seize evidence without engaging in a search, you don't need either a warrant or any exception.

February 29, 2008

Patrol

Residential Entry After Outdoors Arrest

There are four ways to make a lawful entry into a private home. Notice that "entry incident to outdoors arrest" is not on the list of lawful ways to get inside a residence. In three separate cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has held such entries to be unconstitutional.

January 31, 2008

Patrol

Four San Antonio Officers Suspended Over Body Searches

The patrons are also suing in federal court, claiming that the officers violated their civil rights and searched them without probable cause.

October 4, 2007

Patrol

How to Justify Officer Safety Searches

On average, 60,000 officers are assaulted on the job every year. That's an average of 164 per day. The risk level you face on the job makes it important not only to resist complacency and to follow prudent tactics, but also to understand how to ensure that your interactions with suspects are constitutionally justifiable, so that you are never forced to choose between being safe and being sued.

September 30, 2007

Patrol

Seizing and Searching Passengers

In the 2007 decision in Brendlin v. California, the U.S. Supreme Court added yet another to a series of Fourth Amendment opinions on the subject of vehicle searches and seizures involving passengers, rather than drivers.

August 31, 2007

Special Units

Clearing Up Knock-and-Announce Confusion

The detective rapped on the front door. Then three seconds later, instead of waiting for a resident to answer, one of the officers on his team kicked in the door. They had expected to find a meth lab in the apartment, but the man and woman they'd awakened in the middle of the night and handcuffed had committed no crimes. The officers had raided the wrong apartment.

July 31, 2007

Patrol

The "Good Faith" Doctrine

The U.S. Supreme Court has said that "Because many situations which confront officers in the course of executing their duties are more or less ambiguous, room must be allowed for some mistakes on their part. But the mistakes must be those of reasonable men, acting on facts leading sensibly to their conclusions of probability." (Brinegar v. U.S.)

May 31, 2007

Patrol

Vehicle Impounding

If the court finds that the Constitution was violated by a vehicle impound, the existence of an authorizing statute or policy may not be enough to save you and your agency from civil liability and suppression of resulting evidence.

April 30, 2007

Patrol

Plain Sense Seizures

If a criminal exposes evidence in ways that can be detected by use of the personal senses, there is no Fourth Amendment “search” involved in discovering the presence of such items. Assuming no previous unlawful search, the seizure of the items is presumptively reasonable if there is probable cause to associate them with criminal activity.

March 31, 2007

Patrol

Search Warrant Exceptions

The requirement of the Fourth Amendment is that all searches be "reasonable." The Supreme Court has ruled that warrantless searches are presumed to be unreasonable, "subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions."

January 31, 2007