Opinion ID: 2358021
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Heading: The Fourth Amendment and Police Community Caretaking Functions

Text: The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides that The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. [1] The basic purpose of this Amendment ... is to safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions by governmental officials. Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 528, 87 S.Ct. 1727 (1967). To this end, [t]he mandate of the Fourth Amendment is that the people shall be secure against unreasonable searches. United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 65, 70 S.Ct. 430 (1950). The standard of reasonableness embodied in the Fourth Amendment turns, at least in part, on the more specific commands of the warrant clause, United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297, 315, 92 S.Ct. 2125 (1972), and a search warrant, by the express terms of the Amendment, may issue only upon probable cause. Thus the most basic constitutional rule in this area is that `searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment  subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.' [2] Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 454-55, 91 S.Ct. 2022 (1971). See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507 (1967); Jones v. United States, 357 U.S. 493, 499, 78 S.Ct. 1253 (1958); United States v. Jeffers, 342 U.S. 48, 51, 72 S.Ct. 93 (1951); McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 456, 69 S.Ct. 191 (1948). The search of an automobile is one of the class of carefully defined cases which constitutes at least a partial exception to the general rule that a search of private property without proper consent is unreasonable unless it has been authorized by a valid search warrant. Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 439, 93 S.Ct. 2523 (1973). Although automobiles are effects in the contemplation of the Fourth Amendment, there is a constitutional difference between houses [or offices] and cars. Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 52, 90 S.Ct. 1975 (1970). South Dakota v. Opperman, supra, 428 U.S. at 367-68, points out the twofold reason for this distinction. First, the inherent mobility of automobiles creates circumstances of such exigency that, as a practical necessity, rigorous enforcement of the warrant requirement is impossible. Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 153-54 (1925); Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 459-60 (1971). Second, less rigorous warrant requirements govern because the expectation of privacy with respect to one's automobile is significantly less than that relating to one's home or office. Opperman at 367. This is so because [i]n discharging their varied responsibilities for ensuring the public safety, law enforcement officials are necessarily brought into frequent contact with automobiles. Id. at 367-68. Further, [o]ne has a lesser expectation of privacy in a motor vehicle because its function is transportation and it seldom serves as one's residence or as the repository of personal effects.... It travels public thoroughfares where both its occupants and its contents are in plain view. Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U.S. 583, 590, 94 S.Ct. 2464 (1974). The ofttimes police-citizen contact involving automobiles was recognized in Cady v. Dombrowski, supra, 413 U.S. at 441: Because of the extensive regulation of motor vehicles and traffic, and also because of the frequency with which a vehicle can become disabled or involved in an accident on public highways, the extent of police-citizen contact involving automobiles will be substantially greater than police-citizen contact in a home or office. Some such contacts will occur because the officer may believe the operator has violated a criminal statute, but many more will not be of that nature. Local police officers, unlike federal officers, frequently investigate vehicle accidents in which there is no claim of criminal liability and engage in what, for want of a better term, may be described as community caretaking functions, totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute. (Emphasis added). Inventory searches of automobiles are frequently made pursuant to these community caretaking functions. It seems, however, that none of the Supreme Court decisions was dispositive of the issue whether the Fourth Amendment permits such routine inventory searches of automobiles. See South Dakota v. Opperman, supra, 428 U.S. at 377 (Powell, J. concurring). The Court's opinion in Opperman, however, stated that the holdings in Cooper v. California, supra , Harris v. United States, 390 U.S. 234, 88 S.Ct. 992 (1968), and Cady v. Dombrowski, supra , pointed the way. And it found that the state courts overwhelmingly and a majority of the Federal Courts of Appeals have sustained inventory procedures as reasonable police intrusions. Opperman at 370-75. The opinion of the Court in Opperman found, on the record of that case, that the inventory search was not unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 376. Its reasoning followed these lines. Activities concerning automobiles carried out by local police officers in the interests of public safety and as community caretaking functions frequently result in the automobile being taken in custody. Vehicle accidents present one such occasion. To permit the uninterrupted flow of traffic and in some circumstances to preserve evidence, disabled or damaged vehicles will often be removed from the highways or streets at the behest of police engaged solely in caretaking and traffic-control activities. Police will also frequently remove and impound automobiles which violate parking ordinances and which thereby jeopardize both the public safety and the efficient movement of vehicular traffic. The authority of police to seize and remove from the streets vehicles impeding traffic or threatening public safety and convenience is beyond challenge. Id. at 368-69. It is the legal impoundment of an automobile which permits the inventory search of the vehicle. When vehicles are impounded, local police departments generally follow a routine practice of securing and inventorying the automobiles' contents. Id. at 369. These procedures developed in response to three distinct needs: (i) protection of the police from danger; (ii) protection of the police against claims and disputes over lost or stolen property; and (iii) protection of the owner's property while it remains in police custody. In addition, the Court observed, police frequently attempt to determine whether a vehicle has been stolen and thereafter abandoned. Id. at 369. So it is that a search of an automobile meeting the requirements of an inventory search need not be justified by probable cause. That standard is peculiarly related to criminal investigations, not routine, noncriminal procedures.... In view of the noncriminal context of inventory searches, and the inapplicability in such a setting of the requirement of probable cause, courts have held  and quite correctly  that search warrants are not required, linked as the warrant requirement textually is to the probable-cause concept.... With respect to noninvestigative police inventories of automobiles lawfully within governmental custody ... the policies underlying the warrant requirement ... are inapplicable. Id. note 5, at 370. Opperman did not definitively establish the permissible scope of the inventory search. It stated that cases decided by the Federal Courts of Appeals have recognized that standard inventories often include an examination of the glove compartment, since it is a customary place for documents of ownership and registration ... as well as a place for the temporary storage of valuables. Id. at 372. It noted that the inventory there conducted was not unreasonable in scope. [O]nce the policeman was lawfully inside the car to secure the personal property in plain view, it was not unreasonable to open the unlocked glove compartment, to which vandals would have had ready and unobstructed access once inside the car. Id. note 10, at 376 (emphasis added). Powell, J. in his concurring opinion carefully pointed out that [a]s the Court's opinion emphasizes, the search here was limited to an inventory of the unoccupied automobile and was conducted strictly in accord with the regulations of the Vermillion Police Department. Id. at 380. He noted, at 380, note 6: A complete `inventory report' is required of all vehicles impounded by the Vermillion Police Department. The standard inventory consists of a survey of the vehicle's exterior  windows, fenders, trunk, and hood  apparently for damage, and its interior, to locate `valuables' for storage. As part of each inventory a standard report form is completed. The report in this case listed the items discovered in both the automobile's interior and the unlocked glove compartment. The only notation regarding the trunk was that it was locked. A police officer testified that all impounded vehicles are searched, that the search always includes the glove compartment, and that the trunk had not been searched in this case because it was locked. The dissenting opinion of Marshall, J. observed, at 385, note 1: The Court does not consider, however, whether the police might open and search the glove compartment if it is locked, or whether the police might search a locked trunk or other compartment. In Cady v. Dombrowski, supra , the Court held that the search of an automobile trunk during a caretaking search and the seizure of a gun therefrom was not unreasonable. But the Court made clear that the officer reasonably believed that the trunk contained a gun and that the trunk was vulnerable to intrusion by vandals. Id. at 448. See also id. at 436-437. Despite the narrowness of the Opperman holding, necessarily restricted to the facts of that case, [3] there emerges from the Court's opinion a doctrine, viable even though not fully developed, which permits as reasonable by Fourth Amendment standards, the inventory search of an automobile under certain conditions. We find the present stage of the doctrine to be that the police may, without regard to probable cause, and, thus, absent a warrant, constitutionally enter an automobile and unlocked compartments therein, and inventory and seize articles found, provided the vehicle had been otherwise legally taken into police custody and the inventorying was pursuant to a standard police procedure.