Opinion ID: 2968446
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: detainee processing

Text: Any officer who brings a prisoner to a holding facility will search the prisoner and remove and safeguard any weapons UNITED STATES v. BANKS 9 the constitutional sufficiency of the inventory-search policy itself. Instead, he highlights six discrepancies between Det. Gunn’s actions in searching the two bags and the procedures required by AACOPD policy: (1) the policy required the initial search of Banks to be conducted by the officer in custody of him, who was the arresting officer, not Det. Gunn, see J.A. 263; (2) booking personnel, not Det. Gunn, should have performed the inventory; (3) all items found in the found on the prisoner before taking the prisoner into the booking area or placing him in a holding cell.
Once inside the booking area or holding facility, the officer in custody of the prisoner will conduct an inventory search of the prisoner before the prisoner is booked or placed in a holding cell. The officer will seize and remove any weapons, contraband, evidence, and property that is not permitted to accompany the prisoner into the holding cell, prior to proceeding with booking or placing the prisoner in a holding cell. . . .
Booking personnel will inventory and prepare an itemized list of all property taken from a prisoner, and all property (including paper currency) retained by the prisoner. The inventory will be documented on the Holding Facility Intake form (PD 2004). Booking personnel will sign and date the property inventory sheet. The prisoner will be asked to sign the inventory form acknowledging the property that was taken. Prisoners with no property will sign an inventory form marked No Property. If the prisoner refuses to sign, another employee will sign the form as a witness to its accuracy. ... E. Secure Storage of Prisoner Property Booking personnel are responsible for the secure storage of all property taken from a prisoner. Each prisoner’s property will be segregated from all other property and locked in secured facilities until it is returned to the prisoner or placed in the property management system. J.A. 263-64. 10 UNITED STATES v. BANKS bag, not just the contraband, should have been inventoried; (4) the inventory should have been recorded on the proper inventory form, not on an investigative report; (5) booking personnel, not Det. Gunn, should have secured the property; and (6) the property should have been securely stored, not placed under Det. Gunn’s desk. Banks makes two arguments based on these six discrepancies. First, he contends that the discrepancies themselves amount to a constitutional violation, even if the search was conducted innocuously. Second, he argues that the discrepancies revealed that Det. Gunn’s purpose in conducting the inventory was to gather incriminating evidence. The government insists that the discrepancies do not evince a pretextual motive for the search, but that instead Det. Gunn fortuitous[ly] discover[ed the] evidence during a routine booking procedure. Appellee’s Br. at 26. We find Banks’s focus on Det. Gunn’s alleged lack of technical compliance with the written policy governing the intake of arrestees by booking personnel to misunderstand the requirement that inventory searches be conducted according to standardized criteria, Bertine, 479 U.S. at 374 n.6. To be sure, the written policy of the AACOPD establishes certain standards for the processing of the typical arrestee and the inventory of the possessions he carries. The policy does not, however, specify the precise procedures to be followed in every circumstance. Indeed, the policy details only the search required of [a]ny officer who brings a prisoner to a holding facility, guiding that officer to conduct an inventory search of the prisoner before the prisoner is booked. J.A. 263. The policy is silent regarding the proper procedures to be followed in the unusual scenario here, in which the non-arresting officer is nevertheless in possession of certain of the arrestee’s belongings that the arrestee himself requested be delivered to the stationhouse. In Lafayette, the Supreme Court upheld a search of a shoulder bag carried into a stationhouse by an arrestee, not because of technical compliance with a written policy, but because it was standard procedure to inventory ‘everything’ in the possession of an arrested person. 462 U.S. at 642. Similarly, the question before us is not whether Det. Gunn complied with all the written directives governing one particular application of the standardized procedures for inventory UNITED STATES v. BANKS 11 searches at the AACOPD, but whether, in light of the unusual circumstances leading to Det. Gunn’s possession of the two bags at the stationhouse, he acted in accordance with standard procedures more generally. The written policy reveals that the end result of an inventory search in the typical arrest scenario is that the arrestee’s person and possessions are searched, with paper currency returned immediately to the arrestee, other personal property stored until the arrestee’s release, and contraband seized and secured. Det. Gunn’s search of the bags mirrored this routine practice. Just as the bags would have been searched and their contents confiscated and secured by booking personnel in a typical arrestee processing, they were searched, confiscated and secured by Det. Gunn. Banks may only succeed in challenging the search of the bags, then, by showing that Det. Gunn’s search was motivated by an investigatory police motive, Opperman, 428 U.S. at 376. See id.; Brown, 787 F.2d at 932 (allowing searches so long as the purpose of the inventory is . . . not to gather incriminating evidence against the owner). This second argument is fatally weakened, however, by the district court’s finding that Det. Gunn’s actions were perfectly reasonable . . . under the circumstances and do[ ] not betoken bad faith on his part. J.A. 259. This factual finding must be upheld on appeal unless clearly erroneous. Buckner, 473 F.3d at 553. Banks presented no evidence that Det. Gunn initiated the search of the bags or conducted the inventory search because he suspected that he would find incriminating evidence therein. To be sure, Det. Gunn’s decision to perform the inventory himself in his office, instead of following the usual procedures, was irregular. The irregularity was due in part, however, to the unusual circumstances of the arrest. The arresting officer, though he responded first to the Target, was only involved because of Det. Gunn’s distance from the pharmacy at the time Eggleston and Banks arrived at the store. Furthermore, the bags were not in Banks’s physical possession because they were procured by Det. Gunn, at Banks’s specific request, after his arrest. The district court credited Det. Gunn’s explanation that [b]ased on the information that [he] found in the bags, [he] knew that this [case] 12 UNITED STATES v. BANKS was beyond [him], J.A. 213, and he thus proceeded to inventory the bags himself and to contact the DEA instead of leaving the bags full of facially incriminating evidence with the booking personnel to be inventoried and stored. The district court found that Det. Gunn’s explanation in fact add[ed] to his credibility. J.A. 258. The district court finally noted that once the bags were lawfully brought into the stationhouse with Banks, it was inevitable that some AACOPD employee would have to look through it to see what’s there. J.A. 259. We hold that because Det. Gunn did replicate standard procedures in conducting the search of Banks’s bags to the extent possible on these facts, and because the district court’s finding that Det. Gunn acted in good faith was not clearly erroneous, Banks cannot show that the search of the bags was constitutionally improper.