Probable Cause of a Police Officer to Search a Vehicle
- Outside of your home, and possibly the workplace, you likely feel the greatest sense of privacy inside your vehicle, but while driving, you expose yourself to contact with law enforcement at a greater rate than in your home. Unlike your home, however, police do not need a warrant to search your vehicle, just probable cause, which the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines as "a reasonable ground for supposing that a charge is well-founded."
- In the United States, the Bill of Rights protects citizens' rights "to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures," which means that a police officer needs a warrant to conduct a search. An exception pertains to the search of a vehicle, however. In 1925, the Supreme Court (in Carroll v. United States) established the precedent that a police officer may search a vehicle based on probable cause, without obtaining a warrant.
- If a police officer shows probable cause that contraband or evidence exists inside the vehicle, and that the vehicle in question has the ability to be mobile, then the officer may search the vehicle. In most cases, the officer finds it easy to prove the latter. Probable cause to search, however, involves a set of facts and circumstances that would lead a person of reasonable caution to believe that a search of a particular place will turn up specific evidence of a crime.
- Police officers develop probable cause to search a vehicle in many ways, such as when an officer (or a K9 unit) detects the odor of an illegal drug coming from inside the vehicle, or sees something readily recognized as contraband or evidence lying on the seat or dashboard. The mere presence of those two examples establishes probable cause to search. Officers can also establish probable cause by combining certain facts already known regarding a specific crime, such as robbery, abduction, drug transportation, with the circumstances and facts presented, including interviews with the driver and passengers during their encounter with the vehicle.
- The law allows for certain searches of the area within reach of an occupant, and an inventory search of your vehicle if it's to be towed. Additionally, police can "pat down" or "frisk" your vehicle if they suspect you have weapons inside it. This type of cursory search limits officers to readily accessible areas where you could have hidden a weapon. Any of these situations can lead police to probable cause to search everything inside.