As an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, "police may, without a warrant, impound and search a motor vehicle so long as they do so in conformance with the standardized procedures of the local police department and in furtherance of a community caretaking purpose, such as promoting public safety or the efficient flow of traffic." United States v. Torres , 828 F.3d 1113, 1118 (9th Cir. 2016). The purpose of such a search is to "produce an inventory" of the items in the car, in order "to protect an owner's property while it is in the custody of the police, to insure against claims of lost, stolen, or vandalized property, and to guard the police from danger." Florida v. Wells , 495 U.S. 1, 4, 110 S.Ct. 1632, 109 L.Ed.2d 1 (1990) (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, the purpose of the search must be non-investigative; it must be "conducted on the basis of something other than suspicion of evidence of criminal activity." Torres , 828 F.3d at 1118 (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted). The search cannot be "a ruse for a general rummaging in order to discover incriminating evidence." Wells , 495 U.S. at 4, 110 S.Ct. 1632.
Thus, an administrative search may be invalid where the officer's "subjective purpose was to find evidence of crime."
Specifically, Johnson challenges the officers' decision not to arrest him as he exited the residence they were staking out, but instead to wait and to stop his car in the street-and to do so by physically boxing him in. He adds that the officers then approached his car with guns drawn, making it even more unlikely that he would feel free to move his car to the side of the road.
Johnson also argues that, even if the stop and impoundment of the car were valid, the officers improperly searched the car in an effort to find evidence of criminal activity.
Johnson raises a number of points in support of his argument, including that the officers' improper motivations are evidenced by their purported failure to comply with various provisions of PPB's inventory policy (for example by failing to list items in an appropriate manner and by failing to provide property receipts for all items seized). However, we need not consider the merits of those arguments-or whether any such violations of PPB policy would require suppression of the evidence found-because the officers themselves explicitly admitted that they seized items from the car in an effort to search for evidence of criminal activity.
In the face of such evidence, it is clear to us that the officers' decision to seize the money, bags, and cellphones from Johnson and his car would not have occurred without an improper motivation to gather evidence of crime.
Read the case here: United States v. Johnson, 889 F.3d 1120(9th Cir. 2018), casetext.com/c...
Anton Vialtsin, Esq.
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