Can the police search my car whenever they want, or do they need a specific reason?
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. Accordingly, the police cannot simply search your car whenever they wish. However, it frequently does not take much of a reason to give the police the right to search your car.
There are roughly two types of automobile searches that the police may perform: 1) a search of the driver and the passenger compartment of the vehicle; and 2) a search of the entire car. The police need different reasons to justify both types of searches. The first type of search generally occurs after the police stop a driver for a traffic violation. Once a vehicle has been stopped, a police officer may “pat down” any occupant of the vehicle as well as the vehicle’s passenger compartment if the officer has what is known as “reasonable suspicion.” Reasonable suspicion is generally defined as a reasonable belief on the part of the officer, based on specific facts, that warrant the officer’s believing that the driver or passenger is dangerous and may gain control of a weapon. For example, courts have held that the police were justified in searching the passenger area of a car where the driver and his wife gave conflicting answers to a police officer, and the officer noticed a box of bullets on the floorboard of the car. The fact that a driver has an NRA sticker on his car, on the other hand, is not enough to create reasonable suspicion to justify a search.
Once the purposes of the stop are resolved and the officer’s initial suspicions have been verified or dispelled, the detention of the vehicle must end unless the stop generated additional reasonable suspicion supported by additional facts. For example, if a police officer who has reasonable suspicion searches the floorboard of a car for a pistol and finds marijuana, the officer likely will then have additional reason to search the car further.
A search of an entire car, however, requires more than “reasonable suspicion.” Read next week’s column to learn about when police can lawfully search an entire car.
This article appears in Barbara Bush.