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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday significantly cut back the ability of the police to search the cars of people they arrest.
Police officers have for a generation understood themselves to be free to search vehicles based on nothing more than the fact that they had just arrested an occupant. That principle, Justice John Paul Stevens acknowledged in his majority opinion, “has been widely taught in police academies” and “law enforcement officers have relied on the rule in conducting vehicle searches during the past 28 years.”
The majority replaced that bright-line rule with a more nuanced one, and law enforcement officials greeted it with dismay. “It’s just terrible,” William J. Johnson, the executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said of the decision. “It’s certainly going to result in less drug and weapons cases being made.” Continue reading
Filed under: Civil Liberties, Drugs, Guns, Prison Industrial Complex, Privacy | Tagged: Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Arizona Supreme Court, Arizona v. Gant, Clarence Thomas, David H. Souter, Fourth Amendment, John G. Roberts Jr., John Paul Stevens, National Association of Police Organizations, New York v. Belton, Rodney J. Gant, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Stephen G. Breyer, Supreme Court, William J. Johnson | Leave a comment »
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