Hello, my name is Chris Morales I’m a criminal defense attorney in San Francisco, California and I’m a board certified specialist in criminal law. Today, I want to talk about the law of searches, searches by the police. When the police can and cannot search you as your walking down the street or when they can and cannot search your house and when they can and cannot search your car. Many searches are done via a search warrant in other words a police officer who has some evidence that there are some contraband like guns or drugs at a certain place will go to
a judge with a request with a written request and ask the judge to read through the request and read through why they want to go to this house or car or person and search. If the judge approves this search warrant, the judge will sign off, the judge will also give strict instructions to the police officer. In other words the judge will say- yes you can search this house, but you only have two weeks to do it and you can only do it during the day. So those are some restrictions that the judge will put on the police officer.
With that search warrant in hand the police can go ahead and conduct a search. Now there are times when the police officer can search someone or search their house or car without the permission of a judge. These are very special times, if the police officer stops someone on the street to talk to them about a potential crime or to gather some evidence the police officer is within their right to a quick pat down search. Whether they are looking for specifically is any weapons that the person may have and
the Supreme Court has said this is OK for a police officer to do this for their own safety. It has to be really non-intrusive and it has to be quick pat down search just looking for bulky items such as a gun or knife. The police can also search you or your house or your car if you give consent and this happens a lot. The police officer will ask you – may I look in your car, look into your trunk or go into your house and a lot of times people will give their consent to search. It seems to me that people don’t know that they can say no to the police.
They can say no you do not have consent to search my car go get a search warrant. I think a lot of people get intimidated when there are two or three police officers sorta surrounding them and asking them for consent to search so they go ahead and consent to that search. But you are absolutely within your constitutional rights to say no you can not search, go see a judge go get a search warrant. So, those are some of the laws of searches by police officers. To read more about what is an unlawful search and/or seizure go to my website www.sfcriminallawspecialist.com
and you can download some free information there. Also follow me on Twitter and Facebook and if you would like to discuss a particular situation or a particular search go ahead and call me (415) 552 -1215.
Criminal Defense Attorney – Christopher Morales
Practice Area: The San Francisco Bay Area, California
Call us today for a free consultation (415) 552-1215 (Se Habla Español)
