Other Procedures
Last updated
Last updated
During an investigative detention, officers may, of course, seek the detainee’s consent to search his person, vehicle, or personal property if a search would assist the officers in confirming or dispelling their suspicions.179 If a search would not be pertinent to the matter upon which reasonable suspicion was based (such as traffic stops), officers may nevertheless seek consent to search because, as noted earlier, a brief request in the course of a lawful detention does not render the detention unlawful.180 As the Supreme Court explained in Florida v. Bostick, “[E]ven when officers have no basis for suspecting a particular individual, they may generally request consent to search his or her luggage.”181
Note, however, that consent may be deemed invalid if a court finds that it was obtained after the officers had completed all of their duties pertaining to the stop, and were continuing to detain the suspect without sufficient cause.182 Officers may, however, seek consent to search if they converted the detention into a contact. (See “Converting detentions into contacts,” next page.)
For various reasons, officers may want to obtain certain information about the detainee, such as his physical description, vehicle description, the location of the detention, the names of his companions, and a summary of the circumstances surrounding the stop. Oftentimes, this information will be uploaded to a database or routed to a particular investigator or outside agency.
In any event, a brief delay for this purpose should not cause problems because, as the Court of Appeal observed, “Field identification cards perform a legitimate police function. If done expeditiously and in an appropriate manner after a lawful stop and in response to circumstances which indicate that a crime has taken place and there is cause to believe that the person detained is involved in same, the procedure is not constitutionally infirm.”183
Officers may fingerprint the detainee if, (1) they reasonably believed that fingerprinting would help confirm or dispel their suspicion, and (2) the procedure was carried out promptly. As the Supreme Court observed:
There is thus support in our cases for the view that the Fourth Amendment would permit seizures for the purpose of fingerprinting, if there is reasonable suspicion that the suspect has committed a criminal act, if there is a reasonable basis for believing that fingerprinting will establish or negate the suspect’s connection with that crime, and if the procedure is carried out with dispatch.184
A detainee may, of course, be photographed if he consented.185 But what if he doesn’t consent? Although we are unaware of any cases in which the issue has been addressed, it seems likely that it would be judged by the same standards as nonconsensual fingerprinting; i.e., taking a photograph of the detainee should be permitted if the officers reasonably believed that the photograph would help them confirm or dispel their suspicion, and the procedure was carried out promptly.186
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