List three types of vehicle searches and distinguish these searches from similar situations not involving vehicles

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

There are seven types of vehicle searches: [student should list three]
• search incident to arrest
• probable cause search
• inventory of impounded vehicle
• search based on reasonable suspicion
• search of outside of vehicle
• non-criminal investigation
• roadblocks
The search incident to the arrest of a person is a thorough search of the person and the area under his/her immediate control. This translates into the search of an area with a radius of about six to eight feet if the person is not in a vehicle. If the person is in a vehicle, the officers are allowed to conduct a thorough search of the passenger compartment only if the person could reach into the vehicle during the search or there was reason to believe that there was evidence in the vehicle related to the offense for which the person was arrested. On the one hand, the passenger compartment is a smaller space with a radius of only three or four feet. Considered in the context of a person in a car traveling down the street, the car is the only area that could reasonably be considered under the person's control.
The probable cause search of a vehicle equates to the area for which a judge could issue a warrant if the officers had taken the same facts to the judge. Because the court has equated the two, the officers can conduct the same search that would have been authorized if they had completed the affidavits, gone to the judge, and requested a search warrant. The difference being that the officers acted on their own; judicial review, if any, will not come until after the arraignment.
Inventorying an impounded car, an event that occurs fairly often in patrol, has no equivalent in the non-vehicular situation. The officers are allowed to do an extensive search in the name of protecting the owner/occupant of the vehicle. The closest thing that I can think of is the inventory of personal belongings that is done when a person is booked. While it is similar in that everything is sorted and listed in an inventory, the prerequisites are not similar. For the booking search to occur, the person must have been arrested for committing a crime. A vehicle can be impounded for a number of reasons that are less serious than being arrested.