" Your vehicle is an extension of your home ..."

[Danny Abear]

Where is MEM when you need him?

 

[DAVE_M]

Where is MEM when you need him?

Busy being MEM.

 

[geoney]

In all the cases you listed, the vehicle search was incident to an arrest, which was your #2 point. I agree with a search of a vehicle with out a warrant being legal incident to an arrest.

The point I took issue with was your #1 point, that an officer can search a vehicle without a warrant just based on "1. Reasonable suspicion that you may have a weapon and then your "wingspan" is searched for officer safety". Just because an officer believes an occupant of a vehicle has a legal weapon does not give them the right to search a vehicle without a warrant.
Unless I'm misunderstanding what you are saying.

Fair enough, I honestly did not do a whole lot of research for citations as I know the info is out there. It is taught in the academy, I learned it in college, and I believe it is in the code of criminal procedure.

For the "officer safety", the person has to be being detained for reasonable suspicion of a crime. Say you get pulled over for speeding and the officer pulls you out of the car to write you the ticket, it is not like he can just search your vehicle because of that. He has to be able to articulate why he felt it necessary to search that area. Even then, it can only be what is immediately accessible to you. He cannot search into the trunk, into bags in the back seat, a locked glove box, etc.

I will see if I can find a solid citation specifically for the wingspan.

Also understand, that when you are pulled over for a traffic violation, it is still an "arrest" when you get a ticket. You are just not being physically seized at that time and instead released with the ticket "summons to go to court assured by your signature" instead of a physical handcuffed arrest. Depending on the circumstances, that COULD be enough to warrant a wingspan search.

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When you exit your vehicle, lock the doors; End of problem.

Not necessarily.