All I recall are the editorials. I think the police largely sidestepped the issue of fourth amendment violations by not pressing any charges even if they saw evidence of illegal activity when they insisted on searching homes without a warrant. This isn’t a real cure for the violations of course, but it greatly reduced the likelihood of legal challenges. The police also likely would have claimed consent to the searches. I have an uncle who lived in one neighborhood that was searched and his view, even though his house wasn’t searched, was that if it would help catch the bomber, the police were welcome to barge in. Many of his neighbors felt the same way. Those who didn’t were steamrollered by the police.
I don’t recall prosecutors bringing any collateral cases based on things in “plain view” after the manhunt but if someone knows of any exceptions, I’d love to hear about them.
And any apartment owner would grant permission. They want to keep their tenants safe. (And if they said no, the city code inspectors would start an intensive inspection early the next weekday morning.)
If indeed the bolded part is true, that is exactly the kind of police-state bullshit the Soviets and now Russians were/are famous for. Which has no place in a free country such as we purport to be.
Do we (any of us) have any evidence of this crap actually occurring versus mere cynical guesswork that it must be commonplace?
No search warrant, no probable cause, no “hot pursuit,” it’s trespassing. There was a recent case here where a cop entered a person’s securely fenced back yard without any justification and shot the guy’s dog for no apparent reason (apparently a very friendly, and also extremely valuable animal). The cop and the police (who tried to claim it was all justified) are being sued for trespassing and for the dog shooting (not sure what grounds there-willful destruction of property or something). I don’t know if they are going to win but it seems likely.
-I would think you could reject permission for snipers under the same principles. No search warrant, no probable cause, and there is no hot pursuit going on. I mean, the sniper isn’t chasing anyone.
LSLGuy, you’re going to want to google “administrative search.” Usually, it’s been used to get LEOs into regulated businesses, like bars, barber shops, and pool halls, while they were working in conjunction with the entities entitled to use those searches to look for code violations. There was a town or two in Minnesota that was trying to use these to investigate tenants. I don’t remember whether the tenants were in public housing, or whether this was a private landlord.
Short version, I haven’t heard of a lot of this happening for private homes, yet. I’m interested what courts have done with searches where, to think of a possible example, cops piggybacked along with the county gas line inspector.
No cite handy, but I vaguely remember something about something like this from some years ago. It went something like this:
New York, unable to continue dumping their garbage out in the ocean, contracted with a private trash-hauling firm to take the trash on a barge down the Mississippi and dump into the Gulf – where I suppose it was either legal or maybe simply Not New York’s Problem.
Protesters set out on a boat to meet the barge. (Who knows what they planned to do there.) Agents of some regulatory agency met the boat up-river a bit before it reached the barge and performed a multi-hour inspection, delaying them long enough for the barge to get away.
The fourth amendment protects you against UNREASONABLE searches and seizures - if there was no other plausible way for the police to get into position - I think you’d lose.
As far as drugs found - yeah in theory - if they had the legal right to be there - they probably could charge you, but unless you had bricks stacked up high - they usually aren’t going to care.
Good police departments want citizen cooperation and look the other way for minor infractions
For example - if it was known they’d try and call ins on anyone in their area illegally - they’d have a harder time getting witnesses for the important stuff.
I’m not aware of any similar law in Massachusetts and the law review article I cited says Arkansas’s law is unique. All the applicable case law I’ve seen in Massachusetts protects a tenant’s expectation of privacy in his or her apartment against a landlord’s purported consent to a search.
Which instantly raises the question of whether the standard boilerplate in most MA apartment leases includes or excludes that grant of right to the landlord. I’m going to bet nearly 100% of the leases from corporate-owned apartments do.
I haven’t looked up other states, but it appears that in Arkansas administrative searches as Gray Ghost notes, are allowable without warrant in cases that involve the Department of Pollution Control and Ecology (like Arkansas EPA).
Bring along an LEO and plain view doctrine applies.
Administrative searches generally aren’t allowed to be used as a pretext for a criminal search but I would not be surprised if they are.
This is wrong. There is no exception to the fourth amendment for when police really really want to get into your house but have no plausible way to gain tactical advantage.
Many buildings have common corridors, access ways, stairwells, that are publicly accessible and there would be no need for a warrant or exigent circumstances to traverse those areas.
Thank you, psychonaut. Embarrassingly one of the threads was my own. For some reason I’d posted the question, become distracted after a while and then completely forgot about it. Reading the thread now there are some great answers plus a link to the staff report by gfactor.
Once again my thanks for taking the trouble to look up those threads.
You seem to be using “publically accessible” in the sense of as “not behind a wall, fence, locked door, or other barrier”. I’m not sure whether the mere fact that an apartment building’s front door is left unlocked can be legally interpreted as allowing members of the public (including the police) the right to enter the tenants’ common areas for any reason. Certainly if I were a landlord I would take the view that access is permitted only for tenants and their guests and that, except as provided by law, anyone else wishing to enter the premises requires my advance permission. The question in this thread is whether establishing a sniper’s nest is one of these legally permitted exceptions.
Regardless, roof access is usually behind a locked door, or via an emergency hatch, so it would be a stretch to call it a common area.
No problem—yours was an excellent question that was highly relevant to this thread; it just happens to be one that had already been answered several times here.
What about, say, when the Secret Service places people on rooftops when the President is in an outdoor setting? How does that work? Does somebody call you up and ask if you’d mind hosting some agents or what?
I assume some buildings are used to it and have a standard thing going on - locally I assume the buildings near the State House often have snipers or whatever on them? I’d be shocked if there wasn’t some kind of rooftop coverage when they took the Confederate flag down, for example.
