I rent an apartment. If I declined to voluntarily allow the cops to search it, can the property owner trump me?
An issue that has not surfaced this this thread but has bearing is that the police lie. It’s legal. It’s a technique that is employed to dupe people. If you watch the Cops TV show you can observe the technique in action all the time.
Granting the police an open search of your home under the premise of looking for a lost person is still an open search. There is nothing to stop them from obtaining the information they need for a later warrant and legal search, and arrest on other charges, all thanks to you giving them permission to freely search your home. If you believe you haven’t done anything wrong in the first place so why not search, your belief may have nothing to do with the realities and politics of the police and prosecuting attorney of where you live.
One should never consent to a search without a warrant under any circumstances, be it during a traffic stop, your home or anywhere else.
Don’t think so. A tenant has the exclusive right of possession of the premises. However, if a landlord suspects illegal activity, then I suppose the landlord can enter given proper notice of entry to the tenant under the lease/law to inspect the premises.
See, this is just something that I cannot get behind.
You and some others here are afraid of getting in trouble for a crime you did commit, rather than one you didn’t (I’ll assume nobody here kidnapped or murdered that girl). People are complaining about accidently having a bong on a table, or evidence of other things that lead to a crime. You know what? Those are CRIMES. I have absolutely no sympathy for you if you are lawyering up just because you don’t want the police to find your stash of child porn or bricks of crack in the closet. Whether or not you committed murder, you guys still commited other crimes and the police should absolutely have the right to arrest you if they stumble upon these other illicit activities.
That is why in such an instance, where good decent people are told of a missing person, they would and should absolutely let the police search their house. Only people who are jacked up about making a political statement or have actually done crimes would be so obscenely protective of their privacy that they wouldn’t allow the police a 5 minute look around. In such instances, the police should and would deem your behavior suspicious. Unless you have a Monk-like level of OCD regarding messiness in your house and don’t want people trampling through it, or you have a priceless Ming vase sitting on a narrow base, there is no harm.
What is the burden of proof that the landlord must meet to “suspect” illegal activity?
Is my declining the voluntary search sufficient?
Also: Can the landlord “volunteer” the whole block of apartments, as long as they give us 24+ hours notice?
As long as you don’t mind ignoring the fourth amendment.
The landlord can inspect his property if he gives sufficient notice.
The landlord cannot give the police permission to search your property without a warrant.
Absolutely ridiculous. First off, even if your conscience is clean, how can you be 100% sure that you have not broken some law or other? To my knowledge I have committed no crimes, but the law is complicated and not always sensible; I have nothing to gain and everything to lose by allowing a police officer into my home without a warrant.
Secondly, this attitude presupposes that every “decent” citizen should divide his life into two parts: the parts which are illegal and the parts which he should happily submit to public inspection. Privacy is much more than the right to hide evidence of illegal behavior, though it includes that too.
This is basically the same old attitude that if you’ve got “nothing to hide,” you should have no problem with officers of the state investigating every private detail of your life. Implicit in that is the idea that every citizen is guilty until proven otherwise, that it’s the act of a “decent” person to willingly submit themselves to be cleared of wrongdoing and that any reticence is suspicious.
That attitude is abhorrent on so many levels I don’t even know where to begin addressing it. Maybe you just have fundamentally different ideas about the value of individual liberty and we’ll have to agree to disagree, but I really find it difficult to imagine how anybody can actually think like that.
I am a good and decent person. The police may be good and decent people, too, with positive motivations behind their request.
They still need a warrant.
It does look pretty sad. SHe was also behaving strangely. I saw an interview with one of her neighbor’s, a little old lady who said that prior to the girl’s disappearance, the little old lady had found her crouched in a ball in the corner of the elevator. The little old lady kept asking if she was okay, but the girl never acknowledged her. Odd.
QUESTION: Something that is unclear/bugging me. Maybe someone can answer. Warrants are limited in scope to some degree, right?
Eg/ Say I am suspected of illegally making fur coats out of Dalmatian puppies. Police show up with a warrant looking for “puppies and coats”. They don’t find puppies or coats, but they find my counterfeit money printer hidden under the stairs. Can they seize my money printing machine that is outside the scope of their original warrant? Or do they need to go away and come back with a new warrant to look for counterfeiting materials?
Part 2 of the question: Does voluntarily inviting them in to search my house leave me wide open for anything they may find? In the case of the OP, a neighbor has had the police look in his kitchen cupboards and freezer. What if they opened my fridge and found an endangered fished as sauteed leftovers?
I’m a good decent guy. I’ve checked, there is no missing person hiding in my closet. As a good, decent guy, I can assure you that if I found a missing person in my closet, I would call the police right away yelling: “I found her!”
I am not a lawyer, but the Rehnquist court ruled that cops don’t need to have a warrant if they believe there is a crime going on right then. Assuming possession of counterfeit money is illegal, that ruling would seem to subsume your scenario.
Canvassing door to door is pretty standard to ask people what they saw/heard/remembered. Asking to come inside and have a look around would and should not be.
I think with the mass DNA sweeps the thinking goes like this: anyone innocent won’t be concerned about giving us a sample, but someone refusing must have something to hide. As others have noted this is a horrible tactic and none of the instances cited in the article returned any results. Given the amount of resources wasted on this type of activity it is amazing that any investigators still consider this a serious option.
ETA: *by “that article” I mean the one about Truro, MA that **muldoonthief **posted @218
That can’t be right. When cops know that a crack house is manufacturing and selling drugs, they have to get a warrant before they bust the door down.
I thought cops only didn’t need a warrant if thee reasonably believed a crime was in progress and there was someone in jeopardy. Eg/ If a cop was walking past my house and heard “Help! Help! He’s trying to kill me!” the cop could kick down my door and rush in.
But if my neighbor shows them a fresh $100 bill I just printed off and said: “Yeah, Cellphone is cranking out bills as we speak!” the cop still needs a warrant to bust down my door.
The concept of warrantless searches in exigent circumstances is at least partially right, but I don’t know about how it would apply to the scenario described here. Obviously there are better sources to explain legal doctrines, but here’s the Wikipedia entry on exigent circumstances.
No. I have been raped, and had my flat burgled twice, and have basically a phobia about people coming into my house. To the point that I have to leave when the guy comes to work on the furnace or cable. I can barely tolerate inviting people over to visit and they are there at MY invitation. To me someone tromping in my house is akin to strapping me down and fucking me.
My constitutional rights aside, there is no reason for the police to do anything further than come to my front door and ask if I have seen her or anything suspicious. There is NOTHING in my house that they could see that would eliminate me, and the only thing they could see in my house that would indicate my guilt would be her body, and since I didnt do it, there is nothing inside that would be of the slightest use to them. It takes 4 to 6 hours to do a full CSI workup on a house the size of mine, and I seriously doubt they are going to spend 36000 man-hours at this point in time, along with the costs of the supplies and tests. Spending 10 minutes poking through my undie drawer will tell them nothing, other than I happen to own mink lined manacles.
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Ah, that’s what I was thinking of: “exigent circumstance”. Like if through a window a cop sees a guy dumping gasoline on my kitchen floor and trying to light a match, he can burst in and tackle him without a warrant. But if he sees me trimming my fresh $100 bills to size, he has to call it in and get a warrant.
So anyone know about the other part of my question: if the warrant is to search for “puppies and coats”, can they seize my counterfeit machine as evidence against me, or not (since it’s outside the scope of their warrant).
To me it would seem that a warrant may have limitations, but if I volunteer to let them search my place there would be no limits (unless I revoke my consent).
As it’s been said several times, allowing the police voluntary access to your home violates no rights. Also, putting you on a suspect’s list violates no rights as you do not have the right to not be suspected of anything.
I put it pretty clearly in the post you quoted from: If you are breaking a law already, then you deserve to be caught and punished. All of this complaining about “What if I have something illegal out that the police see it?” just means you do not want to take responsibility for any illegal thing you’ve done.
Guess what? We all do illegal things. People speed, people jaywalk, download music off the internet, steal pens from work, etc. While people would love to continue doing those things unimpeded, the fact is that people have broken the law and should take their punishment if they are caught.
Between a person accidently leaving out a bong and searching for a missing girl, I would try to hide the bong and give them the right to search. If they find the bong, well, then I deserve punishment.
You consider that privacy? Why don’t you just say that anything you do is ok as long as you don’t get caught? Murder is ok…as long as you hide the body well enough. Rape is ok…if you can threaten her to keep silent. Privacy isn’t a de facto bulwark against illegal activities.
And, lest we get off track here, the OP is asking about cops asking for cooperation VOLUNTARILY. Your privacy rights are irrelevent to the discussion
If you read through the topic, you will see that a counterpoint to your argument has already been made. No citizen has a right to not be a suspect. If the police deem that the pool of suspects is everyone within a 10 mile radius, then guess what? You’re a suspect and there’s nothing you can or should be able to do about it. Your problem is with the investigation methods itself, not any sort of rights. You should be arguing instead that the net is cast too wide and its ineffective. But no one should be arguing that the police have no right to ask for voluntary cooperation and no one should be claiming that being on a suspects list violates their rights
Some of us don’t have an automatic suspicion of the police. Every police or government misdeed is broadcasted while the everyday heroes that do their job is ignored. I know some police are corrupt, but you’re not likely to run into a specific set of circumstances that would be detrimental to you. So I would cooperate because there’s almost no chance I would be framed or punished for something I didn’t do. And if it helps to find a missing person, all the better
I’m sure that had you been the murderer hiding pieces of her in your freezer, you’d say the same. Pardon me for thinking the police shouldn’t rely on killers turning themselves in.
Your experiences are obviously not the norm. To the extent that you have a legitimate phobia, I can see you protesting their entrance. If the police suspect you for not letting them in, I’m sure a doctor’s note or some kind of psychological testimony would remove you instantly from their list.
I don’t expect every person, most people, or even some people except for a very small amount to have the same experiences you do. Yours is a special circumstance. Most people here are just trying to defend rights where none has been violated.
Criminals aren’t all geniuses. A lucky break on a 10 minute search just might turn up something. If not, then it was only 10 minutes wasted, no big deal. For a missing person, yeah, I’d say that’s a good tradeoff.
See the link I posted in #172, on Page 4 of this thread. Or just google “Plain View Doctrine”.