holding that Supreme Court precedent did not prohibit police department regulations from giving police officers the discretion to choose between impounding a vehicle or parking and locking a vehicle as long as “[t]here was no showing that the police chose to impound [the defendant’s] van in order to investigate suspected criminal activity”
How later courts described this case
- holding that Supreme Court precedent did not prohibit police department regulations from giving police officers the discretion to choose between impounding a vehicle or parking and locking a vehicle as long as “[t]here was no showing that the police chose to impound [the defendant’s] van in order to investigate suspected criminal activity”
- stating that "police officers may open closed containers while conducting a routine inventory search" if they are following "standardized police procedures," and that "[t]his absence of discretion ensures that inventory searches will not be used as a purposeful and general means of discovering evidence of crime"
- stating that the reasonableness of warrantless inventory searches is based on their non-investigative purposes of "protect[ing] an owner's property while it is in the custody of the police, [ ] insur[ing] against claims of lost, stolen, or vandalized property, and [ ] guard[ing] the police from danger"
- concluding that inventory searches are a well-defined exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement because it serves to “protect an owner's property while it is in the custody of the police, to insure against claims of lost, stolen, or vandalized property, and to guard the police from danger.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Justice Blackmun,
with whom Justice Powell and Justice O’Connor join, concurring.
The Court today holds that police officers may open closed containers while conducting a routine inventory search of an impounded vehicle. I join the Court’s opinion, but write separately to underscore the importance of having such inventories conducted only pursuant to standardized police procedures. The underlying rationale for allowing an inventory exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant rule is that police officers are not vested with discretion to determine the scope of the inventory search. See South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U. S. 364, 382-383 (1976) (Powell, J., concurring). This absence of discretion ensures that inventory searches will not be used as a purposeful and general means of discovering evidence of crime. Thus, it is permis *377 sible for police officers to open closed containers in an inventory search only if they are following standard police procedures that mandate the opening of such containers in every impounded vehicle. As the Court emphasizes, the trial court in this case found that the Police Department’s standard procedures did mandate the opening of closed containers and the fisting of their contents. See ante, at 374, n. 6.