Even with reasonable suspicion that a person has a gun in a car, an officer cannot stop based on that alone

A citizen informant identified a white Grand Prix as having an occupant with a gun. Officers stopped the car and found the gun, but the search should have been suppressed because possession of a gun in a car in Minnesota is not necessarily a crime because he could have had a carry permit. State v. Timberlake, 726 N.W.2d 509 (Minn. App. January 16, 2007):

At the inception of the stop, all that the officers knew was that an informant had witnessed a black male in possible possession of a handgun near a convenience store, and that the black male had left the convenience store heading east on Maryland in a white Pontiac Grand Prix driven by a black female. The officers were able to verify that a white Pontiac Grand Prix, being driven by a black female with a black male passenger, was heading east on Maryland approaching Arkwright.

Because the informant was an identifiable private citizen, and the officers were able to verify details of the informant’s report before initiating the stop, it was reasonable for the officers to suspect that someone in the white Pontiac Grand Prix was in possession of a gun. But in Minnesota, possession of a firearm in a motor vehicle is lawful if the possessor has a permit. Minn. Stat. § 624.714, subd. 1a (Supp. 2003). Nevertheless, respondent contends that because possession of a gun in a public place is unlawful without a permit, the officers had reasonable suspicion to believe that appellant was committing a crime–i.e., that he did not have a permit. But it is equally plausible that appellant did have a permit. Accordingly, we conclude that mere suspicion that a person possesses a gun is insufficient to warrant a Terry stop, absent additional particular and objective facts which create a reasonable suspicion that the possessor does not have a permit or is otherwise about to commit a crime.

A search incident to an arrest includes the vehicle defendant was in, including containers found in the passenger compartment. Suppression order reversed. Commonwealth v. Rose, 2007 Ky. App. LEXIS 6 (January 12, 2007):

In this case, Rose was arrested prior to the search of the vehicle in which she had been an occupant. It is of no consequence that Danny gave permission to search the vehicle. If an officer has made a lawful arrest of an occupant of a vehicle, the officer can conduct a search of the passenger compartment of that vehicle and any containers therein, even if the suspect is detained in a police cruiser away from the vehicle.

Inmate survived the PLRA cut and defendants are required to answer his complaint that he was strip searched and forced to stand naked outside his cell in view of jailers of the opposite sex, citing Lee v. Downs, 641 F2d 1117 (4th Cir. 1982), where “[t]he Court stated that ‘[p]ersons in prison must surrender many rights of privacy which most people may claim in their private homes. Much of the life in prison is communal, and many prisoners must be housed in cells with openings through which they may be seen by guards. Most people, however, have a special sense of privacy in their genitals, and involuntary exposure of them in the presence of people of the other sex may be especially demeaning and humiliating. When not reasonably necessary, that sort of degradation is not to be visited upon those confined in our prisons.’ Id. at 1119. The cases analyzed after the Lee opinion suggest that reasonable necessity is intertwined with penalogical interest. In other words, if an inmate’s privacy can be maintained without compromising prison operations, then that privacy should be respected. Hickman v. Jackson, 2005 WL 186245 (E.D.Va.).” Azariah v. McCurry, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2802 (W.D. N.C. January 12, 2007).