Inventory of bag in defendant’s possession at the time of booking was not unconstitutional. While the policy refers to jail personnel, it is not strictly applicable to them. The inventory search here was no different or intensive than that which would have been conducted by the jail personnel, and there was no showing that it was conducted with an investigatory motive. Indeed, the bag only came along because defendant requested it. United States v. Banks, 482 F.3d 733 (4th Cir. 2007):
The written policy reveals that the end result of an inventory search in the typical arrest scenario is that the arrestee’s person and possessions are searched, with paper currency returned immediately to the arrestee, other personal property stored until the arrestee’s release, and contraband seized and secured. Det. Gunn’s search of the bags mirrored this routine practice. Just as the bags would have been searched and their contents confiscated and secured by booking personnel in a typical arrestee processing, they were searched, confiscated and secured by Det. Gunn.
Banks may only succeed in challenging the search of the bags, then, by showing that Det. Gunn’s search was motivated by “an investigatory police motive,” Opperman, 428 U.S. at 376. See id.; Brown, 787 F.2d at 932 (allowing searches “so long as the purpose of the inventory is … not to gather incriminating evidence against the owner”). This second argument is fatally weakened, however, by the district court’s finding that Det. Gunn’s actions were “perfectly reasonable … under the circumstances and do[] not betoken bad faith on his part.” J.A. 259. This factual finding must be upheld on appeal unless clearly erroneous. Buckner, 473 F.3d at 553.
Banks presented no evidence that Det. Gunn initiated the search of the bags or conducted the inventory search because he suspected that he would find incriminating evidence therein. To be sure, Det. Gunn’s decision to perform the inventory himself in his office, instead of following the usual procedures, was irregular. The irregularity was due in part, however, to the unusual circumstances of the arrest. The arresting officer, though he responded first to the Target, was only involved because of Det. Gunn’s distance from the pharmacy at the time Eggleston and Banks arrived at the store. Furthermore, the bags were not in Banks’s physical possession because they were procured by Det. Gunn, at Banks’s specific request, after his arrest.
Officer was entitled to qualified immunity for warrantless entry into an apartment based on an apparent emergency. The search was not clearly unreasonable, and it was objectively justified. McTwigan-Evans v. Spaulding, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27245 (D. Colo. April 12, 2007).*
A face-to-face CI is more reliable than an anonymous tipster. This one was corroborated, and the reasonable suspicion involved danger to the officer. United States v. Kent, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27111 (E.D. Mo. April 12, 2007):
The court finds the officers had specific articulable facts providing reasonable suspicion to detain the defendant. Although the defendant argues that the CI had no track record. That is true. However, as the Second Circuit stated in United States v. Salazar, 945 F.2d 47, 50-51 (2nd Cir. 1991), “A face-to-face informant must, as a general matter, be thought more reliable than an anonymous tipster, for the former runs the greater risk that he may be held accountable if his information proves false.” The CI was considered by Blakely to be sufficiently trustworthy to be signed up to be an informant. For tips there is no requirement that the informant even be known. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 237-238, 103 S.Ct. 2317 (1983). The CI in this instance had offered firsthand knowledge of the person who had just been at the CI’s residence. He was walking in an area known for crack cocaine trafficking. He was alleged to be carrying a concealed weapon, which is a crime in itself. Blakely remembered that there had been a controlled buy from TKO in 2003.
There was a danger and immediacy involved in this factual situation, which is not always present in an investigatory stop. The likelihood of finding weapons with one who has been involved in drug trafficking is alluded to in many cases. The person described as TKO, when informed of the officer’s intent to pat him down for weapons, in effect, refused to be patted down and placed his hands in his pockets where a weapon might be located and was going to walk away, which under the circumstances, could reasonably be interpreted as an admission that he was the man they were looking for. The officers were faced with a situation such as the one described in Terry:
“We are now concerned with more than the governmental interest in investigating crime; in addition, there is the more immediate interest of the police officer in taking steps to assure himself that the person with whom he is dealing is not armed with a weapon that could unexpectedly and fatally be used against him. Certainly it would be unreasonable to require that police officers take unnecessary risks in the performance of their duties. American criminals have a long tradition of armed violence, and every year in this country many law enforcement officers are killed in the line of duty, and thousands more are wounded. Virtually all of these deaths and a substantial portion of the injuries are inflicted with guns and knives.”
392 U.S. at 23-24, 88 S.Ct. at 1881.
