Police Vehicle Searches Incident To Arrest: Evaluating Chiefs’ Knowledge of Arizona V. Gant
In 2009, in Gant v. Arizona, the United States Supreme Court significantly changed the Fourth Amendment norms governing police searches incident to arrest at vehicles.1 To date, there is no known empirical study of police knowledge regarding such standards of searches at vehicles. Moreover, previous studies on general law enforcement knowledge of Fourth Amendment rules largely focus on non-ranking or non-supervising officers. This empirical study aims to fill these gaps by shedding light on police supervisor knowledge with respect to searches at vehicles.2
This study finds that police chief knowledge concerning search incident to arrest law at vehicles is rather uneven. In certain areas pertaining to this law, chiefs have moderate to strong knowledge. For example, a majority of chiefs knows that the Belton rule, governing searches incident to arrest at vehicles, is no longer the applicable rule for these searches. 3 In addition, most chiefs know about the particular legal criteria under Gant to apply when deciding to conduct a search incident to arrest at vehicles, such as whether the arrestee would be able to reach inside the passenger compartment of the vehicle to access a weapon.4 However, in other areas of search incident to arrest law at vehicles, police chief knowledge appears to be modest to low. For instance, most chiefs do not realize that the ability to obtain a warrant is not a factor that must be evaluated in the decision-making process to search a vehicle’s passenger compartment incident to arrest.5
