The Three Golden Rules of Search & Seizure

The following is a computer-generated transcription, some grammar and spelling errors may be inherent How are you doing Law enforcement officers, it's Anthony Bandiero, here with Blue to gold law enforcement training. And today I'm gonna share with you the three golden rules of search and seizure.These three golden rules come from reading 1000s of court cases over the last 20 years. And after all, you start seeing a theme of what the courts are looking for the first golden rule, and the most important is, the more you articulate why you did something, the more likely you'll be upheld in court. And the reason for this is, first of all, the Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. In other words, if what you did was reasonable, it's lawful. But what is reasonable is depends on the totality of circumstances, right. So that means that every fact and circumstance comes into play, right? One change in the fact or one change in the circumstances of something can determine can change whether it was reasonable or unreasonable. So you need to tell the court why you did something. And finally, this is an objective standard. You can't go into court and say, Your Honor, I was reasonable because I sincerely believed that what I was doing was reasonable. The courts will thank you for that feedback. But they require an objective standard, right? So it's kind of like taking all the facts of circumstances that you had, they put into this objective standard computer, if it spits out that it would do a similar response, as you did, then the court says, Okay, that was reasonable. But the key is you want to give that computer as much data as possible. And so the final point here is, when you do your report, you want to talk about three factors in the encounter, whether it's a consensual encounter, and Terry Stop, a use of force and so forth. The first factor is police. Talk about what police did, what did you do? What did your partners do? What resources did you have? What resources did you not have, and so forth? The next factor is suspect. What did the suspect say? Do? What was he wearing it? For example, if it's gang attire? Was there any weapons present? What's his criminal history, and so on? And finally, talked about the environment? Where does this encounter take place? Was it at night? Was it in a desolate area was in a high crime area, and so forth? You know, was it were there people around, you know, potential Confederates for the suspect, you want to talk about all those things, and laid out for the court. The second golden rule is, the more serious the crime, the more likely the court is going to uphold your actions as reasonable. And This is, you know, this is very important. So for example, if you have reasonable decision of suspicion to stop a person for a suspected sexual assault, and you pull out your weapon, you point your gun at them, and you say, hey, get on the ground. And then, you know, you pat them down, and you find, you know, a weapon and drugs and so forth. And then a suspect says, hey, you know, when he pointed that gun at me, I felt like I was under arrest, a reasonable person in those circumstances would feel like I was under arrest, and the courts are more likely. And I say, note, using pointing a firearm in those circumstances was reasonable because there's a serious offense. And so I like to, you know, basically say that courts are going to bend over backwards to find that your response and actions were reasonable when it's a serious offense. But if it's a minor offense, then they're going to put the whole weight on your shoulders to tell to to basically convince them to persuade the court, why you did what you did. And so if you pulled out your firearm and pointed at somebody suspected of stealing a candy bar at Walmart, the courts are gonna more likely not find that that was excessive for the situation. Right...