Can law enforcement use a GPS tracking device without a warrant? In 2007, a man named Juan Pineda-Moreno was suspected of purchasing products to grow Cannabis. Rather than put a GPS tracking device on his car and leaving it, they put several GPS devices on his car throughout a four month investigation. Most of the time his vehicle was on public property, but twice the car was in his driveway, so they entered his property at 4 to 5 in the morning to place it. I'm aware that in United States v. Jones the Supreme Court ruled that police must obtain a warrant to use GPS devices. However, their conclusion had to do with how long the GPS was attached to Jones' car. In Pineda-Moreno's case, the GPS was used to follow him for short distances. I cannot find any new information on this case past 2010. Can officers still use a GPS tracking device without a warrent?
US v. Jones The majority opinion in US v. Jones 565 U. S. ____ (2012) , written by Justice Scalia, held that the attachment of the GPS device to the vehicle was a trespass and thus a search. The analysis ended there. It did not even need to reach the issue of how long Jones was monitored (although one of the concurring opinions took that into account). Katz did not repudiate the understanding that the Fourth Amendment embodies a particular concern for government trespass upon the areas it enumerates. The Katz reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test has been added to, but not substituted for, the common-law trespassory test. This leaves open whether police can attach a GPS device to a car before it is obtained by a defendant and then later use that GPS device to monitor the defendant's movements. Based on the concurrences in Jones there are at least five votes for the principle that long term GPS surveillance is a search (Justices Alito, Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor1) and at least one vote (Justice Sotomayor) for the principle that any GPS surveillance is a search. The latter holding would require overruling or distinguishing Karo and Knotts, two cases that allowed the placement of a surveillance device into things before the defendant purchased them.2 Effect on US v. Pineda-Moreno Regarding, US v. Pineda-Moreno, on remand to the 9th Circuit for consideration in light of Jones, the 9th Circuit said: Jones has made clear that the agents conducted Fourth Amendment searches when they attached tracking devices to Pineda-Moreno’s Jeep and used the devices to monitor the Jeep’s movements. Indeed, for purposes of this remand we will assume, without deciding, that those warrantless searches would be unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment after Jones. But Jones had not been decided when those searches occurred. And when the agents attached and used the mobile tracking devices that yielded the critical evidence, they did so in objectively reasonable reliance on then-binding precedent. Relying on Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229 (2011), the 9th Circuit declined to suppress the evidence obtained against Pineda-Moreno. Searches conducted in objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent are not subject to the exclusionary rule. 1. While Justice Sotomayor did not join Justice Alito's concurrence, she wrote: "I agree with Justice Alito that, at the very least, “longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy.”" 2. In a pre-Jones dissent to the denial of a petition for en banc rehearing of US v Pineda-Moreno, Chief Judge Kozinski distinguished Knotts this way: The electronic tracking devices used by the police in this case have little in common with the [beepers] in Knotts. [...] Beepers could help police keep vehicles in view when following them, or find them when they lost sight of them, but they still required at least one officer—and usually many more—to follow the suspect. The modern devices used in Pineda-Moreno’s case can record the car’s movements without human intervention—quietly, invisibly, with uncanny precision.
There are two separate questions here, it seems to me. First: are law enforcement officers required to respect your house rules and avoid making a mess? At least in the United States, the answer is unequivocally no. If the only "damage" suffered is that you need to sweep the floor, or put your clothes back in drawers, that's not the police's problem. You have not suffered any damages that a court is going to reimburse, and your best case scenario, even if you win a suit against the police, is an award of one dollar as nominal damages. Second: are law enforcement officers required to reimburse you for any physical damage they caused while executing the search warrant? The answer here is tricker, and depends on the search warrant. If the warrant is invalid, then the answer is yes. But remember: just because, for example, the cops are looking for the guy you bought your house from, who moved out a month ago, that doesn't mean the warrant is "invalid." Just because the cops got a bad tip, or suspected you wrongly, or were in some other way wasting their time--as long as the warrant is technically proper and they were able to convince a judge it was reasonable, the warrant is valid. Even if the warrant is invalid, you may need to sue the police to get anything reimbursed. If the warrant is valid, in practical terms, you will almost certainly need to sue the police to recover anything, and you will have to show the Court that the police's actions that damaged your property were so extreme that they were outside the reasonable scope of the warrant. For instance: the warrant is for a large item, like a stolen car: the police cannot smash holes in your walls to make sure the car isn't hidden inside. If they're looking for drugs, they may be able to. If the officers' actions are consistent with the scope of the warrant, then you are not going to recover anything. The warrant is, basically, permission from a judge to enter your home and perform those actions, and they will not be liable for them. A number of relevant cases are discussed in this article: http://www.aele.org/law/2010all01/2010-1MLJ101.pdf
There is no search analog to the Miranda requirement. The Supreme Court in Miranda didn't just decide that people had to be told their rights, for all rights in all contexts. Miranda applies just to 5th and 6th Amendment rights, in case a person is being held coercively. If you are free to go, you need not be apprised of your rights: so, if the police are just asking questions when you are not being held, they are not required to give a rights warning. Likewise, they are allowed to request permission to conduct a search. It is true than many people do not understand that a request is distinct from an order. A useful phrase to remember is "Am I free to go?". If the answer is no, you are busted and they can search you. If the answer is yes, you don't have to let them search you (to avoid the ambiguity of silence, refusing permission to search is not a bad strategy, unless you want then to search you – e.g. if you want to get on the plane).
This all depends upon where you are. I am a landlord and I am answering based upon the laws of the U.S. and the states that I operate in. First things first. You are not the property owner. While this does not limit the answer, it is a factor. You do not have the right to the property even if you have a key and the permission of the tenant. You are not the property owner, do not represent the property owner nor the tenant, and by contract do not have legal rights to the apartment. It does put you in a different situation. As a landlord, it is against the law for me to provide access to a tenants apartment to anyone without authorization. This, of course, precludes emergencies such as welfare checks. In the case of the police, a warrant is required or a form that the police fill out that allows the police to gain access. This would be used in cases such as when a spouse requires the recovery of personal property during a domestic dispute. A judges order is not always possible in these cases. These are often limited cases and the form absolves the landlord of liability even in cases where the police act incorrectly. So without a warrant or a form that certifies any lawful request, anyone including the landlord can be arrested for a crime. For your situation, a quick call to the landlord would have been appropriate. Without a warrant or certification, the police still had options including waiting for the person in question to either leave or return to the apartment or even request a warrant by phone. Often, the warrant, once signed by the judge, can be read over the phone. Any landlord should always have a paper copy provided within minutes since some cruisers will have a printer and can print the warrant. Your refusal appears to be legal. However, in the future, you can ask for a copy of the warrant that you provide the landlord. I do not wish to paint a negative image of the police who do the hard work that most people will never take on, they are after all heros, however, some do not know the law perfectly well especially tenant landlord law. As well, some will try and get away with skirting the law trying to get an important job done. It does happen. I hired a lawyer just last week for an illegal request unrelated to the question here. Addressing the OPs comment: Hello, I believe I misstated the situation a bit in that the locked door in question was for the apartment building and not a tenet's apartment itself. I have edited my question. Does this change anything? Technically, this does not change much of anything, however, the request by the police can be seen as a reasonable one. They just may want to talk to the individual which is reasonable. In this case, I might have let them in if the access I was giving them was to a common space such as a hallway. In this case, the outer door locks are only to keep Intruders from entering the building and not meant to restrict access for valid purposes. Are you in trouble? I would say no. If anyone asks, you can give reasonable arguments for your situation. However, the next time, consider what I have written here. The police have a tough enough time doing their jobs. If you can help and stay within the proper boundaries of what the law allows, that would be best.
Jurisdiction? washington. RCW 9A.16.020 says when force is lawful. (1) Whenever necessarily used by ...a person assisting the officer and acting under the officer's direction Not apparently applicable in this case. (2) Whenever necessarily used by a person arresting one who has committed a felony and delivering him or her to a public officer competent to receive him or her into custody Looks promising, except RCW 9A.52.070 says &quot;(2) Criminal trespass in the first degree is a gross misdemeanor&quot;. For the record, (3) Whenever used by a party about to be injured, or by another lawfully aiding him or her, in preventing or attempting to prevent an offense against his or her person, or a malicious trespass, or other malicious interference with real or personal property lawfully in his or her possession, in case the force is not more than is necessary but you didn't describe malicious trespass (which incidentally is not statutorily defined in Washington). Our last hope is: (4) Whenever reasonably used by a person to detain someone who enters or remains unlawfully in a building or on real property lawfully in the possession of such person, so long as such detention is reasonable in duration and manner to investigate the reason for the detained person's presence on the premises, and so long as the premises in question did not reasonably appear to be intended to be open to members of the public For example, you can detain a person for a few seconds to ask what he's doing there and to get whatever answer you are going to get. It does not extend to &quot;detain the trespasser until you are satisfied that he has truthfully identified himself&quot;, or &quot;until the police show up&quot;.
Until it runs out of gas. With the caveat that I can't prove a negative: No, there is no such statute or case law restricting how long a police or law enforcement vehicle can follow someone on a road. However, law enforcement officers can be subject to investigation and sanction under "stalking" or "harassment" laws, which typically require a pattern of documented misbehavior in the absence of good cause for said behavior.
If you read the first link, every offense can lead to arrest without a warrant. Notwithstanding, you don’t have to be arrested to be charged and vice -versa.
Courts, particularly traffic courts, tend to take a police officer's word over that of an accused person. While legally the limit is 70, the driver has very little recourse if the officer claims falsely that the actual speed was over 70. But the deterant effect of a posted limit is lost, since drivers in general have no way to know that Officer O will ticket anyone going over 60. I suppose that driver D, or D's lawyer, could subpoena calibration records of any radar gun or other measuring devise used, and could insist on its being tested. However, unless they had reason to think there was an issue, I wonder if D and D's lawyer would go through that process. Some speed measuring devices print a paper slip showing the date and time along with the reading. If such a device was used that record would be harder to alter. Some cars are now equipped with devices provided by insurance companies that record speeds and other driving info in a secure way to help judge a driver's safety and allow individual rate setting. It might be that the record from such a device would be admissible to show the speed was under the posted limit. But there is a sense in which the law is what the police and the courts enforce. If anyone who drives the road over 60 is cited and must pay, one could say the effective limit there is 60.