Is there EVER a reason to consent to a police search?

Never never consent to a search or even talk to the police if there is even a small chance of you being under investigation for a crime even if your heart is as pure as a saint.

For one thing your consent is good for the whole household so you are in fact consenting for all the household members.

Oh if the police come to your door talk to them at the door or outside do not allow them into the house.

The police are agents of the government and unless they had a court order to do a search there is zero reasons to allow the government to search your home.

Cute story my father was a railroad engineer and a mile long freight train he was running had a red signal and needed to stop cutting a small town in half during rush hour.

The train conductor was walking ahead to see if he could find out what the problem happen to be when the police bended out of shape seize him and took him to jail.

They then try to get my father to come off railroad property or allow them to come onto railroad property and he refused to allow them to do so.

Well the light turn green in the mean time and the cops order him to move the train and he refused to do so until either his conductor was return or the railroad send out another conductor.

The long and short of it was that the police with sirens on return my father conductor to him and he then move the train.

But if they arrest you they can search, right?

What if, just using my example above, I had said that they couldn't come in and they arrested me for something... i don't know... maybe disturbing the peace. Then I would have had to do the whole getting arrested thing and they would have still come in. So everyone who lived in the house would still have been exposed.

I realize that the police aren't likely to arrest me for such a thing but, you know, what if.....

They can search you and anything within your reach but not the whole house and second as in the case of the black professor arrested for disturbing the peace that Obama got involved in the police got the professor to come off his property as the power to enter private property and arrest someone had some limits that does not apply to public property.

See also the story that I had added to my first post concerning the police seizing the conductor when he was off railroad property but not my father who was on railroad property.

Footnote not giving the police any grounds to search any part of your home without a warrant is another reason not to invited the police into the house but to instead step out and close the door behind you.

If you are then arrested it make any claims that they was searching any part of your home without a warrant due to it being under your immediate control unlikely to stand up in court.

After having a bad day I took a walk outside late one night. Police stopped me to see what I was doing on the street. I asked them why they wanted to talk as I kept walking. They said they just wanted to talk and I said that I wasn't in the mood to "just talk." I kept walking and after asking me again a couple of times they took me to the ground. I refused to tell them my name until they told my why I was being arrested. I always thought that they cannot stop you if you are not doing anything wrong. I spent the night in jail refusing to tell them my name until they told me why I was arrested. They told me I was arrested for resisting arrest! This didn't make sense because I can't resist arrest until I am under arrest. I finally told them my name and then they told me that the reason that I was arrested in the first place is because I was in park after hours. They said they saw me do it 5 minutes before they stopped me. They were right. Instead of walking along the side of the street I cut a corner about twenty feet into a city golf course. So I broke the law without knowing it but I think that they should have told me right in the beginning.

Interesting question.

I was stopped while driving my old vw van on a nice street. I was with my future husband on the way back to Venice from fixing up my mother's house to rent, and wanted to show him the street of beautiful trees and houses, since he didn't know the area. The police - I think it wasn't security patrol but police - stopped me because there had just been a burglary or some such. All I had in the van were some tools and house paint and they checked. None of my paintings (would they have taken me for stealing my paintings? snort) and no large bundles of money or cocaine. I took it as "driving while owning a vw on the wrong street". Mine wasn't cruddy, had a new paint job by the infamous Earl Sheib, but wasn't a typical auto of that neighborhood. I don't think things would have gone well if I refused.

I also saw a guy get shot and killed by the police for resisting arrest. I think the guy was on drugs or out of it or something. I didn't see how the whole thing started but I did see how it ended. While I think the guy was probably wrong the police also reported the story to the public different than the way I saw it. Perceptions.

They could had kept you there while they was trying to get a warrant for you van for a few hours perhaps but other then that I do not think things would had gone bad if you had refused.

I've told this story before.
I was a volunteer probation officer in San Angelo, Texas in 1970. While riding in a probationer's car from a job interview I had arranged (Let's call him Perez, but that wasn't his name) , we were pulled over on one of the main streets of the town.
"Hey, Perez, I didn't recognize your car."
(yup. Sure)
He says Perez laid a little rubber taking off from a red light back there.
(Um. No fricking way, but okay.)
The usual Drivers License, registration stuff was handled quickly, the officer leaning into the car at one point to take a closer look at me .
(as in why is this gringo riding with this Chicano kid?) .
"Okay," says the cop," Just watch how fast you take off from the stop lights from now on."
Right.
Whatever.
The cop gets in his car.
Perez doesn't move.
The cop waits and waits, but Perez doesn't even start his car.
The cop finally pulls by us.
We don't wave.
What happened next was Perez backs up to the corner, backs around the corner and, as soon as traffic clears, zooms across the road, down a couple of streets , left into an alley then down behind the shopping center into the
do-it-yourself car wash through the Exit lane.

He hopped out of the car at the vacuums.

"Got any change?" he asked as he put some in the machine and started it up.
I got out and walked around the car to where he was already vacuuming up the rest of marijuana that had been scattered all over his back seat and car floor when the cop was 'taking his look at me'.
He grinned.
"This is the first time they've tried this on me. They got my friend, Louis, like about two years ago. He's still in jail."
We took turns going over every inch of that car.

Then we headed back out towards the courthouse which is where my car was.
We hadn't gone six blocks before there was a siren and lights behind us.
Different cop., but, surprisingly well-informed as to who was driving the car because he said Perez's name before he looked at his license.

We had left the back windows down after we finished vacuuming and the cop stuck his head into the car expecting to spot the half a bag of seeds and stems that his buddy had dumped a few minutes before.
His face was full of complete surprise. I'm sure for a moment he thought maybe he had the wrong car.
He didn't know what to say.

"Hi," I said, "I don't think we've met. I'm with Bob Turner's office."

(Bob was head of the probation departments for FOUR Texas counties, a land area bigger than States of the Union. A great guy, but you didn't want to on his bad side no matter which side of the law you were on. He didn't like people messing with his success rate.)

"We're just on our way back from getting Perez a job."

"Good for you." said cop number two taking one more look inside.

He handed Perez his license and off we went into the land of the free.

Joe(where the stars at night are big and bright)Nation

What got me started thinking about this was seeing this short film this morning:



Then I watched a film made by a past director of the ACLU about what you need to know about police searches.

Judging by the responses here it seems that there really isn't a good reason to ever give consent.

Here's the ACLU bit:



It looks a bit dated already but I think I'll be making Mo watch it in a few years....

Criminy, I hadn't seen this particular tale before.

There is a footnote that the government with the courts backings are claiming the rights to search your computers and even do a complete copy of your hard drive at the border for no reason at all.

So before I leave the country I always do a complete backup of my travel netbook and if the custom people ever demand that I unprotected my computer so they can poke around in it I am going to refused and allow them to seized it if they wish to do so.

Nothing on the computer is illegal however it is the principle of the matter and I can replaced the netbook within a week off ebay for a hundred dollars or so and restore the softwares/files from my home backups.

God know how must taxpayers dollars they might be willing to spend trying to break my layers of security for zero gain if they happen to be able to do so but it will be many tens of times my cost of replacing the hardware.

Citizens should not roll over for the government and even have a moral duty not to do so in my opinion.