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S.D. N.Y.: PC for a vehicle search makes Gant irrelevant to case

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Threat to arrest a pawnshop operator (a closely regulated business) for refusing to open the safe during an administrative search was facially unreasonable, so the officer has no qualified immunity. 5 Borough Pawn v. City of New York, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 54069 (S.D. N.Y. June 22, 2009)*: Clearly no reasonable officer could have thought that he was privileged to arrest a pawnshop owner who refused to allow him into a closed and locked safe without a warrant. The New York Court of Appeals' decision in Keta and the Grasso Memo--which was official NYPD policy--make it perfectly clear that police officers are not privileged, under the New York State Constitution, to invade safes without a warrant. Marti, like every other NYPD officer, is presumed to know about Keta and the Grasso Memo, and so to know that he was not privileged to arrest a pawnshop owner or employee for doing what Cabrera did...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on June 30, 2009 (boomark / email).