Officer smells marijuana. Searches the car. Finds nothing.

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]This officer stopped the vehicle. He smelled the odor of raw marijuana emanating from the vehicle. He got everybody to step out. So, there's multiple people in the vehicle. Let's say that there's at least two people, a driver and a passenger. The passenger has a cross-body bag on their person.

[00:00:13]So, you already see the problem, right?

[00:00:15]The officer asked for consent to search the bag. The passenger says, "No."

[00:00:21]They search the vehicle. I guess they left I guess they left the bag on the person.

[00:00:25]They search the vehicle. They find no marijuana. But they did smell the marijuana. So, where could it possibly be?

[00:00:31]>> On the passenger. So, now the person's already said no. Mhm.

[00:00:35]>> What are we going to do, right? That's I guess that's the Unless you want to know some more facts, but um I guess one question is First of all, can we force the person to leave the bag in the car? No.

[00:00:47]What's the problem there?

[00:00:48]>> It's more like a pocket than it is It's it's basically their person than it is a bag that maybe they would have just left behind.

[00:00:54]>> I agree. I'm You know, I'm not saying this is a slam dunk black and white, but the case law would tend to indicate that the container has to be sitting on its own to be considered a container for the motor vehicle exception. Now, I don't think we have any problem if the if the bag was on the floorboard.

[00:01:11]>> Right.

[00:01:11]>> Leave it there.

[00:01:12]>> Yep.

[00:01:12]>> Even you know, cuz first of all, you have probable cause. But if it's on their person, it's almost like a you know, a wallet and so forth. So, I think that's the first problem. What about patting the bag down?

[00:01:22]>> I'll see an issue with that. I mean, they're commonly used to carry weapons with the drugs. You can commonly articulate drugs and guns.

[00:01:29]>> Yep. And the officers may be outnumbered. There might be some other factors at night, which is you know, it's harder to see what they're doing.

[00:01:36]You know, maybe a high high crime area.

[00:01:38]Maybe they already know what their history and so forth. Now, we don't you know, we're not going to articulate the armed and dangerous for them, but it's probably not hard to articulate armed and dangerous, especially when a person has a container that is often associated with weapons. Okay. So, now fine. We patted it down from the outside, whatever. We don't you know, whatever that looks like. We don't feel any weapon. We search the car. We find nothing.

[00:02:00]Now you know what the cops want to do?

[00:02:02]>> Search the driver and the passenger.

[00:02:03]>> Okay, what's your what's your advice there?

[00:02:06]>> I'll see you issue with that. I mean process of elimination. You already searched the car. Find anything. You should get to go with the driver. That's not really an issue. So you you try searching driver. You'll find anything.

[00:02:17]All you got left is the passenger. It makes sense. You just have to articulate it.

[00:02:20]>> Now would it matter would be nice if you catch somebody marijuana.

[00:02:23]>> It would.

[00:02:23]>> Especially coming from that person if you did. But what we teach here at Blue to Gold is that in order to search people, you need two things. PC for them, which you have here.

[00:02:33]And a recognized exception, which would be agency search incident to arrest, something like that, right? Because if they have drugs on their person, will you ever see those drugs again?

[00:02:40]>> Nope.

[00:02:40]>> No. So this is a this is a this is not a a slam dunk case. There's going to be a lot of articulation here. However, it is a situation where it's reality and you're going to have to deal with what you have. I think ultimately they can work this out. I agree. Okay.