SUSPECT SEARCHES: ASSESSING POLICE BEHAVIOR UNDER THE U.S. CONSTITUTION*

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Abstract
Research Summary: This study examines police conformity to the law by evaluating direct observations of police searches in a medium‐sized American city against the applicable constitutional standards. Other researchers have investigated police misconduct, but the present study uses direct observations of police behavior. The research asks three questions: How frequently do patrol officers engage in searches? How often do their searches meet constitutional standards? What explains the proclivity to search unconstitutionally? The results paint a disquieting picture, with nearly one‐third of searches performed unconstitutionally and almost none visible to the courts. The research links police misconduct to the municipality's “war on drugs,” but surprisingly, the majority of constitutional violations was concentrated in a small number of otherwise model officers engaged in community policing.Policy Implications: Based on researchers’ direct field observations, this analysis suggests that studies of constitutional violations based on secondary or official records touch only the exposed tip of the population of police searches, and far more importantly, they may vastly understate the extent of constitutional violations. This is not the picture offered by Wilson and Kelling (1982), who claimed that the police previously had been constrained by legal restrictions. If anything, the data support Kelling's (1999) more recent contention that police officers are “pushing the Fourth Amendment” to the verge of or beyond what is legally permissible. There are substantial costs when the police search unconstitutionally, not only to the rights of individuals but also to the legitimacy of law enforcement. The present observations were conducted in the midst of a war on drugs, which raises the question of what a replication would show now that the nation's local law enforcement agencies have been enlisted in a war against terrorism.