Around 2:30am I got a notification on my phone that it had detected movement outside my apartment. When I pulled up the live footage, there was a marked city police cruiser parked in the middle of the road, and an officer was seen in my driveway closing my car door and walking back to his cruiser, before he drove away. I hadn't paid for Nest Aware, so I didn't get a video capture of the officer. Nothing seems to have been taken (or planted) inside the vehicle. It was just super weird, and I haven't seen anything like it before. Plates are current and legal, no late car payments or unpaid traffic tickets. Was this legal without a warrant?
Bruce2019-02-25T13:04:23Z
You have a higher expectation of privacy in your driveway, so the officer would need probable cause with exigent circumstance to search your car. Could be as simple as someone else opening the door and he was closing it. Or it could be he was looking for someone that ran, it could be someone just committed a crime in the area with a car that looks like yours, or it could be the neighbors called in something suspicious. The only way to know if he had a legal reason is to ask him.
It can be legal as long as the police officer has a suspicion. It could be that your car is similar to one they're looking for. Since they've not 'forced entry', there is no damage either.
Of course this depends on where you’re living, I don’t know the laws of every location. If you are in the us or Canada most states or provinces do not allow officers to do a search without a warrant and reasonable suspicion, in that case they would have had to assume the car is locked and knock at the door before checking it out. If I were you I would report the unwarranted search incase of any issues this may cause you down the line. cops are out to prosecute.. the more trouble they cause the public the more arrests / speeding tickets / DUI’s they give the more money they bring into the system the more valuable they become in their line of work.. The one that doesn’t bring in the extra money, the one that lets the guy pass 10k’s over, the one that doesn’t arrest someone for just their race, the one that doesn’t plant false evidence, they see that cop as useless as they don’t bring in as much money to the system as the other one causing the trouble. Report this to authorities.