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Hirundo,

The point you might have missed (and it is not commonly understood or accepted) is that a frisk of the car is justified by the same grounds as the frisk of the person. The justification does not disappear when the driver exits the car. SCOTUS recognized that I have to get the driver out of the car to search it, so I must still be allowed to do the search even if the driver has left the car. So, even if the driver leaves the car on his own, I can still do the frisk of the car if it was justified at the time of the person getting out of the car.

A still gray area is if I can frisk the car if the driver gets out when I stop it and I later (after he is already out of the car) develop the grounds to frisk him. Most courts have ruled that it is justified, but there have been a few where it has been ruled against. A good part of the question is how well the officer can write.

Target1911 wrote:In the stop I described, AS I described it, what are the LEGAL boundaries of the LEO.
or..........
Officer, out of courtesy I would like to inform you I have a loaded pistol between the seats near my right leg. It is under the towel. How would you like to handle this so there are no misunderstandings.

Can he legally search the entire vehicle, or is he only allowed to search for the weapon I informed him of?

The legal boundaries are in between what you posted. He can then frisk you and the area you had immediate access to. He could check under your seat for example, but he could not open a locked container. The glove box and console can be opened if they are latched but not locked, and the trunk would be off limits totally. While most officers would also look under the passengers seat, it is really stretching the law if there was only one person in the car.

But, that is also assuming he can articulate why he thought there was a threat from this specific stop. I think a court would agree if you had told him there was a weapon but I am not sure I would under the say you told him.


And thanks for the kind words Flintknapper. I always figured that my job was easier if everyone knew the base rules to start with. Since I think we should have nothing to hide along these lines, I like to let people know what the limits are and show them our point of view.

Ask your friend to call the police station and file an informal complaint. Since he had broken no laws, there was no reason to handcuff him or search the vehicle. It was legal (sort of) under the guise of a frisk. For a frisk to be legal, the office must have an articulable reason why this particular stop put him in fear of danger to his life or health. I could see him saying he was in danger because he was told there was a loaded shotgun in the car. I disagree with him, but I can see his point of view and the SCOTUS says this one is pretty much based on the point of view of the officer at the time.

I think an informal complaint would be in order just to help the officer and department learn that having weapons in cars is strictly legal now. I want to get this point across to help prevent the problem from re-occurring.

Also, you might mention to your friend that he is under no legal obligation to volunteer any information on firearms in the vehicle (unless he has a CHL of course). Doing so obviously scared this officer, who it appears would have been better of in his ignorance. If he had remained ignorant of the situation, your friend would have been on his way quicker and with less hassles.