Police The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and th ...

officers in various jurisdictions have power to search members of the public, for example, for weapons, drugs and stolen property. This article concerns searches of members of the public who have not been

arrested An arrest is the act of apprehending and taking a person into custody (legal protection or control), usually because the person has been suspected of or observed committing a crime. After being taken into custody, the person can be questi ...

and who are not held in detention. For search powers in relation to those persons see Search on arrest and Searches in detention. For searches of property, rather than people, see

search and seizure Search and seizure is a procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems by which police or other authorities and their agents, who, suspecting that a crime has been committed, commence a search of a person's property and confisca ...

England and Wales

powers in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

and

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

, allowing police officers to search members of the public for weapons, drugs, stolen property,

terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

-related evidence or evidence of other

crimes In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Can ...

are known as stop and search powers.

United States

Searches in the United States are governed by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which generally requires that the police obtain a warrant before a search is legally permissible. However, certain exceptions to the warrant requirement exist. After stopping a person based upon the reasonable belief that the person might be engaged in unlawful activity, or following a routine encounter such as a traffic stop, the police in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

may perform a cursory search of the persons outer clothing for their own safety.

Terry v. Ohio ''Terry v. Ohio'', 392 U.S. 1 (1968), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that it is constitutional for American police to "stop and frisk" a person they reasonably suspect to be armed and involved in a crime. Sp ...

. However, unless the object is reasonably identified by feel as a possible weapon or contraband, they may not remove objects from pockets, as that would constitute a search. Minnesota v. Dickerson. When performing a pat-down following a Terry stop that results in the officer identifying a weapon by feel, a police officer is allowed to remove the weapon from the person's clothing.

References

{{law-enforcement-stub Searches and seizures de:Leibesvisitation

England and Wales

United States

See also

References