Apartment complex has an off duty resident police officer accompany the maintenance man on his routine rounds to do maintenance and inspect the condition of the apartment complex. You guessed it...there in plain view are a few fine examples of illegal recreational pharmaceuticals...what to do...what to do??? Grab the goodies? Secure the apartment and get a warrant? Back out of the apartment apologizing profusly, begging forgivness and considering a new line of work???
Should the apartment complex reconsider their gun carrying tool carrier policy?
Anyone see any problems...thanks from scenic Waller County

Your facts are minimal. Did the apt owner call for assistance by the maintinence man? Did the rental agreement allow for maintenance man to come in unannounced? What did the rental agrement say about entry by apt. personnel when the renter is not present?

Some good points, above. The reference in the scanario uses the term "plain view," which would suggest in a legal sense that the officer had a right to be where he was. If this was in fact, a "plain view" situation, then no "search" has occurred under the 4th Amendment, and the officer would certainly be within his rights to seize the contraband, and probably secure the premises while obtaining a warrant to search the rest of the apartment.

But I think the previous poster is correct, I'd want to know more before running into court with this case.

Regardless of the legality of the search I would not be suprised if the rental agreement allowed the apartment owners to immediately terminate the lease.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Fred Edwards:
Apartment complex has an off duty resident police officer accompany the maintenance man on his routine rounds to do maintenance and inspect the condition of the apartment complex.

---

Is that kind of a rough complex, Freddie? I mean, is that the standard these days, an armed escort for the maintenance man?

As the others said, lots of issues arise here.

The fact that one of the "maintenance men" is an off-duty cop is irrelevant. If during the routine rounds, these two are normally permitted to enter without notice, then I think there is implied consent to the entry and no search and a valid seizure. If the practice is to routinely conduct a search once inside, that is a different story.

The apartment complex has a practice of having an off-duty cop go on rounds with the Maint. guy so that they can conduct inspections of the inside of the apartments. Why is it necessary to have an off duty cop inspect the insides of the Apts.? It seems to me that this is being done in the hopes of finding contraband as I can see no legitimate purpose. I would also suspect that this is some kind of public housing project (i.e. state owned or state runned), therefore, a state action is involved here with the placement of the cop inside of the Apt. So the 4th amend. covers the search.

There could be legitimate reasons for having the cop accompany the maintenance man. Is he looking for damage to the apartments, pets, or other lease violations that are detrimental to the owner's interests? That the state may subsidise the rents does not make it state action for a complex employee to perform legitimate inspections. As long as the cop is not accompanying the maintenance man as a pretext for finding contraband, what is the problem?

I've lived in apartments where on site security accompanied the maintenance workers on routine repairs. It's more for the peace of mind of the residents than anything else. Maybe a young girl doesn't want to be left alone with a creepy maintenance man. Maybe some guy will come home to his front door ajar and jump to the wrong conclusion. Having a guy there in uniform gives the intrusion an immediate air of authority.

As long as the officer's presence isn't a pretext, it's certainly legitimate and reasonable.