In what circumstances will a police officer who receives a radio call to search for a suspect vehicle have to specify his probable cause to the arresting officer?

In People v. Poehner, supra, 16 Cal.App.3d 481, 94 Cal.Rptr. 94, the border patrolmen who ultimately conducted the search and seizure were informed by another officer of the suspect vehicle's color, model, its license plate number, and the fact it turned onto a side road with its lights turned off. Although it is part of a patrolman's duty to conduct narcotics investigation, it is certainly not his or her only duty. Even though the arresting patrolmen most likely believed they needed to investigate the suspect vehicle for narcotics violations, the relaying officer did not need to specify his probable cause to the arresting officers to make their search and seizure valid, so long as the first officer could show the basis for his probable cause.

In People v. Ngaue (1992) 8 Cal.App.4th 896, 10 Cal.Rptr.2d 521, one police officer relayed a radio call to another police officer to retrieve a gun in defendant's bathroom. The first officer heard the gun fall to the bathroom floor, and another fellow officer told him he saw the gun on the bathroom's floor. Although the officer who actually retrieved the gun neither heard nor saw the gun in the bathroom, the court upheld that officer's warrantless search and seizure. In other words, the retrieving officer had no knowledge of any probable cause but was simply ordered to retrieve the gun by another [59 Cal.App.4th 1556] officer. The retrieving officer could very well have conjectured the reason he must retrieve the gun was to protect other police officers. However, the probable cause behind the order to seize the gun was never directly communicated to the officer. The court did not consider this deficiency to be an obstacle when it validated the seizure of the gun because the other officers' knowledge of probable cause that went into forming the officers' collective knowledge was sufficient to make the seizure reasonable.

Policy considerations also strongly suggest officers and investigators need not inform the final arresting officer of the precise nature of the probable cause they possess. The requirement that an officer furnishing probable cause which other officers use to justify an arrest or search show the basis for his information in court arose out of concern that without such requirement, officers might resort to manufacturing their own probable cause. Without this requirement, "every utterance of a police officer would instantly and automatically acquire the dignity of official information; 'reasonable cause' or 'reasonable grounds' ... could be conveniently fashioned out of a two-step communication; and all Fourth Amendment safeguards would dissolve as a consequence." (People v. Pease (1966) 242 Cal.App.2d 442, 449, 51 Cal.Rptr. 448.)