Can a police officer search a person’s personal information incidental to an arrest?
British Columbia, Canada
The following excerpt is from R. v. Downey, 2019 BCPC 310 (CanLII):
Pursuant to the common law, police officers may search person’s incidental to a lawful arrest. This power is not automatic to all arrests. Rather, for a search to be incidental to an arrest the objectives of the search must be related to the arrest such as a search for evidence, officer safety, or devices of escape: Cloutier v. Langlois, 1990 CanLII 122 (SCC), [1990] 1 S.C.R. 158.
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