Police as Community Caretakers: Caniglia v. Strom

Abstract

Among government officials, police have a near monopoly on the use of physical force and the greatest incentive to hide their motives. An expansive interpretation of Caniglia v. Strom, the recent Supreme Court decision rejecting a freestanding caretaker exception, would help curb both police misuse of force and police use of pretexts to pursue illegitimate agendas, because it would limit police-initiated searches and seizures purporting to be for benign purposes. It might also provide doctrinal support for the fledgling movement to de-police those government services that, whatever might be the tradition, do not require the intervention of armed individuals trained to fight crime. It may be that, outside of real emergencies, the last thing we want police to do is function as “caretakers” of the community.

Keywords: Caniglia, caretaker exception, special needs searches, police & mentally ill