STATE JUSTICES OKAY POLICE SEARCH OF PARKED CARS WITHOUT WARRANTS

Police do not need a warrant to search an unoccupied parked car if they have
reliable information the vehicle is being used to store drugs and there is a
chance someone might move the car, the state Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

The decision was described yesterday as a major victory for law enforcement,
but public defenders said it still affords residents greater protections
than the federal courts have granted on search and seizures.

New Jersey courts already have allowed police to conduct searches without
warrants after they have pulled over cars in situations where drivers could
ditch the drugs. The latest decision for the first time addresses unoccupied
parked cars.

Though the owner was under arrest, the keys confiscated and an officer
posted to watch the vehicle, the police did not need a search warrant to
search the car from which Alfred Cooke, a Jersey City man, was allegedly
dealing drugs, the court said.

In a 7-0 decision, written by Justice Peter Verniero the court said police
would have risked loss or destruction of evidence if they had waited for a
search warrant.

The court ruling reverses two lower court orders suppressing evidence and
means Cooke, 40, will have to go to trial on charges he was distributing
marijuana, cocaine and heroin within a school zone.

Philip C. Chronakis, the assistant Hudson County prosecutor who argued the
case for the state, described the court ruling as "a victory for common
sense and for police safety."

Requiring police to guard a car used to store drugs in a high crime area
while other officers obtain a search warrant places police at an unnecessary
risk, Chronakis said.

"It's certainly a very good opinion for law enforcement," said Lisa Sarnoff
Gochman, a deputy attorney general who had supported the Hudson County
Prosecutor's Office.

The decision lets police conduct a search when they have "probable cause" to
believe there are drugs, guns, or other contraband in a parked car but it is
not practical to get a search warrant, she said.

Susan Brody, the assistant public defender who represented Cooke, said she
was "disappointed" the court did not agree to suppress the evidence. But she
said the general rule pronounced by the court still provides greater
protection to New Jersey residents than the federal courts have granted
nationally.

The court ruling arises from events that occurred three years ago in Jersey
City. In April 1997, police received a tip that Cooke was selling drugs
stored in a gray Ford Escort on Duncan Avenue, near a housing complex known
for drug trafficking.

Two weeks later, a police officer conducted a surveillance of the location
and witnessed Cooke in the parking lot near a gray Escort engaged in a
transaction the officer believed was a drug sale. When Cooke left the area
in a Hyundai, the cop who had him under surveillance alerted other officers
in the area and Cooke was arrested.

Following the arrest, those officers returned to the scene with the keys
they got from Cooke and searched the Escort even though they did not have a
warrant. They found cocaine, heroin and marijuana, the court decision said.

A trial court and a state appellate division panel ruled the evidence should
be suppressed because the police did not have a warrant. The state's highest
court disagreed.

Though emphasizing the preference for a warrant, the court said police acted
properly because a third person was aware the drugs were in the car and
Cooke had been arrested.

The court said the lower court placed too much emphasis on the fact that the
police had the car keys. "Simply because the police were in possession of
one set of keys does not logically preclude the possibility that one or more
third parties had another set of keys to gain access to the Escort,"
Verniero wrote.

Prosecutors had asked the court to adopt a standard that would have made
such a search even easier. They wanted the New Jersey Supreme Court to issue
a decision consistent with a 1996 U.S. Supreme Court decision saying police
could conduct warrantless searches of cars as long as there is probable
cause.

Yesterday, the justices of the state's high court said they will continue
New Jersey's two-prong test of requiring police to show both "probable
cause" for the search, and that an emergency exists making obtaining a
search warrant impractical.