State v. Townsend (2nd District Court of Appeals July 16th, 2010)

The Deputy stopped Townsend because an obstruction on the vehicle's license tag covered the expiration sticker. The registration was for a KIA, but Townsend was driving a Chrysler Sebring. When Deputy Koehler ran the license, he discovered that Townsend had a business purpose only license. Deputy Koehler arrested Townsend for violation of his restricted license, handcuffed him, and placed him in the back of the patrol car.

The defendant's vehicle was on the shoulder of the road on the county easement and was obstructing the bicycle lane. The Deputy determined that Townsend was the primary registered owner of the vehicle and that Townsend's wife was the registered co-owner. No one was at the scene who could take possession of the vehicle, and Deputy Koehler acknowledged that he did not attempt to contact Townsend's wife to ask if she could remove the vehicle.

When asked about the impound procedure, the Deputy noted that the purpose is for “the safety of the vehicle's contents and property for the owner” and “for safety on the obstruction of a right of way.” In his police report, he wrote that he conducted a search incident to arrest. He did not write that the search was an inventory search but testified that the search was both incident to arrest and to impounding the vehicle.

Because the vehicle was obstructing the right of way, the Deputy began the impound procedure for the vehicle. He followed standard operating procedures of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. He searched the vehicle to inventory its contents and found a crack cocaine rock on the driver's seat and a glass crack cocaine pipe under the driver's seat. He then charged Townsend with possession of cocaine and possession of paraphernalia.

The Court held that the Deputy's  search was a proper inventory search, conducted in accordance with standardized police procedures, regardless of the label that Officer Koehler gave to the search in his written report. Townsend's vehicle obstructed the right of way, and Deputy Koehler was not required to offer an alternative to impoundment before he had the vehicle towed. The lower court did not make any finding that Deputy Koehler was acting in bad faith. Rather, the court made the specific finding that Deputy Koehler followed standard impound procedures “as to the search, inventory, and towing of Defendant's vehicle which had to be removed from public property.” Thus, we conclude that the search was valid as an inventory search.

Therefore, the current law is that there is a distiction between "a search incident to arrest" and an "inventory search" that is based upon the facts not upon an officer's articulation in his report.