The following is a computer-generated transcription, some grammar and spelling errors may be inherent

Hey guys, it's Anthony Bandiero here with blue to gold law enforcement training. And today I'm bringing another roadside chat from Studio.

Today's question is, what is a cat out of bag search? So this ties in with another video that I made about private searches. Just to remind you a private search is not a Fourth Amendment search. It does not have to be reasonable. We don't care if it would offend the Fourth Amendment. If you know if you did it, if the police are not involved in it, and they didn't encourage it. It's not a fourth research period, you can use the evidence. Now let's talk about this related issue, which is, what if somebody sees something right from a private area? Like say for example, they bring you a backpack from the from a roommates bedroom, right? And they say, look, there's drugs in here.

There is a doctrine out there called cat out of the back search and allows officers to conduct the same private search that the private person did without offending the Fourth Amendment.

So let's kind of dive a little dive into this and explain what's going on here. So let's walk through this. So imagine a roommate suspects that their that their fellow occupant is selling drugs. One day, they go into the occupants bedroom, snooped around and open up drawers and look in closets and look into a backpack. And lo and behold, they find two ounces of methamphetamine,

shocked and pissed off, because their roommate is, you know, is they confirm what they are doing. They bring the backpack to you at the police station.

The legal question is, what can you do with that backpack? And the answer is the exact same thing the private person did before they entered the police station. That means that if an officer unzipped the backpack, and looked inside and saw those two ounces of methamphetamine, that officer could seize that meth as plain view. And here's why the cat is out of the bag. In other words, the private person, the actual defendant in this case, has lost his reasonable expectation of privacy as to what is in the backpack? Think about him? Is it reasonable for a person to have this private search conducted by their roommate or talk about the defendants point of view, and their roommate found the drugs and and brings it to the inn brings it to the police station? And that roommate says, hey, look, I know what's in here. You know, there's, there's this substance that looks just like, you know, like narcotics is the way it's packaged. And maybe they have personal experience with it. But my point is, you know, there is probable cause that there's evidence in this bag. It's not reasonable anymore, that the defendant has privacy as to those contents. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. But the Supreme Court said in a case called Jacobson, the cat is out of the bag, we know what's in it. Therefore, the police can do the exact same search.