Officer safety justifies truck search

U.S. v. Dennison, 2005 WL 1349966 (6/8/05) - The 10th refused to validate a search of a truck as incident to an arrest because the d.ct. did not make a finding as to the location of the arrested co-defendant at the time of the search. The search would be invalid on incident to arrest grounds if the arrestee had been removed from the scene. But, officer safety justified a search of the passenger compartment of the truck when the defendant remained by the truck because: (1) officers had reason to believe there were weapons in the truck, since the co-defendant had a number of arrest warrants, including for a weapons violation and "importantly" admitted involvement in a domestic dispute earlier in the evening; (2) unlike in the Ybarra case where all bar patrons were illegally searched because of a warrant for one of the patrons, officers could infer a "common enterprise" between the defendant and the co-defendant and that the defendant might want to hide evidence of wrongdoing; and (3) the events occurred at night in a high-crime area and officers couldn't tell if the defendant had weapons within his reach. It didn't matter that the defendant was handcuffed at the rear of the truck [he could have escaped] or that the officers did not act as though they were subjectively in fear [only objective factors matter].