ANY DEVIATIONS FROM THE STATE POLICE INVENTORY-SEARCH POLICY WERE MINOR AND DID NOT WARRANT SUPPRESSION OF THE HANDGUN FOUND IN THE SEARCH; THERE WAS A TWO-JUSTICE DISSENT (THIRDD DEPT).

The Third Department, reversing County Court’s suppression of a handgun found in an inventory search, determined any deviations from the State Police’s inventory-search procedure were minor and did not warrant suppression of evidence seized during the search:

As for whether the trooper who conducted the search of the Kia sufficiently complied with that policy, County Court determined that the trooper did not because “there [were] a great many items and effects within the vehicle that are not memorialized within the inventory form” and because the form “was not filled out until some many hours — if not days — after the search was conducted.” * * *

The foregoing were “minor deviation[s] from procedure” under the circumstances of this case “and did not undermine the reasonableness of the limited search,” particularly because “there was no indication that the police were using the procedure as a pretext to search for incriminating evidence” to begin with … . It is not the role of either County Court or this Court to “micromanage the procedures used to search properly impounded” vehicles and, as the record leaves no question both that the towing]and inventory search of the Kia were justified and that the ensuing list of the vehicle’s contents sufficiently complied with State Police policy to meet the constitutional minimum, defendant’s motion to suppress should have been denied in its entirety … . People v Craddock, 2025 NY Slip Op 01016, Third Dept 2-20-25

Practice Point: Here the Third Department held that any deviations from the State Police inventory-search procedure were minor and did not warrant suppression. Two justices dissented.