Police

Police

The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...

 officers in various jurisdictions have power to search members of the public, for example, for weapons, drugs and stolen property. This article concerns searches of members of the public who have not been arrested

Arrest

An arrest is the act of depriving a person of his or her liberty usually in relation to the purported investigation and prevention of crime and presenting into the criminal justice system or harm to oneself or others...

 and who are not held in detention

Detention of suspects

The detention of suspects is the process of keeping a person who has been arrested in a police-cell, remand prison or other detention centre before trial or sentencing. One criticism of pretrial detention is that eventual acquittal can be a somewhat hollow victory, in that there is no way to...

. For search powers in relation to those persons see Search on arrest and Searches in detention. For searches of property, rather than people, see search and seizure

Search and seizure

Search and seizure is a legal procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems whereby police or other authorities and their agents, who suspect that a crime has been committed, do a search of a person's property and confiscate any relevant evidence to the crime.Some countries have...

.

England and Wales

Police

Police

The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...

 powers in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

, allowing police officers to search members of the public for weapons, drugs, stolen property, terrorism

Terrorism

Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...

-related evidence or evidence of other crimes are known as stop and search powers.

United States

The police in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 may perform a cursory search of the persons outer clothing for their own safety. Terry v. Ohio

Terry v. Ohio

Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 , was a decision by the United States Supreme Court which held that the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures is not violated when a police officer stops a suspect on the street and frisks him without probable cause to arrest, if the police...

. However, they may not remove objects from pockets, as that would constitute a search. Minnesota v. Dickerson

Minnesota v. Dickerson

Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366 , was a 1993 Supreme Court of the United States case. Decided June 7, 1993, the Court unanimously held that, when a police officer who is conducting a lawful patdown search for weapons feels something that plainly is contraband, the object may be seized even...

. Police are allowed to remove weapons from persons, during the time they are present.