Mathias, J.
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… Sams had recently finished work on a home remodeling job and was headed for home … driving a family member’s truck. … Before leaving town, Sams stopped at a fast-food restaurant and purchased his supper to go, eating as he drove.
At the same time, a sworn officer and a trainee reserve officer of the Greencastle Police Department (“GPD”), Christopher Jones (“Jones”) and Justin Tate (“Tate”), were patrolling Greencastle’s streets in their squad car. … Tate noticed the truck had no working taillights. …
The officers approached Sams and asked for his driver’s license and the truck’s registration. … Next to Sams on the passenger seat and center console sat a fast-food bag and a hamburger box. … after several minutes, the officers discovered that Sams was driving on a suspended license for the second time in ten years, a misdemeanor criminal offense.
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Jones chose to issue Sams a summons for the misdemeanor rather than arrest him. The officers returned to the truck to tell Sams the truck would be towed and to give him the summons. … The officers patted Sams down and told him he was free to leave. Sams left the truck and walked to the gas station to wait.
Around this time, a second reserve officer and a second sworn officer, Kyle Lee (“Lee”), arrived on the scene … Jones and Lee began to inventory the contents of the truck before the tow truck arrived. …
From the driver’s side, Jones noticed the fast-food bag … Lee opened the bag. Inside the bag was the hamburger box. Inside the hamburger box were lettuce, ketchup, and more than twenty-five grams of methamphetamine.
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… Sams was charged with Class A misdemeanor driving while license suspended and Level 3 felony possession of methamphetamine, later reduced to Level 4 felony possession. … Sams moved to suppress the methamphetamine. … The court denied Sams’s motion …. Sams sought certification for interlocutory appeal, which the court denied …
… The jury returned guilty verdicts on both the misdemeanor driving while suspended and the felony possession charges. … Sams was sentenced to time already served for the misdemeanor, and to ten years, nine and one-half executed, in the Indiana Department of Correction for the felony.
… Sams challenges the admission of the methamphetamine as the inadmissible fruit of an unlawful search under the Fourth Amendment. …
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The touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness. Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 403 (2006). … it is reasonable for police to search the car and make an inventory of anything inside it for administrative reasons completely unconnected to criminal investigation: to protect the person’s property and to protect themselves, as well as anyone who takes custody of the car after them, from legal liability and from physical harm. …Gibson v. State, 733 N.E.2d 945, 956 (Ind. Ct. App. 2000)…
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At the time of Sams’s arrest, the GPD had a written policy on impounding and inventorying cars (“the written policy”). … “When the driver/owner of a vehicle is arrested, and if the vehicle is subject to a lawful impound, the arresting officer will make an inventory of the vehicle for valuables.”
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However, this is not what GPD officers actually do. Rather, a “standard check of the vehicle” means “[m]ak[ing] sure there is nothing valuable or hazardous and check[ing] the vehicle from front to back. …” (“the unwritten policy”).
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The written policy thus conflicts both with itself and with the unwritten policy. …
In addition, the unwritten policy alone vests GPD officers with an excessive discretion. …
We conclude that, as it existed at the time of Sams’s arrest, the GPD inventory regime did not and could not sufficiently regulate inventory searches conducted under it. … In short, vitiated by excessive discretion, GPD “policy” was really none at all.
Even if GPD inventory policies could pass muster, neither the written nor the unwritten policy was actually followed in this case. … The written policy … appears to contemplate inventory only in cases of arrest. … However, Sams was not arrested before Jones and Lee inventoried his truck. …
Second, as to the unwritten policy, to the extent that any standardized criteria for deciding what is “valuable” exist, they appear routinely to require excluding from inventory items like Sams’s discarded fast-food bag, from which he had been seen eating minutes before. …
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We conclude that, where, as here, the item searched would not have been the target of a well-regulated inventory search, such that the item would not have been searched at all but for the criminal suspicions of the searching officer, the search is pretextual and therefore unreasonable. …
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The trial court abused its discretion by ruling the contrary. All fruits of the inventory search of Sams’s truck were inadmissible. … We therefore vacate Sams’s conviction and remand with direction to grant Sams’s motion to suppress and for any further proceedings required in accordance with this opinion.
Reversed.
Kirsch, J., and Robb, J., concur.