Security and the Law: Alarming Police to Additional Violations
When police respond to an alarm and discover something unlawful for which they were not searching, is the search constitutional? In the state of Virginia, it is.
In this case, the police responded to a home security alarm and received no response to their knock at the front door or to the doorbell. The officer saw no lights in the house but discovered a broken window and an unlocked sliding glass door at the rear of the house.