Two men were approached in the concourse of an airport, a public area. The officers asked if they would talk to the officers and the men agreed to talk. Then they consented to a search. Immediately one officer reached into one man"s pants, to the crotch area, where he heard crinkling and retrieved a package. The other man was searched in the same way. It was suspected (presumably by the searching officers, but the article does not say) packages of crack cocaine.

             The court ruled that the men did not expect the officers to perform such an invasive search when they agreed to be searched. The court ruled that the search would have been legal if the officers had obtained permission from the individuals for that type of search. However, the officers had not done that. The court said that most people would not think that a reasonable search would include having his or her genitals touched.

             To quote the reading, "Whether an individual voluntarily consents to a search is only one of the issues. the court must also consider the scope of the consent." This is in tern dependent on what a reasonable person would have assumed, based on the communication between the officer and the person searched, about the scope of the search. In United States v. Blake, the two men searched were in the concourse of an airport, not in a security area. First, the officers asked to talk to the men. From the men"s point of view, the police might have had any number of reasons for talking to them that would have had absolutely nothing to do with whether these two men were doing anything illegal. They might have been looking for the owner of a suitcase that had been deserted. Maybe a purse snatching had just happened and the men might have seen something. If the men had refused to talk to the officers, the officers would have had to show cause before detaining them. This is a crucial part of our legal system and protects us from having police arbitrarily search anyone they want either to harass or on an unsupported hunch.