Legal Question in Criminal Law in Florida

If a Police officer is inside your residence due to a medical 911 call, such as a guest having a heart attack, and during the time the officer is in your home another member of the residence tells the Police officer that in your bedroom is a locked closet where drugs can be found growing; Is this enough of a reason for the officer to now have the probable cause to force his way into said locked closet to check if the report given by the other member of the residence is true?

Additional info, assume the report given to the officer was solely verbal, no other supporting evidence such as pictures of drugs, drug paraphernalia, items and or tools to grow said drugs, the smell of drugs growing, or anything else besides the verbal report and the fact that the bedroom has a locked closet.

Please also answer this question if everything were the same except that instead of the officer being in the residence for a medical 911 call its now a 911 call due to a report of physical abuse between two out of three members of the residence. The third member of the residence is the one with the locked closet.

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions.


Asked on 7/03/13, 11:29 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Craig Epifanio Craig Epifanio, P.A.

Your questionS sound like homework questions. Regardless, there are too many factors to be answered on a forum such as this. If these issues have happened and these are not just homework questions, then you need to sit down with an attorney in person so that all facts can be explained and to see if anything the officers did was legal.

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Answered on 7/04/13, 12:36 pm


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