Impounding Vehicles, the Community Caretaking Doctrine, and Probable Cause Marijuana Vehicle Searches:  In an unpublished decision (Blakes v. Superior Court (Nov. 24, 2021) 2021 Cal.App. Unpub. LEXIS 7403), California’s Third District Court of Appeal discussed two legal theories for searching vehicles.  First, the Court ruled, once again, that unless the elements of the “Community Caretaking Doctrine” are met, you cannot impound a person’s vehicle and expect a pre-impound inventory search of that vehicle to be upheld.  In Blakes, gang detectives observed defendant driving a vehicle with illegally tinted windows.  Upon initiating a traffic stop, defendant lawfully parked his car in a parking space in a public parking lot.  Defendant was found to be unlicensed (his driver’s license having been suspended) so the officers decided to impound his car and do an inventory search of the car.  However, “(t)here was no evidence petitioner’s car blocked traffic or was at risk of theft or vandalism.”  Therefore, despite the officers’ agency having a policy allowing officers, at their discretion, to impound vehicles driven by unlicensed drivers, this particular vehicle, under these particular circumstances, did not meet the “community caretaking” requirements. I get individual officers arguing with me about this on a regular basis, telling me that a vehicle in these circumstances may be impounded and searched.  This case merely reiterates the now long-standing rule that “no, you may not,” absent the vehicle being “parked illegally, blocking traffic or passage, or at risk of theft or vandalism,” as required by the community caretaking doctrine. (See People v. Lee (2019) 40 Cal.App.5th 853, 867-869.) To be lawful, the impoundment of a vehicle must be both authorized by statute and in compliance with the Community Caretaking Doctrine.  In Blake, there is also a serious probable cause argument that defendant’s vehicle was subject to search based upon the odor of marijuana emanating from his car.  However, the Court held that without any evidence to the effect that defendant was driving while under the influence of marijuana, that he was smoking it while driving, or that he was in violation of any other marijuana-related restrictions, the search of the car could not be justified under a probable cause theory.  The simple odor of marijuana alone being insufficient (See People v. Fews (2018) 27 Cal.App.5th 553, and People v. Johnson (2020) 50 Cal.App.5th 620.), there was no evidence of any such violations in this case.  What this case really came down to is that the officers, as gang detectives, strongly believed that defendant—given some very telling furtive actions during the traffic stop and his known criminal history—was up to no good.  As it turned out, he was, being found to be in the illegal possession of a firearm, an unspecified amount of marijuana, and a bunch of different identification cards, driver’s licenses, and credit cards.  But as we know, the end does not justify the means by which such illegal activity is discovered.  The Appellate Court, therefore, overruling the trial court, rejected both an inventory search theory and a probable cause search theory, ruling that the evidence should have been suppressed.