Summers

Richard Arnold Summers lived in a small trailer. 1 When Anaheim police officers approached it to serve him with an arrest warrant, they encountered Selena Poer on the way out. She said she lived *290 there with Summers and another man who was in the nearby trailer park laundromat. She agreed to accompany the officers while they talked to Summers.

Inside the trailer the officers found Summers sleeping. They awakened him, and he identified himself. Told they had a warrant for his arrest, he stood up, put on his pants, and was handcuffed. As one officer put the cuffs on, the other kept an eye on Poer and watched for the possible return of the absent male occupant of the trailer.

One officer escorted Summers toward the door while the other patted down the bed where he had been sleeping. As he moved the pillow, he saw a sawed-off shotgun between the mattress and the headboard. No one was certain whether Summers was just inside or just outside the trailer door when the shotgun was first observed, but he was roughly 10 feet away.

Of course, finding the shotgun — contraband in itself in its sawed-off condition — considerably upped the ante on the service of the warrant.…

Concurring. — My colleagues have gotten the result right, but have approached that result so timorously as to water down the protection afforded law enforcement officers by the Constitution. There are occasions in which proper interpretation of the Fourth Amendment has the primary effect of protecting not our citizenry, but our law enforcement officers. (See, e.g., Terry v. Ohio (1968) 392 U.S. 1 [ 88 S.Ct. 1868 , 20 L.Ed.2d 889 ] [stop and frisk]; Pennsylvania v. Mimms (1977) 434 U.S. 106 [ 98 S.Ct. 330 , 54 L.Ed.2d 331 ] [ordering driver out of car in traffic stop]; Maryland v. Buie (1990) 494 U.S. 325 [ 110 S.Ct. 1093 , 108 L.Ed.2d 276 ] [protective sweep of residence during in-home arrest]; People v. Glaser *292 (1995) 11 Cal.4th 354 [ 45 Cal.Rptr.2d 425 , 902 P.2d 729 ] [detention of bystander during service of search warrant]; People v. Frye (1998) 18 Cal.4th 894, 989-990 [ 77 Cal.Rptr.2d 25 , 959 P.2d 183 ] [warrantless entry on domestic violence call].) This is one such occasion, and choosing the route of least resistance to avoid recognizing that protection does a disservice to both them and the Constitution.

My colleagues describe this as “a simple Chimel . . . case,”…

CROSBY, Acting P.J.

Richard Arnold Summers lived in a small trailer. [1] When Anaheim police officers approached it to serve him with an arrest warrant, they encountered Selena Poer on the way out. She said she lived there with Summers and another man who was in the nearby trailer park laundromat. She agreed to accompany the officers while they talked to Summers.

Inside the trailer the officers found Summers sleeping. They awakened him, and he identified himself. Told they had a warrant for his arrest, he stood up, put on his pants, and was handcuffed. As one officer put the cuffs on, the other kept an eye on Poer and watched for the possible return of the absent male occupant of the trailer.

One officer escorted Summers toward the door while the other patted down the bed where he had been sleeping. As he moved the pillow, he saw a sawed-off shotgun between the mattress and the headboard. No one was certain whether Summers was just inside or just outside the trailer door when the shotgun was first observed, but he was roughly 10 feet away.

Of course, finding the shotgun — contraband in itself in its sawed-off condition — considerably upped the ante on the service of the…