Distorting the concept of "hot pursuit"

Dave has a post up at TuCents about the recent California Supreme Court decision which allows warrantless entry for police seeking individuals suspected of driving under the influence:

OK then, the police suspect (or claim to suspect) that a person may have been driving under the influence. So they bust in the door if it isn’t opened for them. Arrest the suspect. All without having to demonstrate probable cause.

Now the real fun starts.

Search the entire house for weapons to ’secure the area’. Look around for other interesting evidence. The infamous ‘arms length’ search for anything else they can find. What the heck, bring in the drug dog from the back seat as well.

When you’re done, drop the DUI for lack of evidence, but charge the poor dupe, or anyone else in the house, with everything else from drugs to child abuse, based on the warrantless search.

It's already been pointed out on other blogs that this is merely a codification of what is done in practice anyway: the difference is that this removes any shred of doubt about the sanctity of the home or the presumption of innocence.

In a comment on Dave's post, "gottsegnet" writes:

Interesting. In most states, social workers will, based on an anonymous phone call, demand to enter your home and question your children in private. They will examine the children and inspect the home. Most of these result in removal from the home on charges other than those they came in on. No warrant…not even a court hearing before losing your children due to an anonymous phone call.

So, not only do the police in California no longer have to go through the bother of getting a warrant, the social service workers were ahead of the police in having this sort of power. It doesn't give you a particularly warm feeling about individuals' right to security of person and property, does it?