In People v. Guins, 165 A.D.2d 549, appeal denied, 78 N.Y.2d 1076, 577 N.Y.S.2d 239 (1991) a fire investigator conducting a post-fire arson investigation in defendant's home discovered a security box he suspected contained contraband and summoned the police, who in turn seized the box and found it contained cocaine. Id. at 550-551. The court rejected the notion that an emergency (property protection) necessitated the box's removal: The emergency exception to the warrant requirement sanctions warrantless searches and seizures only in limited circumstances presenting an immediate danger to life or property ... This exception must be narrowly construed because it is susceptible of abuse and may be used to validate an otherwise unlawful arrest or seizure ... Thus, "there is a strong factual inference that an entry which results in an arrest or seizure of evidence was for the purpose of effecting an arrest or seizure" and "that inference should prevail unless the police establish a different purpose justified by objective evidence of a privileged basis for making the entry" ... There is no such evidence in this case ... The conduct of the police and fire officials at defendant's apartment was constitutionally circumscribed by the exigency of the fire. Although the protection of valuable property of a fire victim from vandals and looters is a legitimate governmental interest ... the legitimacy of the interest does not undercut the necessity for a warrant to safeguard the substantial privacy interests implicated by entry into defendant's home by the police." (Id. at 552-553.)