People v. Bullock

In People v. Bullock (1990) 226 Cal.App.3d 380, the defendant was arrested after a car in which he was riding was stopped by police and a warrant check revealed that two arrest warrants had been issued for his apprehension. A search of the defendant yielded an electronic pager which beeped at least 20 times while defendant was being booked. The officer retrieved the callers' numbers by pushing a button and displaying them on a screen on top of the pager. When the officer called the phone numbers, three or four of the individuals who answered requested delivery of cocaine. The pager's memory could store a maximum of four messages for retrieval at a later time. (Id. at pp. 383, 385.) A motion to suppress was denied and the denial was affirmed by the court of appeal. The appellate court stated that exigent circumstances excused the warrant requirement. First, a danger existed that incoming telephone numbers would be lost unless quickly retrieved by the officer, and second, there was a need to return the calls in a timely manner while the callers were likely to be at the numbers they had provided. The pager could only store four messages and at least 20 had been received during the booking process. Some would have been lost had the officer not timely retrieved them. (Id. at pp. 387-388.)