Morning! I catch up every morning, and the whole "fruit" thing started to get me nervous. I started googling about police taking my phone, etc. This was one of the answers I found.
A recent answer from a lawyer states:
Al Rossi, former Criminal Defense Lawyer, Washington State, (1983-2016)
Answered Mar 8, 2019 · Author has 258 answers and 19.9k answer views
There are two issues: the seizure of the phone and the search of the phone’s contents.
First, the physical seizure of the phone. Unless you
voluntarily give the police your phone, if they don’t have a search warrant allowing them to seize it, with the exceptional of unusual circumstances, the police generally seize cell phones upon the arrest of the defendant.
As far as a search of the
contents on the phone,
unless the defendant consents, they must convince a magistrate that the phone is likely to contain either contraband (like child *advertiser censored*), or evidence of crime (financial records of drug deals, recipes for the manufacturers of methamphetamine). If the magistrate finds probable cause, he will issue the search warrant. If not, the defendant phone back eventually, examined. (Unless the phone itself was stolen.
The phone will generally be released, in any case, once the case is finished one way or another.
I'm pretty positive FD gave his cell phone willingly. (?) This is all just my opinion, the lawyers opinion and stuff I found while perusing the online search. I'm no lawyer, either - or purport to be anything "lawyerish".
https://www.quora.com/How-long-can-the-police-keep-your-phone-without-a-warrant-for-it[/QUOTE
