The defendant was found guilty by a jury of the offense of possession of heroin, contrary to MCLA 335.341(4)(a); MSA 18.1070 (41)(4)(a), and was sentenced to serve 2 to 4 years in prison. He appeals as of right and asserts four аssignments of error. None requires reversal.
On November 26, 1972, at about 4:50 a.m. two police officers driving on Eight Mile Road in Oak Park observed the defendant slumped over the wheel of his car, which was parked with the motor running in a parking lot adjacent to a motel. The officers pulled into the lot, approached the vehicle and aroused the defendant, who appeared to be either unconscious or asleep. The officers questioned the defendant briefly about what he was doing there and also asked him to produce an operator’s license.
The defendant was questioned further as to the identity of a white substance observed around his nostrils. In response defendant indicated that he had been snorting cocaine earlier in the day.
The officers then took the operator’s license and utilized the LEIN (Law Enforcement Information Network) computer system to determine if there *522 were any outstanding warrants for the defendant’s аrrest. The record check revealed an outstanding warrant for non-support and the defendant was arrested on that charge and immediately transported to the Oak Park police station.
During the course of the booking procedure at the police station the defendant was subjected to a routine inventory search prior to being placed in the cell block. As he was pulling his shirt over his head, one of the officers observed a shiny piece of tinfoil folded into the defendant’s hair. The tinfoil was seized and opened up by one of the police officers and found to contain a white powder substance later identified as heroin. The amount was determined to be approximately 6.3 grains (.4 grams).
The defendant first contends that the initial рolice contact violated his Fourth Amendment rights and that any evidence obtained subsequent to the parking lot encounter, including the tinfoil packet found at the police station, should thеrefore have been rendered inadmissible.
Mapp v Ohio,
The defendant refers us to a long series of state and Federal decisions in support of his general contention that the behavior which aroused the police officer’s suspicion did not warrant investigatory intrusion in the form of a record check which eventually revealed the existence of the non-support warrant for which he was arrested.
However, not every encounter between a law enforcement official and a private citizen is a "stop” for Fourth Amendment purposes. The law recognizеs an important factual/constitutional distinction drawn between arrests based on probable
*523
cause and street investigations which may ultimately lead to arrests. See
People v Rivers,
With this distinction in mind we proceed to analyze the police activity in the instant case. After observing a human form slumped over the steering wheel of an automobile (which was parked in a hotel parking lot at 4:30 in thе morning with the motor running) the officers’ first step was to approach the vehicle and arouse the defendant. Next they asked him what he was doing there and for his operator’s license. When, in response to police questioning, the defendant identified^ a white substance around his nostrils as cocaihe, the officers took the defendant’s driver’s license and conducted a warrant check through the LEIN system.
The action taken by the police officers here is, for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, comparable to the momentary police-community contact approved in
People v Rivers, supra.
Quoting from
United States v Lee,
" 'Revealed here is the kind of momentary contact which is and must be recognized as necessary to a sound police-community relationship and its commensuratе effective law enforcement.’ ” Rivers, supra, at pp 568-569.
The allegation made by defendant that the warrant check was utilized merely to gain some information on which to base an arrest is entirely meritless. A LEIN check is an unobtrusive investigative tool employed by the police to retrieve information regarding an individual’s driving record and to determine whether there are any outstanding warrants for his arrest — аll matters of *524 public record. As such, a LEIN check does not involve an unlawful disregard for individual liberties.
The next contention made by the defendant is that the tinfoil packet found by the police officers was obtained as a result of an illegal search. It is well established that "information obtained by a police officer through the exercise of his senses as he observes articlеs being removed by a prisoner from his pockets and transferred to a receptacle for safekeeping is not information obtained as a result of a search”.
People v Henry Robinson,
Basic to every analysis of a search and seizure issue is the rule that warrantless searches are "per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment — subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions”.
Coolidge v New Hampshire,
In Michigan, contrary to many other jurisdictions,
1
jailhouse inventory searches are viewed as incident to incarceration and not as incident to the
*525
arrest. See
People v Dixon,
Such an examination and inventorying of an arrestee’s personal effects which takes place at the police station and not at the scene of arrest — and at some time remote from the arrest — can hardly be justified under the traditional concept of being incident to the arrest. Here the legality оf the seizure of the tinfoil packet rests upon a properly conducted custody search required for the safety of the prisoner and of law enforcement personnel..
The subsеquent opening of the packet does not remove this particular search from the protective scope of the jailhouse-inventory exception to the warrant requirement. It would be naive and pointless to assume that law enforcement officials may store an arrestee’s personal effects without first determining what it is they are inventorying.
It should be noted that in sustаining the validity of the instant search this Court is not unmindful of
People v Trudeau,
The defendant next asserts for the first time as еrror that the prosecution failed to prove possession of a usable amount of heroin and that his conviction should therefore be reversed on the authority of
People v Harrington,
Finally the defendant maintains that the trial judge’s instruction tо the jury that they find the defendant innocent of the offense charged before proceeding to the lesser included offenses was coercive, unduly restrictive and therefore reversiblе error.
People v Ray,
The trial court instructed the jury as follows:
"So you will have these three charges to consider when you retire to your deliberations in the jury room. First, the charge — the initial charge — unlawful possession of narcotics. Secоnd, attempted unlawful possession of narcotics. And third, use of narcotics.”
*527 "To repeat, there is one of four possible verdicts in this case. First, that the Defendant is guilty as charged of possession — unlawful possession — of narcotics. If not that, second, he may be guilty of the included offense of attempted unlawful possession of narcotics. If not that, the third included offense, he may be guilty of use of narcotics. And the fourth possible verdict, of course, is not guilty.
"I will repeat. You have one of four possible verdicts. I’ll start with not guilty first, just not guilty. Number 2, guilty of the main charge, unlawful possession of narcotics. If you find him not guilty of that, consider the included offenses; attempted unlawful possession of narcotics or use of narcotics.”
This language, unlike that used in
Ray,
did not require unanimous agreement on defendant’s innoсence of the offense charged before the lesser offenses could be considered and was therefore entirely proper.
People v Robert Hall,
Affirmed.