Owens v. Commonwealth

Opinion of the Court by

Justice MINTON.

This appeal requires us to decide whether a police officer working a traffic stop may exercise discretion to conduct a pat-down search for weapons of a vehicle’s passenger who exited the vehicle to accommodate a search of the vehicle incident to the driver’s arrest, even if the officer has no independent suspicion that the passenger is guilty of criminal conduct. Analyzing the automatic companion rule as a matter of first impression in Kentucky, we conclude that officer safety and public safety demand that the police officer have discretion to frisk the…