A law enforcement officer must have reasonable suspicion to conduct a traffic stop, however, a full custodial arrest is not required.

He urged that the Chimel-search-incident-to-arrest framework continue to be applied when a full custodial arrest is made.

The Court held that officer "Turek was authorized (though not required) to make a custodial arrest without balancing costs and benefits or determining whether Atwater's arrest was in some sense necessary."

Along with the power to make a custodial arrest for any misdemeanor traffic offense, officers have the Constitutional authority to make a suspicionless search of any person incident to a custodial arrest.

Gant, however, did not limit the authority to search a person incident to any custodial arrest.

On the other hand, the court gave the police broad discretion to make full custodial arrests, with the consequent power to conduct searches, for minor offenses.

Justice Souter said it was important to know "how bad the problem is out there," because many jurisdictions appear to authorize custodial arrests for minor offenses.

Why could there not be a similar rule limiting custodial arrests for minor offenses to situations that were somehow out of the ordinary?

The Court distinguished the Chadwick and Sanders situations as not involving an arguably valid search incident to a lawful custodial arrest.

Absent a formal arrest, the issue is whether a reasonable person in the suspect's position would have believed that he was under "full custodial" arrest.