Demonstrate a critical thought process about below: Officers with probable cause but without warrants can search containers inside vehicles that aren't an essential part of the vehicle. Until 1991, officers could only search containers in vehicles if they had separate probable cause to search both the vehicle and the container. If they had probable cause to search the container but not the vehicle, they had to get a warrant. SCOTUS interrogated searching containers in vehicles in California v. Acevedo (1991 ). Police officers observed Charles Acevedo leave an apartment where officers knew marijuana was inside. Acevedo was carrying a brown paper bag the size of marijuana packages the officers had seen earlier. Acevedo put the bag into the trunk of his car. As he drove away, the police stopped his car, opened the trunk, opened the bag, and found marijuana in it. SCOTUS held that it was reasonable to search the container without a warrant because they had probable cause to believe the bag contained marijuana. SCOTUS acknowledged that Acevedo's expectation of privacy in the brown bag, but concluded that the risks the car might drive off and the marijuana might disappear trumped Acevedo's expectation of privacy. So, we can add to our list of cases where SCOTUS interrogated balancing the ideals of Fourth Amendment law enforcement needs and suspects' privacy in the drug war, and decided law enforcement needs outweighed their privacy.