The hearing court correctly concluded that the defendants, who were travelling in a car with illegally tinted windows, were lawfully stopped by the arresting officers (People v. Ingle, 36 N.Y.2d 413). Having credited the arresting officer's testimony, that he asked defendant Cuff if he could "look through" the car, and that Cuff consented to a search of the automobile, by stating "you can look through anything you want. It's not my car", the hearing court erred in concluding that the officer's search of the vehicle exceeded the scope of the consent given by defendant Cuff. We note that the officer's request to search the vehicle came after discovering that Cuff had no driver's license and that the car was not owned by either Cuff or Mitchell, and seeing that the back seat and a rear headrest were oddly positioned.
"The standard for measuring the scope of a suspect's consent under the Fourth Amendment is that of `objective' reasonableness — what would the typical reasonable person have understood by the exchange between the officer and the suspect?" (Florida v Jimeno, 500 U.S. 248, 251.) "The scope of a search is generally defined by its expressed object." (Supra, at 251.) In this case the phrase to "look through" the automobile can only be reasonably understood to request more than permission to conduct a visual inspection; it was clearly a request to search the car (United States v. Rich, 992 F.2d 502, 506, cert denied ___ US ___, 114 S Ct 348). The defendant, a former Housing Police Officer who testified at the hearing that he knew the consequences of the discovery of contraband in the car, placed no limitation whatsoever on the search of the automobile, and voiced no objection while the arresting officer searched the back seat (see, United States v. Martel-Martines, 988 F.2d 855, 858).
Concur — Kupferman, J.P., Ross, Williams and Tom, JJ.