Flawed legal reasoning from the Herald this morning, that seems to encourage the police to cut corners.

[T]he Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution would have forgiven any urgency by investigators to go through the vehicle if they believed there was a firearm either in plain view or concealed inside, or if there was reason to believe the car was involved in the commission of a crime.

Not quite. There is something (based in case law, not the Fourth Amendment) called the motor vehicle exception to the warrant requirement for searching a car. But it's not a 'sure bet' since it is context dependent. A judge may later find that it didn't apply to the circumstances and any evidence found in the search might be thrown out.

Getting prior judicial approval for a search by obtaining a search warrant gives a much higher probability that any evidence found will be held up at trial.

So why, in an important homicide case, does the Herald promote the notion that the police should take the quick route and risk losing critical evidence? Seems odd.