Cite as: 532 U. S. 318 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
629, n. 9 (1989) (collecting cases); United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 543, 557-558, n. 12 (1976) ("The logic of such elaborate less-restrictive-alternative arguments could raise insuperable barriers to the exercise of virtually all search-and-seizure powers"). Beyond that, whatever help the tie breaker might give would come at the price of a systematic disincentive to arrest in situations where even Atwater concedes that arresting would serve an important societal interest. An officer not quite sure that the drugs weighed enough to warrant jail time or not quite certain about a suspect's risk of flight would not arrest, even though it could perfectly well turn out that, in fact, the offense called for incarceration and the defendant was long gone on the day of trial. Multiplied many times over, the costs to society of such underenforcement could easily outweigh the costs to defendants of being needlessly arrested and booked, as Atwater herself acknowledges.22
Just how easily the costs could outweigh the benefits may be shown by asking, as one Member of this Court did at oral argument, "how bad the problem is out there." Tr. of Oral Arg. 20. The very fact that the law has never jelled the way Atwater would have it leads one to wonder whether warrantless misdemeanor arrests need constitutional atten-22 The doctrine of qualified immunity is not the panacea the dissent believes it to be. See post, at 367-368. As the dissent itself rightly acknowledges, even where personal liability does not ultimately materialize, the mere "specter of liability" may inhibit public officials in the discharge of their duties, post, at 368, for even those officers with airtight qualified immunity defenses are forced to incur "the expenses of litigation" and to endure the "diversion of [their] official energy from pressing public issues," Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800, 814 (1982). Further, and somewhat perversely, the disincentive to arrest produced by Atwater's opaque standard would be most pronounced in the very situations in which police officers can least afford to hesitate: when acting "on the spur (and in the heat) of the moment," supra, at 347. We could not seriously expect that when events were unfolding fast, an officer would be able to tell with much confidence whether a suspect's conduct qualified, or even "reasonably" qualified, under one of the exceptions to Atwater's general no-arrests rule.
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