No, the police should just have filed for a search warrant to track the phone. They would have gotten it if your summary of the case is accurate.
If police are allowed to violate procedure and still get to prosecute, there's no incentive for them to ever follow proper procedure. The reason the Fourth Amendment exists is precisely because these lessons were already learned hundreds of years ago, but we seem to have forgotten that police who hold completely authority to determine what is and is not a reasonable search will inevitably abuse that power.
If the rightful owner of the phone consented, I don't see how the police could need a warrant unless it was necessary to win the cooperation of the carrier.
The 'rightful' owner of the property is a question determined by a court not the police. Thus the police cannot use assertions from the person who claims to own the property to search the contents of another persons property.
Which is the entire fucking point of having judges review the claims of police and potential victims of crime. If they took it to a judge a judge could make a determination of whether the search the police of trying to conduct is reasonable based on prima facie evidence and the dangers to society posed both by the alleged crime and the search.
That's why the police can't knock down every door in the city to search for a stolen phone whereas for a nuclear bomb that request might be granted. Of course the 'owner' of the phone is going to consent to everyone elses house in the city being searched.
We're not talking about the necessity of a warrant to enter and search a building for a phone, we're talking about whether a warrant is needed to electronically track the phone to get its GPS coordinates.
The particular method used by the cops in the article is indiscriminately broad, but with cooperation of the carriers the same can be accomplished without revealing the the location of any third party's handset. Likewise with even the slightest bit of cooperation from the carriers, the true owner of the handset can be identified by having the carrier verify whether the complainant is the person who holds the service contract for the phone. So clearly this process can be done without exposing any information other than GPS coordinates of the phone, and I don't see how that would require a warrant - it's information the carriers ought to be required to provide to the customer upon request, and them authenticating that information to law enforcement upon request by the customer doesn't infringe anyone's rights.
If police are allowed to violate procedure and still get to prosecute, there's no incentive for them to ever follow proper procedure. The reason the Fourth Amendment exists is precisely because these lessons were already learned hundreds of years ago, but we seem to have forgotten that police who hold completely authority to determine what is and is not a reasonable search will inevitably abuse that power.