POSNER, Circuit Judge.
We granted rehearing en banc to consider the applicability of the Fourth Amendment, which forbids unreasonable searches and seizures, to the removal of a mobile home from a trailer park. The three-judge panel that first heard the appeal held by a divided vote that the removal was not within the scope of the Fourth Amendment. 923 F.2d 1241, 1249-50 (7th Cir.1991). The full court adheres to this conclusion but has decided to elaborate its grounds. This opinion supersedes the panel’s discussion of the Fourth Amendment, but in all other respects the panel opinion is reinstated.
Edward Soldal lived with his wife and four children in a trailer home, which he owned, situated on a rented lot in a trailer park in Elk Grove, Illinois. The owner of the trailer park, Terrace Properties, decided to evict the Soldáis, and sued in an Illinois state court for an eviction order. Two weeks before the court hearing, Terrace Properties decided to go ahead and evict the Soldáis forcibly. Anticipating the possibility of resistance, Margaret Hale, the manager of the trailer park, notified the Cook County sheriff’s office; and when two employees of Terrace Properties showed up at the Soldáis’ trailer home to remove it, they were accompanied by a Cook County deputy sheriff, who told Sol-dal that he was there to prevent him from interfering with the eviction. Other deputy sheriffs were also at the scene to ensure that the eviction proceeded without interruption. In removing the sewer and water boxes from the side of the trailer home, the employees damaged the home. When they finished disconnecting the home from the utilities, they towed it off the lot and out of the trailer park. The eviction violated Illinois law, because no court order authorizing it had yet been issued — none ever was issued.
The Soldáis’ suit is against Terrace Properties and Mrs. Hale as well as against the deputy sheriffs, and is brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which provides a civil remedy for the deprivation of federal rights by persons acting under color of state law. An initial problem in such a case, from a plaintiff’s standpoint, is how to bring private defendants under the rubric of persons acting under color of state law, a category normally reserved for state and municipal employees. Had the private defendants in this case, Terrace Properties and Mrs. Hale, been acting pursuant to a court order when they had the trailer home removed, this might have made their action [1075]*1075state action. Del’s Big Saver Foods, Inc. v. Carpenter Cook, Inc., 795 F.2d 1344, 1346 (7th Cir.1986); cf. Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., — U.S.-, 111 S.Ct. 2077, 114 L.Ed.2d 660 (1991). But they were not; and the action of a private person in enforcing rights conferred on him by state law is not deemed state action. Id. 111 S.Ct. at 2083; Tulsa Professional Collection Services, Inc. v. Pope, 485 U.S. 478, 485, 108 S.Ct. 1340, 1345, 99 L.Ed.2d 565 (1988); Flagg Brothers, Inc. v. Brooks, 436 U.S. 149, 164-65, 98 S.Ct. 1729, 1737-38, 56 L.Ed.2d 185 (1978). Otherwise everything would be state action, since what law does not forbid it permits.
As for the public defendants in this case — the deputy sheriffs (county police)—the mere presence of police at the scene of a private act (here, the eviction of the Soldáis by Terrace’s employees) in which they do not participate does not transform the private act into a public one. Gramenos v. Jewel Cos., 797 F.2d 432, 435 (7th Cir.1986). But there was more here. The eviction was unlawful, and Soldal had a common law right to resist it forcibly, although his right was limited to using mild force. The deputy sheriffs prevented Soldal from exercising his right, and while this by itself may not have made them actual participants in the eviction, the condition of the record (the case was dismissed on summary judgment) requires us, as the panel opinion explained, to assume that there was a conspiracy between the private and the public defendants — that the deputy sheriffs joined Terrace Properties in a scheme to get rid of a pesky tenant, a troublemaker. 923 F.2d at 1247-48. If so, it is as if the deputy sheriffs themselves seized the trailer, disconnected it from the utilities, and towed it away. Equivalently it is as if they had deputized the private defendants to assist them. Thus, on the state of the record, we must regard all of the defendants as having acted under color of state law.
This frames the question that we granted rehearing en banc to decide: If police officers disconnect and tow away a trailer home, can their action be challenged under the Fourth Amendment as an unreasonable seizure? The question is of surprising novelty, and its implications for other forms of eviction and even perhaps for the repossession of automobiles and other personal property make it of potentially far-reaching practical significance. The history of the question in the courts can be recounted briefly. The question was left open in Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U.S. 67, 96 n. 32, 92 S.Ct. 1983, 2002 n. 32, 32 L.Ed.2d 556 (1972). A glancing reference in Tavarez v. O’Malley, 826 F.2d 671, 678 (7th Cir.1987), expressed the skepticism of three members of this court. The Third Circuit gave a peremptory “no” in Lebowitz v. Forbes Leasing & Finance Corp., 456 F.2d 979, 980 (3d Cir.1972). There is, as we shall see, a Tenth Circuit case that bears closely though not decisively on the issue. The district courts are divided on it. Compare Dorsey v. Community Stores Corp., 346 F.Supp. 103 (E.D.Wis.1972) (3-judge panel), and Laprease v. Raymours Furniture Co., 315 F.Supp. 716, 721-22 (N.D.N.Y.1970) (same), with McCormick v. First National Bank, 322 F.Supp. 604 (S.D.Fla.1971).
It is no accident that the question has not arisen more often. The straightforward way for a plaintiff to mount a challenge under section 1983 to an eviction or repossession or other deprivation of property is by claiming that he was deprived of his property without due process of law, as in the Del’s case cited earlier and a host of other cases. The panel held that the Sol-dáis had abandoned any such claim. 923 F.2d at 1248. They were prudent to do so. In the circumstances of this case they would have faced a distinctly uphill fight to establish it. The Supreme Court has held that the denial of procedural rights (here the rights that Illinois law grants tenants in eviction proceedings) as a result of the random and unauthorized acts of subordinate public officers (the deputy sheriffs in this case) is not actionable under section 1983 unless the plaintiff lacks adequate judicial remedies under state law. Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981); Zinermon v. Burch, 494 U.S. 113, 110 S.Ct. 975, 108 L.Ed.2d 100 (1990); see also Easter House v. Felder, 910 F.2d 1387, 1396-97 (7th Cir.1990) (en [1076]*1076banc). Illinois law entitled the Soldáis to sue Terrace Properties and Mrs. Hale for the damages caused by the illegal eviction. Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 80, ¶ 221. The Soldáis had an adequate remedy. They failed to use it.
The existence of adequate legal remedies for an illegal eviction such as occurred here — state remedies if they are adequate, a federal remedy under the due process clause if not — is pertinent to deciding whether the Fourth Amendment should be bent to provide the Soldáis with still another remedy. Bent it would have to be, because the amendment was never intended to regulate garden-variety commercial disputes of the sort involved in this case. Why bend, when the Soldáis had adequate alternatives?
The Fourth Amendment regulates both “searches” and “seizures” and it will be helpful to distinguish between the two. Even though we are treating the employees of Terrace who did the actual disconnection and removal as if they had been police officers employed by the State of Illinois, we can hardly construe their conduct as a police search. The “officers” did not enter the Soldáis’ trailer home. They had no interest in what was in it. They were not conducting an investigation or seeking to make an arrest. There was, however, at least in a literal sense, a “seizure” of the home and its contents; and while most seizures that are challenged under the Fourth Amendment are incidental to a search, some are not. The most common seizure challenged under the amendment is an arrest, and it is actionable whether or not it is accompanied by a search.
With only a few exceptions, the seizures held to be forbidden by the Fourth Amendment have been seizures made in the course of public law enforcement—certainly arrests are of that character —rather than repossessions or other seizures made in the course of a dispute between two private parties, even if police officers were assisting the person doing the seizing to the extent of being coconspirators with him. A good example is Autoworld Specialty Cars, Inc. v. United States, 815 F.2d 385, 389 (6th Cir.1987), where law-enforcement officers removed vehicles from a dealer’s showroom for use in evidence in a criminal prosecution against the dealer. It could indeed be argued on textual and historical grounds that despite its broad wording the Fourth Amendment has no proper application outside the law enforcement context. Not only the second clause of the Fourth Amendment—the clause that places limitations on warrants—but also the background against which the amendment was enacted indicates that the searches and seizures to which the amendment refers are those made for purposes of law enforcement, not those made in connection with private disputes over property rights. Cf. Wyman v. Jones, 400 U.S. 309, 317, 91 S.Ct. 381, 385, 27 L.Ed.2d 408 (1971).
But a constitutional provision need not be interpreted so narrowly as to disable it from reaching novel abuses of power. The Fourth Amendment, at least, has not been so interpreted. It has been held to regulate wiretapping and administrative searches, Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967); Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967), neither a practice with which the framers of the amendment were acquainted. Repossessions and evictions may be far from the core of the Fourth Amendment but we hesitate to suggest that they can never provide the setting for a violation of the amendment. In Specht v. Jensen, 832 F.2d 1516 (10th Cir.1987), remanded on unrelated grounds, 853 F.2d 805 (10th Cir. 1988) (en banc), a search of the plaintiff’s home by a creditor accompanied by the police was held to violate the Fourth Amendment. We agree with that decision; and it is the closest case to ours. But there is a crucial difference. In Specht the conduct of the police invaded an interest that the Fourth Amendment unquestionably protects: the interest in the privacy of the home. (The court in Specht emphasized this point. 832 F.2d at 1520.) The invasion was no less extensive, intrusive, or injurious just because the police were assisting a creditor rather than enforcing criminal or other public law.
[1077]*1077It might seem, though, that the removal of the trailer home in this case was a “seizure” on the same footing with the “search” of the home in Specht. Literally there was a “seizure” here, but to use a literal interpretation of a constitutional provision enacted two centuries ago to make every repossession and eviction with police assistance actionable under — of all things — the Fourth Amendment would both trivialize the amendment and gratuitously shift a large body of routine commercial litigation from the state courts to the federal courts. That trivializing, this shift, can be prevented by recognizing the difference between possessory and privacy interests.
The police did not enter Soldal’s trailer home. They did not rummage among his possessions. They did not arrest him (that came later, and is dealt with in an unrelated part of the panel opinion). They did not invade the private “space,” for solitude or secrecy, that the Fourth Amendment protects. Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 478, 48 S.Ct. 564, 572, 72 L.Ed. 944 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting). In that respect this case is like Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U.S. 583, 591, 94 S.Ct. 2464, 2470, 41 L.Ed.2d 325 (1974) (plurality opinion), where “nothing from the interior of the car and no personal effects, which the Fourth Amendment traditionally has been deemed to protect, were searched or seized and introduced in evidence. With the ‘search’ limited to the examination of the tire on the wheel and the taking of paint scrapings from the exterior of the vehicle left in the public parking lot, we fail to comprehend what expectation of privacy was infringed.” (Footnotes omitted.) The police did, of course, take Soldal’s home away, and that was a grave deprivation. But it was a deprivation purely of property; there was no invasion of the Soldáis’ privacy.
Of course this conclusion depends on how broadly or narrowly we define “privacy.” Any interference with solitude is an infringement of privacy in a perfectly good sense of the word; thus an unwanted telephone solicitation is an invasion of privacy. And the Supreme Court has often used “privacy” as a synonym for reproductive autonomy. But it would be odd to suggest that a telephone solicitation aimed at selling tickets to the policemen’s ball, or a law regulating abortions, invades privacy in a sense relevant to the Fourth Amendment. That sense has to do, rather, with the interest in keeping at bay prying ears and prying eyes. It is not invaded by an eviction or repossession; it can be invaded by a search or other entry into the home incident to an eviction or repossession.
In modern law the interests in property and in (Fourth Amendment) privacy are protected by different constitutional provisions and by different bodies of constitutional doctrine. Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517, 538-40, 104 S.Ct. 3194, 3206-07, 82 L.Ed.2d 393 (1984) (concurring opinion). It is true that the older cases, illustrated by Olmstead, often tied the protections of the Fourth Amendment to property concepts, such as trespass. The modern cases, however, well illustrated by Katz, which overruled Olmstead, refocus the amendment from property to privacy in accordance with Justice Brandeis’s dissent in Olm-stead. This leaves deprivations of property to be regulated by the due process clause (also the takings clause, but that is not involved in this appeal, for reasons explained in the panel opinion, 923 F.2d at 1248-49). We have already noted that in interpreting that clause the Supreme Court has held (with qualifications not relevant to our case) that a person who claims to have been deprived of his property by the state without due process of law must use the judicial remedies that the state has provided for such deprivations. That requirement would be nullified if the property owner could avoid it by recasting his suit as one under the Fourth Amendment rather than under the Fifth (or Fourteenth) Amendment. The elaborate jurisprudence of property deprivations under the due process clause that culminates in Zinermon v. Burch would turn out to be a point about pleading.
Hudson v. Palmer illustrates the distinction we are making between property and privacy. Prison guards searched the plain[1078]*1078tiff’s cell and seized items of his personal property. This was as much a seizure of property as the removal of the Soldáis’ trailer. Yet the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment did not apply. It did not apply because, the majority opinion concludes (Justice O’Connor’s concurrence is less definite on this point and she was the fifth vote, but she joined Chief Justice Burger’s opinion, thus making it a majority opinion), prison inmates have no right of privacy. 468 U.S. at 526-28 and n. 8, 104 S.Ct. at 3200-01 and n. 8. Prison extinguishes that. It does not extinguish property rights, but the Fourth Amendment does not provide a remedy for a pure deprivation of property rights. The remedy in a proper Fourth Amendment case includes the value of any property rights impaired or destroyed — such impairment or destruction is an item of consequential damages in a suit for the violation of the constitutional right. Taliferro v. Augle, 757 F.2d 157, 161-62 (7th Cir.1985); Specht v. Jensen, supra, 832 F.2d at 1528; B. C.R. Transport Co. v. Fontaine, 727 F.2d 7, 12 (1st Cir. 1984); Marrero v. City of Hialeah, 625 F.2d 499, 514 (5th Cir.1980). But if the only rights impaired or destroyed are property rights, the case is not actionable under the Fourth Amendment in the first place.
The cases, it is true, distinguish between a “possessory” interest said to be protected against unreasonable “seizure” and a “privacy” interest protected against unreasonable “search.” United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113 and n. 5, 104 S.Ct. 1652, 1656 and n. 5, 80 L.Ed.2d 85 (1984); Segura v. United States, 468 U.S. 796, 806, 104 S.Ct. 3380, 3386, 82 L.Ed.2d 599 (1984); Maryland v. Macon, 472 U.S. 463, 469, 105 S.Ct. 2778, 2782, 86 L.Ed.2d 370 (1985); Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 324, 107 S.Ct. 1149, 1152, 94 L.Ed.2d 347 (1987); Horton v. California, — U.S. -, 110 S.Ct. 2301, 2306, 110 L.Ed.2d 112 (1990); see 1 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizures § 2.1(a), at pp. 299-300 (2d ed. 1987). Justice Stevens, dissenting in Hudson v. Palmer, thought that such decisions required a different result in that case. 468 U.S. at 543-44, 104 S.Ct. at 3209. Obviously the majority disagreed. The path of reconciliation lies in recognizing that the privacy which the Fourth Amendment protects is the privacy not only of oneself and one’s home, as we have thus far been assuming, but also, as the amendment states, of one’s “effects.” “Effects” are personal property, and are frequently affected with a privacy interest. Just as it is an impairment of privacy to seize one’s person (that is, to arrest one), so it can be an impairment of privacy to seize one’s personal property. Opening a letter is an obvious example, and it is no accident that the list of protections in the Fourth Amendment includes “papers” as well as persons, houses, and effects. The opening of a package, as in Jacobsen, is another example of how a seizure can invade privacy. But not every interference with exclusive dominion and control over one’s property is a seizure in the relevant sense because not every such interference compromises privacy. Merely removing luggage from an airport conveyor belt and squeezing it has been held not to be a seizure. United States v. Lovell, 849 F.2d 910, 915-16 (5th Cir.1988); United States v. Garcia, 849 F.2d 917, 919 (5th Cir.1988); United States v. Brown, 884 F.2d 1309, 1311 (9th Cir.1989). See also Arizona v. Hicks, supra, 480 U.S. at 324, 107 S.Ct. at 1152; United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705, 712-13, 104 S.Ct. 3296, 3302, 82 L.Ed.2d 530 (1984). It is different if the police “secure” a residence, that is, take it over, without searching it, while awaiting the arrival of a search warrant. That is a palpable interference with privacy-the police are in the home, looking about-even though it is not a search; it is rightly classified as a Fourth Amendment seizure. United States v. Lindsey, 877 F.2d 777, 780 (9th Cir.1989). The physical movement of the Soldáis’ home-the privacy of its interior uncompromised and unobserved-was not a seizure.
The distinction may seem a fine one. The Fourth Amendment abounds in fine distinctions, perhaps more than are necessary. California v. Acevedo, — U.S. -, 111 S.Ct. 1982, 1991, 114 L.Ed.2d 619 (1991). But the particular distinction that we have just elaborated (and that future [1079]*1079cases will no doubt elaborate further) between a Fourth Amendment seizure and other types of interference with property is necessary not only if we are to make sense of Hudson v. Palmer but also if the Fourth Amendment is not to swallow the due process clause. If police tow an illegally parked car, without entering or even looking into it, it is a deprivation of property within the meaning of the due process clause, Sutton v. City of Milwaukee, 672 F.2d 644 (7th Cir.1982); Saukstelis v. City of Chicago, 932 F.2d 1171, 1172 (7th Cir.1991), but is it also a seizure under the Fourth Amendment?
The distinction we are drawing between property and privacy interests in one sense helps explain, and in another sense is thrown into question by, the “plain view” doctrine, that is, the doctrine that if police are lawfully on the premises they can seize contraband or evidence that is in their plain view even if they had gained admittance to the premises without a warrant and without probable cause to believe they would find anything; their presence might, for example, be lawful only because the owner had consented. Horton v. California, supra; United States v. Cardona-Rivera, 904 F.2d 1149, 1154-55 (7th Cir.1990); United States v. Perry, 815 F.2d 1100, 1105 (7th Cir.1987). There is no incremental invasion of privacy if something is seized that is in, as it were, lawful public view; the thing is no longer private; and the owner’s property right is not a Fourth Amendment shield. This point is further illustrated by GM Leasing Corp. v. United States, 429 U.S. 338, 351-52, 97 S.Ct. 619, 628, 50 L.Ed.2d 530 (1977), which upheld the Internal Revenue Service’s seizure without a warrant of the plaintiff’s automobiles because it “took place on public streets, parking lots, or other open places, and did not involve any violation of privacy,” but not the seizure of books and records since that “involved intrusion in the privacy of the [plaintiff’s] offices.” Of similar character are the “open field” cases, such as Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57, 44 S.Ct. 445, 68 L.Ed. 898 (1924), and Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 104 S.Ct. 1735, 80 L.Ed.2d 214 (1984). And see Autoworld Specialty Cars, Inc. v. United States, supra, 815 F.2d at 388.
Yet in all these cases the seizure of items that were in the public view, while lawful, was treated as a Fourth Amendment seizure, so that it had to be pronounced reasonable (for example because it was consented to, or supported by probable cause, or it seized something that was in plain view) before it could be permitted. The reason, however, is that seizures made in the course of investigations by police or other law enforcement officers are almost always, as in the plain view cases, the culmination of searches. The police search in order to seize, and it is the search and ensuing seizure that the Fourth Amendment by its reference to “searches and seizures” seeks to regulate. Seizure means one thing when it is the outcome of a search; it may mean something else when it stands apart from a search or any other investigative activity. The Fourth Amendment may still nominally apply, but, precisely because there is no invasion of privacy, the usual rules do not apply.
There is another reason for distinguishing public law enforcement from other contexts in which seizures may occur, and that is the historical connection between the Fourth Amendment and liberty. The objection to an arrest is not only that it is an invasion of privacy, but also that it is a restriction of liberty. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 19 n. 16, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1879 n. 16, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). Some property seizures are of this character as well, such as prolonged detention of an individual’s luggage at an airport, which by preventing him from continuing on his way curtails his liberty. United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 708-09, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 2645, 77 L.Ed.2d 110 (1983). In none of these cases is the court concerned with property rights as such, although in some of the cases property rights get mentioned in connection with the question of standing to maintain a Fourth Amendment challenge, an issue since laid to rest by United States v. Salvucci, 448 U.S. 83, 100 S.Ct. 2547, 65 L.Ed.2d 619 (1980). Outside of the law enforcement area the Fourth Amendment [1080]*1080retains its force as a protection against searches, because they invade privacy. That is why we decline to confine the amendment to the law enforcement setting. But concerns of liberty will rarely be present outside of that setting and they are not in this case — which because it is a case of seizure, not search, does not involve an invasion of privacy either.
Thus, no interest protected by the Fourth Amendment is involved, and this helps show that even if, despite what we have said, there is some element or tincture of a Fourth Amendment seizure, it cannot carry the day for the Soldáis. Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989), establishes the principle that the dominant character of the conduct challenged in a section 1983 case determines the constitutional standard under which it is evaluated. The narrow holding of Graham is that when the gist of the challenged conduct is an arrest, the court should use the standards of the Fourth Amendment to adjudge its lawfulness even though the conduct could also be characterized as a deprivation of liberty. But the converse should also be true. If the gist of the challenged conduct is a repossession or eviction conventionally challenged under the due process clause as a deprivation, recharacterization as a Fourth Amendment seizure is barred. The suggestion that Graham stands for the proposition that all property disputes should so far as possible be stuffed into the Fourth Amendment strikes us as bizarre.
Mr. Soldal is neither an arrestee (so far as pertinent to this part of the case) nor a prison inmate, but the principles of Graham v. Connor and Hudson v. Palmer sweep broader than their facts or narrow holdings, and the need to carve the joint between the Fourth Amendment and the due process clause is as urgent in this case as in an arrest case or a prisoner case. The decisions require us to mesh the different provisions in or incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment while preserving their separate domains — and thus to make the amendment coherent. Hudson tells us to do so by allocating the protection of privacy to the Fourth Amendment and the protection of property to the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. United States v. Janik, 723 F.2d 537, 547-48 (7th Cir.1983); cf. United States v. Karo, supra, 468 U.S. at 713, 104 S.Ct. at 3302. Mr. Soldal lost his property, but not his privacy or his liberty. He has no Fourth Amendment case. He had other legal remedies but he waived them.
The paradox seemingly presented by our decision — that the law-abiding have fewer rights under the Fourth Amendment than the criminal — is superficial. Different constitutional provisions protect different interests. The Fourth Amendment protects privacy, and that interest is more likely to be infringed by criminal investigations than by other governmental activities — though the law-abiding are, occasionally, the inadvertent and, rarely, the intended targets of a criminal investigation, and when they are they receive the full protection of the amendment. The due process clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments is among the provisions that protect property (though that is not all it protects); and property interests are more likely to be asserted by the law-abiding than by the criminal class. The Soldáis, to repeat, had remedies; they chose the wrong one.
For the reasons stated in this and the panel opinion, the judgment of the district court is
Affirmed in Part, Reversed in Part, and Remanded.