Yes, the ideal answer when a cop asks to look around is, "Not without a warrant" because in the real world, the law requires it, and that protection is supposed to be one of our inalienable rights.
The thing to remember about Columbo though is that he's not so much a cop as he is a detective-shaped object. He's a cop-mimic, like those spiders that evolved to look like ants so they can creep up on them, or a snake that resembles a more dangerous snake to deter predators. This elfin creature does not exist in the same world as our cops and laws and chain of custody. He doesn't exist to jam us up so the chief will get off his back about stats. This isn't The Wire.
Columbo can say he's a cop, work with cops, talk like a cop, and carry a badge, but those things function like guns in the Looney Tunes universe. They move the plot forward, but expecting them to behave like they do in our world shorts out the punchline. He doesn't exist to glorify the profession of policing or bolster our faith in the judiciary process. He's there to do a catharsis where someone who expects their status to shield them doesn't get away with murder.
Columbo doesn't want to poke around because he needs an excuse to justify the "probable cause" he'll later cite on his paperwork leading to the plain sight discovery of incriminating evidence. Columbo already knows you're guilty because you're the overbearing Pater Familias of a prestigious think tank where the military industrial complex makes up the scenarios they'll use to justify next year's budget increases, and you just showed up at the crime scene acting weird. He doesn't need to make up evidence because his glass eye has already seen into your heart as he sits on his little toadstool, in a hole in the baseboard, where he and Mrs Columbo live like fairytale mice.
We don't need a warrant from Columbo because he isn't after us. He's not the kind of predator we expect cops to be. He doesn't need to abuse us or his authority to move the case forward because there's a fucking robot right there and the most technologically advanced item in the script can't help but provide the proof he needs to get the murderer.
"BEEP. FUCK DR CAHILL. BEEP."
Columbo isn't a cop. He's a puckish trickster who uses the delusion of superiority and the expectation of preferential treatment to get inside the defenses of the elite and fuck up their hives. The evidence he collects would never hold up in court because it doesn't have to. The case isn't building to an arrest warrant, criminal charges, arraignment, depositions, jury selection, trial, and conviction. It's building to the moment Columbo gets them. In this world, when he gets the murderer, it's over. They lose and that's justice.
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