Does anyone know why the potential form is used for shiraberu?
Is it not しらべられる？you can just input しらべ there cause it has られ on the questions already.
In this case it’s not potential, but passive form (the speaker had his possessions searched).
These forms look the same, so you have to infer which one it is from context.
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Agree with casual. Just wanted to help you identify useful context to tell the forms apart.
With the passive form, the doer of the action is marked with に.
If it were potential, the doer of the action would be omitted, or marked with は or が.
警察官はあなたの持ち物を調べられる
This is what “Police can search your belongings” would look like.
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Thank you so much for these helpful explanations. I totally missed the にparticle that would have tipped me off. But yes I often confuse passive and potential form.