DISGUSTING: How one Florida County Sheriff's office is preparing for Irma

[Lee-Lee]

79. Well, to start

A local sheriff has a legal obligation to arrest anyone with a warrant. It's an order from the court that has to be complied with.

When I was a deputy there was a lot of discretion I had on matters if I arrested, have a warning, or ignored. But if a person has a warrant that was a hard and fast thing that I had to take them into custody. No ifs, ands, buts or excuses. A warrant is an order from the court that an officer is legally obligated to act on, and failure to is a criminal act by the officer.

And most of the arrests I made for warrants were simple Failure to Appear warrants where people had tickets or court dates for very minor things who did the absolute stupidest thing possible and just blew off their court date. I never for the life of me could comprehend why so many people just blew off cour dates knowing 100% that doing so made things 100000 times worse. I've seen people end up in jail over a ticket for an expired tag because they didn't pay the ticket, didn't show up in court to contest it or ask for a payment plan if they couldn't pay, the ignored the certified letter telling them if they didn't make contact with the clerk of court in 10 days they would have a warrant issued. Hell, the clerk would make payment arrangements and take $10 a week as long as you did something they wouldn't issue a warrant. But they just ignored it and ended up arrested.

Citizenship ship status a local agency has no legal obligtion and in most cases no legal power to enforce at all.