Doing a Florida warrant search doesn’t have to be an especially difficult task. All you need is a little know-how and a few tools. There’s a lot of information that you can find about warrants as well as from warrants when you look them over. Of course, we all hope that the people we do warrant searches on aren’t going to turn up anything bad, but you can’t always hope for so much. Some people do get in trouble with the law, regardless of what kind of person they are on the outside.
We like to think that criminals have a look about them. Wouldn’t the work be so much simpler if the Hollywood trope of criminals being leather-clad, tattoo-covered people that are generally mean and unfriendly? Unfortunately, in the real world, you might discover that people that look like cliche movie criminals are actually very kind, while people that look like upstanding citizens have unspeakable sins in their not-so-distant past. That’s why it’s important to not judge a book by its cover and to take the time to find out for sure if the person in question has a warrant out for their arrest.
The Legal Definition of a Warrant and a Brief Explanation
While almost everyone in the country, possibly in the entire world, knows what a warrant is, not everyone has a solid understanding of what it does, why it exists, the history of it, or really much other information other than knowing that it allows for a police officer to search you, take your things if those things are related to a crime, and arrest you. Most people are entirely unaware of the legal mechanisms in place that make warrants work at all or why they were created in the form that they’re in today.
Let’s begin at the beginning, at least for American warrants. Every country has a different warrant system but those countries aren’t the focus of this article. That being said, we do have to talk about an old British type of warrant called a “general warrant.” These warrants were issued with no name or objective attached to them, which was bad news for pretty much any random person walking down the street. A police officer with a general warrant could pretty much do whatever they wanted. Arrest whoever for whatever reason, search people for no reason, whatever they wanted they were able to do with impunity.
Early Americans were, clearly, not huge fans of this type of warrant. Plenty of the early settlers would just be walking down the street and have to worry about being arrested for… well, no reason, realistically. This was one of the many issues that the young United States had with the way that the crown was ruling over them. It’s a little less well-known than taxation without representation, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a huge issue. In fact, it was such a huge issue to early America that the 4th Amendment of the Constitution explicitly bans this type of warrant.
In short, the 4th Amendment offers protections to all United States citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures. By legal definition, an arrest counts as a seizure and that’s why the 4th Amendment protects against unreasonable arrests. It might not be immediately obvious, but this amendment created a very powerful system of checks and balances within the criminal justice system here in the United States. Police could no longer go around arresting people all willy nilly, they needed an actual, legal reason to bring people into their custody.
In order for a warrant to be issued, it must be signed by a judge or magistrate. This is true in every single state, but the more specific things are decided on a state-by-state basis. The exact, legal definition of a warrant is “an order that is issued by a judge or magistrate that allows a law enforcement officer to search or seize a specific person or their property.” Specific conditions must be met in order for a warrant to be issued, which is why judges and magistrates are the only people allowed to approve the issuance of any warrant.
In the state of Florida, a judge or magistrate is able to issue a warrant anytime there’s enough evidence that a crime has been committed. The level of evidence that is considered “enough” is up to the judge or magistrate’s discretion. Florida is one of the states with the least rigorous requirements for a warrant to be issued for someone’s arrest. Warrants in this state can be executed anywhere at any time. That practice is common, but in Florida, a warrant can only be executed like this in the county where it was issued and the counties directly surrounding said county.
If it’s believed that a suspect has fled to a county outside of the radius that a warrant can be executed, that county can endorse the warrant to extend the area in which the warrant can be executed. If a county does this, the warrant can be executed in the original issuing county, the endorsing county, and all counties surrounding both counties. If the suspect is believed to have fled the state, Florida officials have to speak with the state officials where the suspect has fled and figure out how their laws can work together to extradite the suspect back to Florida.
Finding Warrant Information in Florida
Knowing how to do a warrant search in the state of Florida can help you a lot in your personal life. People use this skill for a laundry list of different things, ranging from vetting their dates before going out, making sure that their loved ones haven’t fallen in with a bad crowd, checking to see if their neighbors are doing sketchy things, the list goes on. Generally, at the core of it, people use these searches to try and help better ensure the safety of themselves and the people around them.
You might find that this information is easier or harder to find, depending on which county you live in. The reason for that, and you may or may not be aware of this, not every county makes this information easy to find. In fact, some counties require you to email them with a picture of your I.D. and will only provide warrant information about you. That being said, in many counties, this is a viable option and can provide you with exactly the information that you need, especially if you’re sure that the person in question hasn’t left the county.
If you need to check in other counties, this search becomes more of a crapshoot. If you’re incredibly lucky every single county that you’ll need to check will have the information that you’re looking for in aces. If you’re less lucky, some of them will have it. If you’re just plain unlucky, you might run into wall after wall after wall. That is a frustrating process that many inexperienced warrant searches end up being caught up in. There’s a much better and faster way to go about this if you run into any walls at all, or if you just want to make sure that you’re doing the process as quickly as possible.
The best solution for those of us that have a surplus of curiosity and a shortage of time would be to use a warrant lookup service. There are plenty of services online that can find this information and are able to check the entire state of Florida in a matter of seconds. If you want to make sure that you’re being extra thorough, you can even choose a service that will search through the entire country. Those services actually work just as quickly as the ones that only search through the state.
Whichever method works out best for you is probably the right one to pick. The best part about doing warrant searches no matter which state you’re in is that the only wrong answer is the one that doesn’t result in you getting the information that you’re looking for. All roads lead to Rome, as they say. The only important thing is that you have what you want when you finally make it there. That being said, we personally prefer warrant search services simply because they’re a lot faster and more efficient than using other resources.
Get Warrant Information Now
No one likes waiting around while they try to sort through government database after government database. It’s hard and you end up spending a lot of your time feeling like you’re wasting your time on this search. Fortunately, the internet is an incredibly powerful tool that can allow you to get all of the information you need and more if you just know how to go about looking for it. There are many powerful tools available to aid you in your cause, and that makes things a lot easier for everyone that’s trying to do this type of search.