Fla. NAACP asks officials, workers not to check for warrants at hurricane shelters
The Florida NAACP is calling on officials and disaster workers helping with the Hurricane Irma response to drop an idea to check for outstanding arrest warrants at storm shelters.
The county sheriff whose vow to jail offenders elevated the discussions earlier this week declined Friday to meet this request.
The debate comes amid the second of two catastrophic storms to approach the nation's southern states in the last two weeks, and raises questions of how people should be treated during a disaster. During the threat of Hurricane Harvey to Texas, rumors circulated that undocumented immigrants could be detained by federal agents. Federal and local officials and the Red Cross later asserted they would not be checking evacuees for immigration status.
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The call from the NAACP related to Hurricane Irma came Friday afternoon in the form of a statement distributed to the press.
"As the State of Florida prepares for Hurricane Irma, the NAACP is concerned that the Polk County Sheriff’s Office is scaring people away from safe shelter by saying that individuals with outstanding warrants will be arrested if they arrive at a shelter," the statement read. "Coupling law enforcement or deportation with the provision of life-saving aid is a cruel and unnecessary distraction from the essential work of ensuring that all Floridians weather the storm safely."
Florida NAACP officials could not be reached Friday afternoon because they were busy evacuating the Category 4 storm. An official at the Baltimore headquarters of the civil rights organization said the concern is tied to conditions at jails during the storm. Texas inmates during Hurricane Harvey endured questionable conditions, and after Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana, inmates at a facility in Orleans Parish endured waist-high water, lack of food, and issues with sanitation and a safe water supply, Ngozi Ndulue, the NAACP's senior director of criminal justice programs, told Paste BN in a telephone interview.
"We need to make sure were paying attention to the needs of everybody, particularly people who are entrusted to the care of the state," she said.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd reached via Twitter responded with a statement.
"Law enforcement officers arrest those with warrants wherever they encounter them - in a store, during a traffic stop, at a home, etc.," the statement read. "A storm doesn't give one a 'free pass' to violate the law. We encourage anyone with a warrant to turn himself in sooner rather than later. Our jail is a safe, secure facility. We will not have violent fugitives in a shelter with citizens."
When questioned directly about the Florida NAACP request, Judd said, "That is our response. Our job first and foremost is to keep people safe."
The debate started on Wednesday when Judd issued a series of tweets from the @PolkCoSheriff account first warning that law enforcement officers would be at shelters checking IDs and that "sex offenders/predators would not be allowed." But it was a second set of tweets that generated discussion.
"If you go to a shelter for #Irma and you have a warrant, we'll gladly escort you to the safe and secure shelter called the Polk County Jail."
That tweet generated more than 9,000 responses for and against.
Follow Melanie Eversley on Twitter: @melanieeversley