Warrants, love them or hate them they’re a big part of the way our criminal justice system works here in the United States. If you’re in Florida and you’re worried that there might be a warrant out for your arrest, you may want to look into figuring out how to do a Florida warrant search just so you can be sure. These searches can be easy if you know what you’re doing, but they can also be really difficult if you don’t. We’re going to cover a lot of warrant information today, including how to do your very own warrant search.

If you feel like you might be the outlier of people that want or need to do this kind of search, but you are actually doing something that’s incredibly common. According to our own reports, at least 1 in 5 people do warrant searches at some point in their lives, with 1/10 doing at least one every year. That translates to millions of people doing at least one warrant search every year, so you can be happy knowing that you’re far from being the only person that looks for this information.

In fact, every single day people do warrant searches all over the United States for a variety of reasons. Some people want to make sure that they don’t have a warrant out for their arrest, some people are keeping an eye on their loved ones, and other people even use these searches to make sure that the people they’re considering inviting into their homes aren’t going to cause a whole lot of trouble. So, what exactly is a warrant, when are they issued, and how does one go about getting warrant information? Let’s have a look so you can know once and for all!

A Brief Explanation of the American Warrant

It’s worth noting that every country handles its warrants differently. We can’t speak on how Canada handles their warrants, nor can we speak on how Mexico handles their warrants. We could in theory but we aren’t going to teach you how to find warrants in those countries so it wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense to do so. That being said, the warrant system in the United States is definitely enough of a topic to entirely dominate this article. There’s definitely no shortage of things to learn here.

So, the American warrant exists because of the 4th amendment. It’s a little more complicated than that, we’d have to give you a history lesson about how warrants were conducted in colonial America to really get into depth about that and we can cover that another time. In any case, the 4th amendment of the American constitution guarantees that all citizens will be safe in their person, papers, and belongings from unreasonable searches and seizures. Just to be clear, an arrest is a seizure of your person and that’s why you’re protected from unreasonable arrests under this amendment.

To put all of that into easily understandable language, if the law enforcement officer that you’re talking to can’t see any reasonable probable cause to take you or your things into custody or search you, they aren’t allowed to because of this amendment. It’s actually unconstitutional to search or seize without probable cause or a warrant, but that also means that without a warrant they have to catch you red-handed, and that can be tricky for a large number of crimes. In fact, most criminals escape the scene of the crime before they’re caught and they need to be brought into custody at a later time.

How are Florida Warrants Issued?

Every state needs to have a few things in common when it comes to how warrants are issued. In general, only a judge or magistrate is able to authorize a warrant because they’re considered to be the only people with enough legal knowledge to be able to say with certainty if the warrant is constitutional or not. Some states, including Florida, allow for mayors to sign warrants as well, but the authority of the mayor is less than that of a judge or magistrate when it comes to warrants so oftentimes their warrants aren’t quite as powerful.

In order for a judge, magistrate, or mayor to sign a warrant in the state of Florida, there has to be some level of evidence that the person in question could at least be reasonably considered a suspect. That can mean eye-witness testimony and it can also mean hard evidence. For example, if someone leaves their wallet at the scene of the crime that can be enough for a warrant to be issued. That being said, a warrant doesn’t mean that someone is guilty. Maybe someone just so happened to drop their wallet at the scene of the crime. That’s enough to have them brought in but not enough to convict.

In the state of Florida, a warrant must have the name of the suspect. If the name isn’t available it must include a reasonable description of the suspect. If you’ve noticed that we’re saying reasonable a lot, that’s because a lot of the law is based on what a reasonable person would think about it. Other than that, the warrant needs to have the signature of the authorizing body, the crime or crimes that were believed to have been committed, the counties in which the warrant is executable, and the date the warrant was signed.

A warrant signed in a county in Florida isn’t executable in the entire state. It is only executable in the county where it was signed and in all surrounding counties. If it is believed that the suspect fled to another county, the judge, magistrate, or mayor of that county can be requested to endorse the warrant so that that county and surrounding counties can execute the warrant. The only exception to this is if a judge signs the warrant and specifically says that it can be executed anywhere in the state.

Finding Floridian Warrants

Now we’re getting to the part of the article that you came here for, the actual process of finding a Florida warrant. There are a couple of ways that you can go about this, and both of them are better for different things. As you’re reading this just make sure to think about what you need in a warrant search so you can be sure to select the best option for you. What works best for you might not be what works best for your neighbor, so it’s especially important to think about what you need.

The best and often considered easiest way to do this is through a warrant lookup service. You can search in your county, throughout the entire state of Florida, or even across the entire country. These websites have systems that are specially designed to pull as much warrant information as possible as quickly as possible to ensure that their customers are satisfied with the speed and accuracy of the results. They operate by accessing public warrant databases all over the country to make sure that they’re bringing you nothing but the best and most accurate information available.

By using one of these services you can be sure that you’re getting the maximum amount of information available at lightning speeds. In fact, most of these services boast instant results, only taking as long as it takes for your browser to load the next page. With that kind of speed, it makes sense that this method is viewed so favorably among people that regularly do these kinds of searches. On the other hand, checking through police records can take a bit of time and that’s really only if you’re lucky. That is the other method that you have available to you.

None of the police databases are connected by the police, meaning that you would need to check through every county in Florida just to conduct a statewide search. That would mean looking through 67 databases just for the state of Florida, and over 3,000 databases if you wanted to conduct a nationwide search. Many counties also don’t provide warrant databases to the public, meaning that doing this manually would be incredibly time-intensive while also not always yielding you exactly the kind of results that you want. That being said, if you only want to check in your county and your county provides this information it can work out well for you.

Getting Warrant Data in Florida

Florida is one of the best states for public records because of its sunshine laws. Floridians probably already know all about that, but people outside of Florida might not realize that the public information laws in Florida are the reason why you see so many crazy headlines come out of Florida. Without every state having the same kind of laws, it’s hard to say for sure if Florida is really as crazy as we think or if, as a state, they really just value government transparency on every single level of government.