Washington County Sheriff Sets Up Web Page To Track Criminal Releases
Washington County Sheriff Nate Brooksby is tired of having to explain why the bad guys are getting away.
Brooksby, the newly elected sheriff of the county (although he took over for the late Cory Pulsipher last year), said he gets asked all the time why one prisoner or another has been released from jail.
"I get asked a lot about jail releases," he said in a social media post. "Short of emergencies in the jail, I do not have say about who is released, that is up to the courts."
Brooksby, like many law enforcement officers, expresses frustration over the often early release of people his department worked so hard to put behind bars.
"Fundamentally, the system has changed to protect criminals and ignore the victims," he said. "Law enforcement is doing its job to keep our community safe, but the justice system has created an ever-revolving door to release serious criminals back on the streets to commit more crimes (creating more victims)."
So Brooksby has decided to at least try to make amends from some of these early releases. He has created a web page to "look at all felony releases including the suspect's name, crimes committed, whether released on bail or no bail attached to their release, the time they spent in jail, and the name of the judge who released them on those conditions."
The website can be found here.
Brooksby continued: "You will be able to see when someone was released, their felony charge, how they were released, and the judge who set the bail or made the order."
Comments to the post were almost exclusively positive, with fans posting "Thank you for creating this site!" and "This is great."
Law abiding citizens may find the site a little infuriating as it highlights the relative ease at which some serious criminals get out of prison. For instance, one recent person was charged with 2nd degree felony homicide after causing a crash that killed a person last summer in Hurricane (allegedly while driving under the influence).
That person's case hasn't gone to trial yet, but until it does that person is currently walking free while out on a $10,000 bail.
Another case has a person charged with 1st degree and 2nd degree felony sexual assault. That individual is currently free on $30,000 bail.
A third person, the alleged perpetrator in a highly-publicized case from last Friday in which a 14-year-old girl woke up to find two strange men inside her house, is already free on $15,000 bail. The individual is from a state in the southeast United States and may never return to Utah.
Brooksby wrote: "We hope this may answer some of your questions or concerns."
Or perhaps, raise a whole bunch more concerns.
Here's the link again: Felony Release Report , WCSO
And some screen shots from the site: