Hillsborough County Sheriffs Office

Our class trip to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s office on Tuesday provided us with a lot of useful information. J.D. Callaway, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s office PIO gave our class a short lecture and then proceeded to give our class a tour of facility. I found our class visit to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's office to be one of the more informative class sessions we have had.

I think one of the reasons that Callaway’s lecture was so informative was because he has been on both sides of the field, he was a reporter and now works on the opposite end, controlling the information the media gets from the sheriff’s office. He did a very good job explaining the different actions to take when covering a story. For example, he explained that if you were covering a story on someone who had a warrant, you would want to go to the courthouse to obtain the information you would need. He also told us that as a reporter, a search warrant can be extremely valuable because it contains so much pertinent information. A search warrant would provide you with the law enforcement’s credentials, as well as every exhibit brought before the court that stated probable cause to obtain the warrant. I was unaware that a search warrant is a public record and that it becomes so just ten days after the search was conducted. A search warrant can also really give a reporter a heads up on who law enforcement is leaning towards because half of the time search warrants don’t have an arrest with it so searching for arrests wouldn’t necessarily tell the whole story.

I was surprised when J.D. told us that 73,000 people were booked to the Orient County jail last year and that unless the arrest is sealed or expunged by the court, it is a public record for eternity. I also liked when J.D. brought up how technology is creating a challenge in a sense, because of the video being taken at booking in the county jail. That video then also becomes accessible to reporters but only after they are able to ensure that no one else is in the video, such as someone who was simply passing by rather than being booked.

Overall, I feel that one of the things that made this class trip so interesting was how much J.D. was able to apply the information to real life scenarios. He has been in our shoes, and that’s why a lot of the information he gave was relevant.