{"id":14296,"date":"2014-11-20T18:01:44","date_gmt":"2014-11-20T23:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=14296"},"modified":"2014-11-20T18:01:44","modified_gmt":"2014-11-20T23:01:44","slug":"woodstock-times-sheriff-suspends-warrant-checks-at-social-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=14296","title":{"rendered":"Woodstock Times: Sheriff suspends warrant checks at Social Services"},"content":{"rendered":"

Woodstock Times: Sheriff suspends warrant checks at Social Services<\/a> by Jesse J. Smith:<\/p>\n

Ulster County Sheriff Paul VanBlarcum said this week that he will suspend a controversial policy of running warrant checks on visitors to the county\u2019s Department of Social Services HQ after lawmakers threatened to replace sheriff\u2019s deputies assigned to security at the facility with private security guards.
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\n\u201cI was not going to take the chance of 20 or 25 people losing their jobs,\u201d said VanBlarcum, who has steadfastly defended the policy in the face of criticism from civil-liberties groups and county lawmakers.<\/p>\n

The policy, which began last month, called for all visitors to the DSS facility on Ulster Avenue to present identification to the deputies who run the metal detectors and perform bag checks at the entrance. IDs were checked against a statewide database of active warrants. Those found to be wanted by the law were detained and, if the arresting agency asked, taken into custody. During the 20 business days that the policy was in effect, 30 people were arrested after their name popped up on the warrant list. The majority of the arrests were for low-level misdemeanors and probation violation warrants. The program netted its first felony-level arrest last week when a Kingston man wanted for allegedly selling crack cocaine to an undercover cop was caught when he showed up at the DSS building.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Woodstock Times: Sheriff suspends warrant checks at Social Services by Jesse J. Smith: Ulster County Sheriff Paul VanBlarcum said this week that he will suspend a controversial policy of running warrant checks on visitors to the county\u2019s Department of Social … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative-search"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14297,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14296\/revisions\/14297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}