ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. -- Police officers face dangers everyday as they serve warrants.
Their faces won't be forgotten. They're the faces of recent fallen officers in Florida who were trying to serve warrants to criminals. One of them, Amanda Haworth has family just outside Jacksonville. Her father was devastated when he found out what happened.
In Jacksonville, a wild shootout in broad daylight Friday left a man dead after US Marshals tried to serve a warrant on career criminal Barion Blake. Investigators say Blake was on the run from New York and wanted for attempted murder.
Shootings don't happen every day, but the danger is always there. "We serve warrants everyday," said Chuck Mulligan with St. Johns County Sheriffs Office.
Warrants have to be served and Action News has learned in the state of Florida there is a huge backlog. There are more 100,000 outstanding warrants in the state. St. Johns has 2,662. There's 2,344 in Clay County.
Mulligan says it's a never ending process. "We average 300-400 warrants a month, and we're serving several hundred a month," said Mulligan.
For every criminal investigators take off the street, there's a handful of new warrants issued. That makes it hard for officers to keep up and lives are always on the line. One officer's family knows that danger first hand. "To all the career criminals out there, if somebody comes to your house with a warrant, go with them. Because they're going to get you sooner or later, and stop the bloodshed," said the father of fallen officer Amanda Haworth.
