A Florida woman and a Florida sheriff’s office appear to be trading barbs in a viral social media battle over an outstanding warrant and investigative work efforts, respectively.

On Tuesday, the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office uploaded a wanted poster on Facebook, requesting the public’s help for information on the whereabouts of Kwanteria “Panky” Alizeyh Richardson, 27.

The poster reads: “Kwanteria Richardson, AKA Alizeyh Richardson AKA Panky, has an outstanding warrant since December 2024 for aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.”

That was just the beginning.

A sheriff’s deputy who crashed on body camera lied by omission by initially hiding the fact that he was looking at porn at the time, says the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.

“Gosh darn it,” he said on footage after the crash. “Yeah, that f—ing really sucked.”

The internal affairs report from the Office of Professional Standards determined that he lied, was looking at porn on his phone while driving the patrol vehicle, and also failed to wear his seat belt.

Law&Crime is not naming him because he has not been charged with a crime. The deputy resigned during the investigation, Cpl. Chanel Martin of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office told Law&Crime in an email.

The crash

His bodycam from the afternoon of Nov. 6, 2024, shows him with his phone out, though it is unclear what it has on. But what is clear is that the yellow air bag bursts out.

He indicated to at least one passerby he was OK. He walked over to another vehicle that apparently got caught up in the crash. Law&Crime is omitting this encounter because it shows the woman, but in it, the deputy is checking on her.

“Hello, ma’am,” the deputy tells the other driver in the video. “Are you OK? I’m so sorry.”

“It’s OK,” she said.

“My brakes locked up,” he said.

She said she was OK.

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The Modern Law Library

Meet the sheriffs who believe they are ‘The Highest Law in the Land’

By Lee Rawles

October 24, 2024, 1:30 pm CDT

The first image conjured in your mind by the word “sheriff” might be the protagonist of a Wild West movie or Robin Hood’s foe, the sheriff of Nottingham. But unless you’re a resident of Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii and Rhode Island, there’s likely an elected law enforcement official in your area who has that title.

In The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy, lawyer and journalist Jessica Pishko takes a deep dive into the history of this position in American life and at a far-right movement hoping to co-opt the role of sheriff to advance extreme conservative policies.

There are about 3,000 sheriffs in the United States, one per county (or county equivalent). In this episode of The Modern Law Library podcast, Pishko and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss how the rural/urban divide impacts the demographics of sheriffs. Ninety-seven percent of the land area in the United States is considered rural, but only 20% of the people live in those rural areas.

In the 2020 census, Greene County, Alabama, had 7,730 residents and one sheriff. Cook County, Illinois, which contains the city of Chicago, had 5,275,541 residents and one sheriff. This leads to a larger proportion of sheriffs representing a rural and more conservative demographic, Pishko says.

Pishko explains the “constitutional sheriffs” movement, including its similarities to other fringe movements like the sovereign citizens. Adherents claim that sheriffs alone have the power to interpret how the Constitution and the first 10 Amendments should be enforced in their counties. They claim that state governments, the federal government, the president and the U.S. Supreme Court have no power over sheriffs, and that as elected officials, sheriffs are answerable only to their constituents.

In this episode, Pishko also describes the large role that sheriffs have in incarcerations, how their enforcement powers differ or overlap with police, and what disciplinary or oversight measures are available when a sheriff abuses their office. Pishko and Rawles also discuss the roles that sheriffs might have in local elections and whether they might have an impact on the 2024 presidential election.