The state of California is a pretty interesting state from a legal standpoint. There are a lot of laws in the books, just like in any state, but California seems to bring its spirit into everything it does, including writing laws. If you want to know how to do a California warrant search, there are some things that you’ll probably want to know first. It can be a simple or difficult task depending on how you go about it, so let us be your sherpa into the world of looking for warrants.

Everything on this list is going to help you get to your end goal of finding warrants for people. It doesn’t matter what your reasoning might be or even where in California you need to look, finding this information can be helpful for a multitude of reasons. Just remember that you’re not alone in your desire to find this information, millions of people all over the country seek out warrant information every single day. This information is inherently valuable and that makes it a good target for people that are looking for ways to vet people before allowing them into your life. 

Make Sure You Know the Proper Spelling of the Person’s Name

If you’re going to do a warrant search, the most important thing to know is the spelling of the person’s name. If you can’t spell someone’s name you have no hope of finding their warrant information no matter how hard you might try looking or where you intend to look. In some cases, this is pretty easy. Let’s say that you met the person on Tinder and their name is something like Carl Johnson. You wouldn’t have any problem getting the right spelling and searching for the person in question no matter what method that you decide to go with. 

On the other hand, what if you want to look up a co-worker that you’ve only ever heard their name and it’s something like Niahm, Padrig, Siobahn, or Saoirse? While it is uncommon for people to name their children Gaelic names in the current day, it’s not entirely unheard of, especially in families that are proud of their Irish heritage and you’d have a hard time guessing the spelling of any of those names based on how they’re pronounced. Don’t believe us? Look it up. This might be an extreme example, but it is something that can happen in real life and can cause you as much trouble as if someone goes by their middle name or nickname.

Expect The Worst, Hope For The Best

When you go into this search, try to remember that you might not find answers that you’re happy about. While plenty of people don’t have warrants, most people, in fact, the person that you’re looking up can be among those that do have warrants out for their arrest. Before you start your search, just prepare yourself for that distinct possibility. Even the most rainbows and sunshine people in your life could have warrants out for their arrest. People catch you off guard all the time, that’s why the phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover” was ever coined in the first place.

Managing your expectations in a time like this can do wonders to the hit that your mental health takes if you find out something that you hadn’t hoped or expected for. That’s why it’s important, at least while doing this search, to assume that they do have a warrant out for their arrest so it doesn’t surprise you and potentially cause you a good deal of grief. Managing expectations can be hard, especially if you think the world of someone, so prepare for the worst while hoping that you’re wrong and you’ll never be more disappointed than you need to be.

Know What You’re Looking For

Before getting into the search for someone’s warrant, you’ll want to make completely sure that you know exactly what kind of information you’re looking to get. You could Google it and spend a bunch of time sorting through California’s statutes about warrants and translate the legalese into common English, but that takes a lot of time and would be kind of a silly thing to do considering we already went and did all of that for you specifically so you wouldn’t have to. Before we get into those details we just wanted to say that you’re welcome. 

Anyway, in the state of California, you can expect to find the name of the person the warrant was issued for, issuing date, time, and county, which laws were violated, which county the laws were violated in if different from the issuing county, and how much bail was set for, if bail was set at all. In most cases, if you find information from a warrant in California you can expect to get all of that information, but at the bare minimum, you’d be able to see what crimes were violated and which county the warrant was issued in. 

Take A Deep Breath And Relax

Lots of people get very stressed out when they do their warrant searches. It’s understandable, you could potentially learn some pretty unsavory things about the person you’re looking into. That can have a lot of consequences on your life depending on what kind of information you find, and that on its own is stressful. You also might be considering turning this person in to the police, and that is an even more stressful thing to think about, especially if you care deeply about the person in question. That’s ok and is entirely to be expected, so don’t worry too much about any emotions that this situation might inspire in you.

Just take a deep breath. Stressing out about the situation isn’t going to help anything or anyone. If you need a moment to think before proceeding, that’s ok. If you feel like it would be better to tear the bandage off and find out this information once and for all, that’s also ok. Regardless of what method you think would work best for you, sometimes all you can really do is take a deep breath and allow yourself a moment before proceeding. Keeping a calm head will help you out a lot if you do find things about the person in question that you didn’t want to be true about them.

Don’t Go Straight To The Source

This one might sound counter-intuitive, but let us explain. If you go directly to a law enforcement website, you run the risk of not being able to find any information about this at all. Some counties provide rich and full databases that have a lot of this information available for anyone who cares to look. Others simply don’t. You can try your county’s sheriff’s department’s website, but if they don’t have what you’re looking for you’re going to need to know where to look next. 

That next place to look would be a warrant search service. These services are well-connected and can pull up warrant information from anywhere in the state, no matter how difficult it might be to find it online. These services are highly-specialized for this take and will give you a great deal of information about the person in question’s warrants, assuming that they have any.

Plan Your Next Move

Once you know for sure if the person in question does or does not have a warrant out for their arrest, it’s time for you to plan your next move. If they do have a warrant and you feel like you need to turn them in to the police, plan how you’ll do that. If you feel like you’d be better off keeping that information to yourself, think about how you’ll go about that. If you want to cut ties with that person entirely, think about how you want to accomplish that. Regardless of the result of your search, knowing your next move is pivotal.

Process The Information

This is going to be our last tip today, but it’s a good one. Before you do anything with the information you found, process it. Of course, this applies a lot more to if you found out that the person in question did, in fact, have a warrant out for their arrest but it could apply the opposite direction, as well, if you really truly believed that they were a wanted person. Processing your feelings about the situation can help you make more rational choices moving forward. As they say, “cooler heads prevail.”

Unlocking Information About Someone’s California Warrant

Getting warrant information used to be a task of herculean effort. Now that the internet is so advanced and so many places post databases here, it’s a lot easier to find warrant information if you have the right tools in your belt and an idea of how to use them. Fortunately, finding warrant information isn’t too difficult and even the most tech-challenged people could do so with a little guidance.