In rural Iowa feud, sheriff won’t honor small town’s arrests

DURANT, Iowa (AP) — The sheriff of an eastern Iowa county has declared that his jail will not book suspects arrested in one town because he doesn’t trust the officers there.

Cedar County Sheriff Warren Wethington issued the directive last month, which applies to anyone arrested by the Durant Police Department. They now are booked in a neighboring county.

Wethington says one of Durant’s three officers has a history of being untruthful and using questionable force and the chief hired him anyway. He says he simply cannot vouch for the integrity of their arrests.

The sheriff’s move has won praise from some county residents. But it has escalated his long-running feud with Cedar County Board of Supervisors chairwoman Dawn Smith, whose husband Robert Smith is an officer at the center of the misconduct allegations.