Being wrongfully arrested is a major fear for a lot of people, mainly because once it starts, there’s not much you can do to resolve it. No matter how good your lawyers are, there’s a strong chance that you’ll be spending at least a few nights in jail — and once they realize their mistake, getting financial compensation for the police’s error takes more than a bit of work (and the expertise of a lawyer who knows how to argue against qualified immunity).

No matter if it was to avoid a potential lawsuit or just out of the goodness of his heart, this sheriff decided that arresting a dude for nothing was bad, actually, and that he was going to do something about it. Specifically, he was going to apologize and, according to him, compensate the man for his mistake.

Per the sheriff’s apology, they had arrested the man for possession with intent to distribute. The only problem was the dude was completely innocent. “The reason why I called the press conference today is, I owe a young man a sincere apology because we made a mistake, and I don’t want him, his family, his friends or anybody that knows him to think that he did anything wrong in any way,” the sheriff says. “This is a guy that did nothing wrong.”

“It was a mistaken identity. They look quite a bit alike. We were working with an informant who emphatically said, ‘That’s him, that’s him, that’s him,’” the sheriff later added. “The young officer that did this, a very good investigator, just made a mistake.”

Additionally, the sheriff noted that they were able to get the man his job back and hoped that this public statement would help restore his reputation. “We’ve had this happen in the past. I really hope this never happens again,” the sheriff stated. “The chances are that this may happen again. But I’m gonna do our best, I’m gonna do our very best not to let this happen again.”

In my opinion, this is the least that he could do, but it’s still nice to see. While we may not like to admit it, mistakes like these do happen, and publicly coming out and saying “we fucked up” should be the bare minimum standard for police officers and sheriffs in this position.

That, or the people who falsely locked the person up have to spend the same amount of time in jail as they did. Let’s see how quickly that will bring down false arrest numbers!