Request By:
Major General Billy G. Wellman
Office of the Adjutant General
Departments of the Army and Air Force
National Guard of Kentucky
Boone National Guard Center
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Opinion
Opinion By: David L. Armstrong, Attorney General; Greg Holmes, Assistant Attorney General
This is in response to your letter to the Attorney General in which you seek advice concerning whether a county sheriff or local police officer can be paid an arrest fee and transportation expenses for arresting and transporting a member of the National Guard pursuant to a "Warrant of Arrest on Military Charges."
Initially, we refer you to KRS 441.500. This statute provides, in pertinent part: "441.500 Transporting to and from detention facility (1) If an accused is confined in a detention facility, he shall be transported as necessary in accordance with the following provisions, unless otherwise ordered by the court: . . . (c) In all other cases the sheriff of the county where the prisoner is incarcerated shall carry out this duty."
There is no provision in the Kentucky Revised Statutes expressly authorizing the payment of arrest fees and transportation expenses to county sheriffs and local police officers for transporting arrested members of the National Guard of Kentucky. In the case of Overstreet v. Boyle County Fiscal Court, 264 Ky. 761, 95 S.W.2d 584 (1936), the Kentucky Court of Appeals (now Supreme Court) quoted with approval the following rule: "Statutes relating to the fees and compensation of public officers must be strictly construed in favor of the government, and such officers are entitled only to what is clearly given by law." See also KRS 64.410 providing in part that no officer shall demand or receive for his services any other or greater fee than is allowed by law or any fee for services rendered when the law has not fixed a compensation therefor.
It is therefore the opinion of this office, based on the aforementioned statutes and case law, that there is nothing in Kentucky law which requires, or even permits, the payment to county sheriffs or local police officers of arrest fees and transportation expenses such as you have described in your letter.