Early Thursday morning, Hurricane Irma tore across the Caribbean destroying entire communities and leaving a reported eight deaths in its wake. As Floridians brace themselves for the most powerful storm ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, a Polk County Florida Sherriff took the opportunity to antagonize residents who might seek refuge in local shelters.

On Wednesday, in a series of tweets, the Sherriff's Office announced that law enforcement officers will be checking IDs at every shelter and turning away citizens with certain criminal records.

He went on to smugly clarify that individuals with arrest warrants will be taken into custody.

He then continued to exploit the terror of those in the path of the impending category 5 storm.

As always, Twitter responded with a collective WTF.

Seriously?

Where does he get off?

Despite the public outrage, sheriff's office spokeswoman Carrie Horstman defended the tweets, telling the Orlando Sentinel, "Officers are legally obligated to take a person into custody if they have a warrant." She went on to say that officers have no way of seeing what type of crime is connected to a warrant so, even people with minor offenses would be arrested.

Terrorizing citizens who are seeking shelter from a natural disaster is absolutely disgusting. We can already see how this scenario is going to play out.