This is an opinion column.

The words on the warrant still seem surreal:

YOU ARE THEREFORE ORDERED to arrest the person named or described above and bring that person before a judge or magistrate of this court to answer the charges…

But it’s real. The reality signified by an official red stamp across the page.

“Executed,” the stamp reads, so the person named above – in this case Charles Edward Gray, a big man, 6-foot-4 and 280 pounds, with gray hair and green eyes – was arrested and hauled off to jail.

Court documents detail the gruesome details of his crime.

Gray “failed to pay for three months of trash service,” the complaint in Chambers County District Court explains. “After receiving the bill for three months, then a citation, two door hangers on the residence, and multiple attempts at a phone call he missed his January 12, 2022 court date. He owes a total of $104.92 dollars to the city of Valley.”

So he was jailed. On a delinquent trash bill of $104.92.

Of course that is not the end of it. Gray was made to secure a $2,500 bond, to pay a fee, and to be a criminal in his hometown. Because he failed to pay a mandatory trash bill to the city

Gray is seeking to join a class action lawsuit filed last week against the city of Valley and the private company, Amwaste LLC, the town used to pay to carry away the refuse.  The lawsuit was filed last week on behalf of Santori Little, who was jailed in a similar manner as Gray, for failure to pay less than $150 in trash fees.

Valley tosses people away. Like trash.

The names – some might call them victims – have piled up since 82-year-old Martha Menefield was arrested in November over a $77 trash bill.

Allan Armstrong, one of the lawyers who filed the class action, said Valley and the waste company took advantage of their power to extort money from the poorest of residents. Among other things, the lawsuit claims a pattern of racketeering activity.

“We have sued a governmental entity and a waste management company for RICO violations, the mob-busting statute,” he said. “We are confident the waste management company and the municipality conspired to illegally incarcerate citizens to collect debts for the waste management.”

Other plaintiffs will continue to be added to the suit, he said.

Attempts to reach Amwaste officials failed. Valley rebid its trash collection services in December and contracted with another company.

Valley Mayor Leonard Riley said he could not talk about the suit, but said he is appointing a new committee – three council members and two sanitation officials – to examine the town’s policy fee collection and the incarceration that goes with it.

“I’m hoping they come up with a new structure,” he said.

Riley said those who are unable to pay should come forward to ask for exemptions. Of more than 2,500 customers, 120 are exempt, he said.

“I just want people to pay their trash bill,” he said, “If they need to be exempt, get exempt. Trash is an expensive business.”

But Riley, who has been mayor for nine years, was unapologetic about the arrests. Asked if it bothered him to see people like Menefield go to jail over non-payment of fees, he said it does not.

“It bothers me that she was delinquent,” he said. “Delinquent is delinquent. They had so many chances to pay.”

It ought to bother the rest of us, in a state that likes to talk about defending its rights, when jail is used as a late fee.

John Archibald is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for AL.com.