Nearly one million on run in LA

STEPHANIE CAIN

LOS ANGELES There are close to 1 million fugitives running from justice in Los Angeles County, and few law enforcement agencies have the cash or people to look for them.

According to the California Board of Corrections, which polls every county in California quarterly, there were 97,377 unserved felony warrants and 821,404 unserved misdemeanor warrants in the county at the end of year 2000. Statewide, the total was nearly 2.6 million.

The state Wanted Persons System, a computerized database of fugitives run by the Department of Justice, holds the names of far fewer fugitives. Only about 300,000 from Los Angeles County and about 900,000 statewide are in the system.

Since law enforcement agencies only report the names of scofflaws they're willing to transport back to the jurisdiction where the warrant was issued, there's a discrepancy in the numbers.

Whatever the number, there are precious few looking for them.

Time was that the Los Angeles County Marshal's Department took care of the majority of warrants throughout the county. But in 1994, the marshal's merged with the Sheriff's Department.

The move is said to have saved taxpayers $14 million a year, but it also paved the way for more difficulties in serving warrants.

"There's only one way to serve a warrant," said Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer. "There needs to be that physical contact, and any time you're talking physical contact you're talking about bodies, money, and that's always a problem."

"Law enforcement has competing priorities, and who wants to take money away from Peter to pay Paul? Who wants to take money away from drug enforcement, for instance, or firearms?" Barankin said.

Throughout the state, other units like the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement's Violence Suppression Unit and a sexual predator apprehension team almost exclusively go after people with warrants, said Mike Van Winkle, spokesman for the DOJ.

Azusa police Sgt. Frank Chavez confirmed that finding the time to serve warrants can be a challenge.

"It's tough," he said. "We have a number of warrants we've issued as a result of the hard work of our patrol officers, but over time, you acquire arrest warrants and you're incapable of staying on top of them."

"It definitely is a manpower issue. With the L.A. County Marshal's Department, they'd come in every day and say, 'Hey, we're looking for this guy.'"

Now, Chavez described the system as piecemeal.

"You're picking up the stragglers. You just kind of stumble upon them," he said.

Chavez, who coordinates the reserve officer program, said he tries to tackle the issue day by day, usually assigning a pair of reserves to serve warrants one day each week.

Felony cases get quicker attention from the District Attorney's Office, and "over time, your cases get pushed farther and farther back. With a misdemeanor case, you may not have it looked at for another month, so then the case is a month old in the mind of the cop that filed it in the first place."

A man picked up for a $2,000 warrant in, say, Twentynine Palms, was often considered too big of a burden, Chavez said.

"In the past we've said, 'Cite him out, give him a new court date and it's his responsibility to show,'" he said.

Gerry Shumway, a jailer and reserve officer in West Covina, said the majority of charges he books each day are for spousal abuse, drugs and warrants.

"It's just impossible," he said. "There's so many people with warrants, how they get caught is traffic stops, when they routinely run them for warrants, and nowadays it seems if you stop five cars, one of them's going to have a warrant."

A two-person reserve team out of the department is assigned to handling warrants, but they only serve traffic and misdemeanor warrants.

-- Anonymous, May 07, 2001