Every now and then, I still like to pretend I'm a real cop. Last night before going home, I was in my office perusing data in CrimeView NEARme (the app formerly known as P3i), when I clicked on a nearby arrest warrant. It was issued for a California sex offender who had moved to Nebraska and failed to register. We had begun investigating the case back in April, and a warrant was issued on July 20. There was nothing in the reports, however, that showed any activity on the case since the warrant was issued. Sometimes ships pass in the dark, and I wondered to myself if the investigating officer realized that his case had finally turned into a felony warrant.
I made a phone call to Sgt. Ryan Witzel, for the purpose of suggesting that he and his Center Team officers might want to check out the address, and determine whether our felon was still around. Sgt. Witzel, however, told me he had just received an email from the original investigating officer. He pulled the email up, and read it to me. The felon, it appears, had been arrested on July 21st by a fugitive task force in Kansas City. I complimented Sgt. Witzel on clearing the case four days before I called. Drat, skunked again.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
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10 comments:
If only that officer would have updated the data so you could have seen that without making a phone call.
8:22
Geez, he'd just learned of the arrest--the warrant hadn't been cleared yet.
To an outsider like me, four days after someone was picked up seems like a long time for a warrant to remain active unnecessarily. Do other agencies normally notify the warrant-issuing authority once they have someone in custody so the warrant can be cleared? I would imagine that this is a rather common problem. How many other officers might have saw that warrant on NearMe and spun their wheels looking for the suspect? I'm just curious, more than anything else. -8:22
9:31,
Generally, a warrant will remain active until the offender actually appears in court. This is usually the same day or the following court day. There will always a lag between the arrest, the withdrawl of the warrant, and the update to the database. It will be considerably longer in a case like this, where the defendant is arrested in another state, and hasn't even been brought back to Nebraska yet.
Officers are generally aware of these factors, and understand the potential lag. We have processes in place for the confirmation of warrants, to reduce the chance that we are arresting someone on a warrant that has been resolved, but the court record has yet to catch up to the criminal justice database.
Nonetheless, you could indeed have someone looking for a person who has already been arrested, if the information is not yet reflected in the file. Nothing's perfect.
Steve,
You are quite right. I stand corrected.
At first I thought you were writing about my favorite band.
Hey Director, rumor has it that you chased down some fleeing suspect yesterday morning in Woods Park.
10:34
Oooh! We need more info! Perhaps we'll have to pay $15 for the official police report! :)
SNAP!!!!
"Every now and then, I still like to pretend I'm a real cop."
Do you still have your commission, or did you relinquish it when you became Director??
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