When Warrants Pile
Up, Criminal Suspects Remain Free
Most Police Departments Have Long Arrest
Backlogs
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| Dana Jensen |
| NLPD's Warrant Sgt., Sgt.
Strecker Goes To Homes To Serve Warrants Saturday
Evening. Also Discovered A Couple Of Women Smoking
Pot. | |
 |
| Dana Jensen |
| NLPD's Warrant Sgt., Sgt.
Strecker Goes To Homes To Serve Warrants Saturday
Evening. Also Discovered A Couple Of Women Smoking
Pot. | |
| By ANDREW
RYAN
Day Staff
Writer
Published on
6/1/2003
New London — On his second try Saturday afternoon, Sgt.
Michael Strecker found Kenneth Elijah Barnhill, one of this city's
wanted, at his grandparents' home on Connecticut Avenue. Armed with
45 mug shots, it was the seventh door Strecker had knocked on in
less than two hours, and the first person he'd found at home.
“I have a warrant for Kenneth,” said Strecker, standing in the
family's dining room, explaining that there was an arrest warrant
for third-degree assault stemming from an incident at New London
High School.
“I didn't assault nobody,” said Barnhill, 16, glancing meekly at
his grandparents. Strecker walked him out of the house to a police
cruiser to take him to jail.
In a beige, four-drawer file cabinet in the department's dispatch
center, New London police keep about 1,260 active arrest warrants
waiting to be served. While New London has three to four times as
many as most other local departments, including Norwich, Waterford
and state police in Montville, all departments struggle to keep up
with the task of serving those accused of crimes.
The backlog in New London and other communities points to a
statewide problem that some blame on police apathy and a system in
which the methods of serving the warrants varies from department to
department.
“We found that the system was total bedlam and chaos,” said Rep.
Robert Farr, a West Haven Republican who served on a legislative
task force that examined the system in 1997.
In Connecticut, each police department is responsible for serving
and following up on their own arrest warrants. Farr estimates there
are 58,000 active warrants in the state. Most warrants are fed into
national and statewide computer systems that allow officers to run
the names of people they pull over against the names in a database.
Often, this leads to warrant arrests, but critics say the police
rely too heavily on these chance encounters.
“The attitude in law enforcement historically has been that
serving a warrant is not a priority because eventually criminals get
re-arrested,” Farr said.
Police officers say that tracking down suspected lawbreakers is a
time-consuming process, one that often takes a backseat to domestic
disputes and 911 calls. Most days, there just isn't time.
“We need to spend more time to serve the warrants that we have,
tracking down the people that are wanted,” said Strecker, New
London's warrant sergeant. “More time means more money. That's
probably why we are in the state we're in.”
For some, that's troubling. “A lot of times they will say they
couldn't find them, but they didn't make any effort to find them,”
said James F. Papillo, the state's victim advocate. “It impacts
public safety. That's a significant problem.”
Even with the backlog, New London County State's Attorney Kevin
Kane doesn't see outstanding warrants as a problem and concedes that
people who are tough to locate are often found when they are
arrested for another crime. If a case involves a violent offender,
the process is expedited and law enforcement pools its resources to
arrest the suspect, he said.
“I don't think we have had many cases where serious crimes were
committed by people with warrants,” Kane said. “That Norwich case
was an exception.”
The Norwich case involved Tyree L. Davis, 23, who had a history
of sexual violence. On Feb. 10, a judge signed a warrant for his
arrest because he violated his probation stemming from the rape of a
15-year-old girl.
Yet, 28 days after the judge signed the warrant, Davis was still
on the street. On March 9, police said he lured a 14-year-old into
his car in Norwich and forced her to have sex with him. Police
arrested him two days later.
In Plainfield on Dec. 31, 2001, Michael Latour, a man with a
violent past and an outstanding warrant for assault, murdered Jenny
McMechen, who was eight months pregnant. While McMechen's death
inspired legislation to toughen penalties against people who kill
pregnant women, there haven't been significant changes to the
warrant system.
For a new warrant, police build a case against a suspect and send
their findings to a state prosecutor. If the prosecutor believes
that the warrant presents probable cause for an arrest, it is passed
on to a judge. After a review, the judge can sign the warrant and
send it back to the police to be served.
In most departments, a warrant is the responsibility of the
original investigator, so detectives will knock on doors, check
phone, utility and welfare records and talk to family members in the
hunt for their suspect.
Judges also issue re-arrest warrants automatically when a
defendant misses a court date. The warrant returns to the officer
who made the original arrest, whether it was a state trooper who
arrested someone for drunk driving on Interstate 95 or a New London
patrol officer who nabbed someone for assault in a bar fight.
New London police say that the bulk of the backlog is re-arrest
warrants — people who were arrested, went to court, made bail and
then skipped out of their next court date. Of New London's 1,200
plus warrants, Strecker estimated that 60 to 70 percent are
re-arrest warrants.
•••••In New London's file cabinet, the charges and vintage of the
warrants vary. On one extreme, there is Enrique Aviles, a man who
police have wanted for criminal attempt to commit murder since 1987
and who is believed to have fled to Puerto Rico. On the other end,
there is Jamal L. Alexandrette, who police ticketed for possession
of a vicious barking dog in 1999 and didn't pay the $100 fine.
New London has trouble keeping ahead of the flow of warrants
partly because it receives more arrest warrants than other
departments in the region. Since Jan. 1, the court has issued 290
new arrest warrants in New London, compared to about 85 in
Stonington, 52 in Waterford, about 100 in Norwich and 200 at Troop E
in Montville.
In addition, Deputy Chief William Gavitt said that New London's
population is more transient than other local towns, with New York
drug dealers coming to the city to make quick cash. When they get
arrested, they often make bond and go back to New York, out of reach
of the New London's police, he said.
Some departments, however, are more successful than others in
chipping away at the backlog.
Troop E requires that troopers submit written updates on their
warrants every six months. When there is time, Lt. Patrick O'Hara,
the commanding officer, said he has assigned a few troopers to a
warrants squad to go track down the wanted. The state police
barracks at Montville has only about 100 active warrants, he said.
Since Jan.1, they have served about 150.
In Stonington, Sgt. Louis Diamanti oversees a spreadsheet that
tracks officers' progress on their warrants. Like Troop E, officers
have to update their progress every six months. And in turn,
Diamanti submits quarterly reports to his chief.
Stonington has 330 active warrants and has served about 70 since
the beginning of the year.
“I'd like to snap my fingers and have all of these served
tomorrow, but that's not going to happen,” Diamanti said. “Some of
the warrants you are just never going to serve, that's a fact.”
Many criminals are transients that move from address to address,
state to state, police say. For minor crimes such as shoplifting,
the expense doesn't justify extraditing someone from California for
a misdemeanor, Diamanti said. Consequently, the warrant languishes.
In New London and Norwich, officers are expected to follow up on
their warrants, but there is no requirement that they submit written
reports detailing their progress. Strecker has served as New
London's warrant sergeant for about six years. In November, the
department began giving Strecker two days a month to focus solely on
serving warrants to reduce the backlog.
“What we have is a zealot we've found,” said Capt. Kenneth
Edwards of Strecker and his penchant for tracking down suspects. In
the first three months of this year, Strecker served 64 warrants.
Working warrants Saturday afternoon, Strecker carried a manila
envelope crammed with mug shots. While driving, he scans faces,
hoping he'll notice somebody on the street.
“If you don't get a warrant in the first week or so, they get
stale,” he said. “When the warrants are fresh, sometimes people
don't know (the police are looking them). When they know, they
boogie.”
People move, get evicted or stay with relatives, he said. At 46
Coleman St., Strecker knocked hard on a green door. Like most of the
stops on Saturday, nobody answered. He talks to neighbors, flashes
mug shots and asks, “Hey, do you know where Carl moved to?”
Trying to serve an unsuccessful warrant at 80 Maple St., Strecker
noticed three women in a gray Lincoln Navigator behind another
building smoking a “blunt,” marijuana rolled in cigar casing. He
called for backup and arrested Salina Barnhill, 34, for possession
of marijuana, but it cut into 45 minutes of his warrant time.
Later, he stopped at Magoo's II bar on Jefferson Avenue, fishing
for people wanted on warrants. James Jimenez strolled out of the
bathroom and got caught in the net. Jimenez, who also goes by the
names James Brown and James Luis Brown, had a July warrant for
third-degree domestic assault. After a search, police found a $20
bag of crack and almost $300 in cash.
Some days, Strecker said, he gets lucky. Other times, “it looks
like it's fruitless, but you have to do it.”
This year, Strecker and other Connecticut law enforcement
agencies got a new tool for tracking down fugitive felons from the
Social Security Administration. In February, the state began sending
its list of wanted felons to Baltimore to be crunched with a
database of federal welfare recipients. Unlike the bunk addresses
felons typically give police, fugitives tend to give Social Security
a legitimate residence so they can receive their benefits check,
said Monica Thompkins, the national coordinator for the fugitive
felon program.
When they get a match between the databases, Social Security
passes along the information to local law enforcement and sends the
felon a letter warning that their benefits will be cut off in 60
days if they don't remedy their legal problems. In four months, the
program has identified 440 felons in Connecticut, Thompkins said.
When Strecker isn't assigned to warrants, he keeps an eye on the
paperwork that comes back from court, giving officers a heads up
when one of their warrants is ready to be served.
And, at the rear of the department's roll call room, there's
another reminder about the city's wanted. Strecker created a warrant
wall: 40 black and white, 3-by-5 mug shots that remind patrol
officers who they are looking for.
One of the city's most prolific fugitives, Robert “Bee Bee”
Vernon, 36, holds a prominent place on the wall. He has skipped out
on five court appearances and $186,000 worth of bond. The warrants
stem from charges that range from possession of marijuana to
resisting arrest to third-degree assault.
“Last time, it took six of us and a canine to get him,” said
Strecker, adding that after that arrest he made bail and failed
again to appear in court. “The information on him is that he is in
Montville.”
Sometimes, it's as easy a sending a fugitive a letter or calling
them on the phone and asking them to turn themselves in. Other
times, it's a cat-and-mouse game that can drone on for years.
“They know they are being looked for,” said Gavitt. “They don't
want to be found.”  | 
