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PA puts warrants in the computer
Posted by David Hardy · 9 April 2007 10:56 PM
Story here. The state found there were 1.4 million unserved arrest warrants, incluing thousands for violent offenses.
It's amazing just how many criminal records such as this have never been entered into any usable database. I helped on a case here where the mess came to light. Felony arrest warrants took days or weeks, misdemeanor ones weeks or months, to get into the system. The court computer system didn't "talk" to the law enforcement one, so each warrant had to be hand-entered. A warrant for violation of probation was a state issue, so county and city authorities didn't enforce it, nor even tell state authorities when they knew where a violator was.
I was arrested one night after spending 2 years on the lamb. It was a failure to appear warrent because somebody forgot to tell the courts that I had paid my ticket.
So I was living at the address on the warrent for two years untill one night a board rookie cop decided to run my plates just for fun.
In the end everything cleared up, but I didn't apreciate the suprise, and I would have prefered a phone call when the warrent was issued, or a knock on my door....