Months ago when I was still working the graveyard shift at a Shell station, I was speaking with one of the night beat cops and something came up which I’ve never been entirely able to clarify.
Anyone who has any white trash or the like in the family probably knows or has met someone that has fled their hometown to avoid being arrested on warrants. In nearly all of the cases these warrants came about from minor violations of the law (ie. traffic tickets 9 times out of 10) where a ticket wasn’t paid, community service wasn’t served, etc. This is not to say that people don’t flee to avoid murder raps and the like, but it does lead up to my question. Also, despite seeming a frivolous way to get out of paying a few hundred dollars in fines, it used to be that getting out of the county you were wanted in was a viable way of getting out of your legal obligations, since different counties and states didn’t bother trying to track you down unless you were wanted on a serious charge. For the most part, as long as you weren’t pulled over or detained in the county that had issued the warrant, chances are there was no real risk of your being arrested. My understanding is that this has changed somewhat, but exactly to what extent is what I wish to ascertain.
Getting back to the cop, he informed me that since 9/11 there has been an independent company (can’t think of the name, but not an official government agency) that allows local precincts and county courts to upload warrant information to a national database, which police then check any time you’re pulled over or detained. In other words, that warrant you picked up in Minneapolis may end up catching up with you in Phoenix after all. But not so fast. Obviously a fee is charged each time warrant information is uploaded, so according to this cop it’s not always lucrative to spend X amount of dollars uploading warrant data in order to collect on, say, a $200 fine. Particularly it it’s going to involve transporting a prisoner across state or county lines. This obviously leaves a bit of a grey area. Does anyone know the guidelines that most counties are apt to use in these cases, or even anything further about the company itself? I got the impression the cop was being semi -honest (in admitting that not all warrants will show) but was nonetheless exaggerating the likelihood that warrants for minor offenses would be uploaded at all.
The reason I believe this is that a) if they eventually arrest you in the county with the warrant they don’t need access to a national database, and b) if they DO need access to the national db to get the warrant info, then they will certainly end up having to have you transported to the county that issued the warrant. Since most people that take flight in these situations have spotty employment history, it’s unlikely that many of them will be able to post bond and get the situation rectified prior to transport being arranged. Ideas?