I have a question: many times you will read that a person is arrested-and he has outstanding warrants against him. As I understand it, if you are given a summons to court, and do not show up, the judge will issue a “Default Warrant”.
This is an authorization for any law enforcement officer to arrest you and bring you in.
My question: since so many people seem to ignore these, what are you actual chances of being arrested, should you have one?
Suppose you skip town-years later, you return. Is a local cop really going to know that you have an outstading warrant from 5 years ago?
It depends on the jurisdiction, of course, but most states have online databases of warrants and orders, and patrol officers can often look stuff up right from their car. So if they pull you over for a broken tail light and run your license, the warrant will pop up. In places where they don’t have fancy computers in patrol cars, they just radio your license info to the station and they look it up. This is standard procedure in most places.
So if you do get stopped and you have a warrant, at least in that jurisdiction, chances are fairly good that you’ll be arrested.
Depends on lots of factors, but typically warrants are entered in a state’s database. Once there, they often linger until removed. The police are not usually going to form squads to hunt you down, but if you happen to come to their attention – say, via a traffic stop where the officer runs your license – they will learn of the warrant and arrest you.
In most states, these are entered into the state drivers license/non-driver id system, as flags on the person’s record.
So if the ‘wanted’ person is stopped by any cop who has access to that state computer system, as soon as the cop runs your drivers license, up will pop a notice that there is an outstanding warrant for you. So then that cop will arrest you, and take you to jail.
And nowadays, nearly all cops, including the local ones, have access to this system. So the local cop likely won’t be going out looking for you. But if he stops you for any reason, you are likely to be arrested for that old warrant.
I looked up default warrant, never heard it called that, it seems to be central to MA. Most jurisdictions term them Bench Warrants, a warrant from a Judge.
Warrant’s don’t expire unless rescinded, which is not likely. If you are “under investigation” for something, whether in a car or an foot, your warrant data is stored to check, upon a LP check or by a given name.
Police can run plates for no reason, so you might not have done anything to get stopped, but if your name comes up as registered to a fugitive, they got you.