Riverhead P.D. 2011 New Years' Resolution: Start a Warrant Squad

Riverhead Police Chief David Hegermiller said today that his department is about to get tough with people wanted on arrest warrants issued by the Riverhead Justice Court.

With outstanding warrants continuing to pile up – 877 as of today, according to Judge Allen Smith – Hegermiller said he hopes to have in place by early next year a process whereby two officers would be assigned each day to nothing but execute warrants.

Executing warrants, he explained, means going to a defendant's address and placing him or her under arrest. In the past, this is something he said he lacks the manpower to pursue. Today, however, he said he was confident he could work something out.

"When a warrant is issued against you, you have to know that there's some kind of outcome to it and that it's not just going to sit on a list somewhere," he said.

The new policy comes in response to an issue Smith has been raising for years – namely that the credibility of his court is dangerously undermined when people think they can ignore court orders with impunity.

He said that most outstanding warrants are for people who have been ordered to appear in court and chose not to.

"It gets to the credibility of the system," he said. "You can't run a criminal court if people don't think they have to appear when ordered." 

Smith said that warrants currently outstanding run the full gamut from code violations to serious misdemeanors like assault and driving while intoxicated.

To the extent warrants out of his court are currently being enforced, he said, "It's a function of a person being stopped and having a police officer run his or her name through a computer.

"If you have an active warrant, whether it's from us, a district court or county court, the computer is going to light up," he said.