It doesn’t matter if the underlying offense was serious or trivial. Don’t show up in court when you’re required to do so? Bench warrant.  Don’t pay a fine on time? Bench warrant. A warrant here, a warrant there, and next thing you know, you’ve got 1.2 million bench warrants on your hands. That’s a lot of warrant.

“Warrants never go away. There’s no expiration date,” Bratton said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It would be great to get rid of a lot of that backlog. It’s not to our benefit from a policing standpoint to have all those warrants floating around out there.”

While some warrants are for people who committed crimes, say robbery, others are for offenses like drinking in public.  Among the problems is that when a warrant falls, a person is taken into custody, held and, after about 24 hours, taken before a judge. Often, the offense itself would be disposed of without jail, maybe some community service, maybe even dismissed, but the warrant means they spend a night (at least) in jail, plus are exposed to the additional. and more serious, charge of bail jumping.

In light of the “crime” originally charged, it all can seem pretty crazy:

Sheila Beasley was struggling to clean up after her beloved Rottweiler, Rocky, on a Bronx sidewalk on a December day in 2008 when she briefly put his leash down — a move spotted by a nearby plainclothes police officer who promptly wrote her a summons for having an unleashed dog.

Beasley, a 50-year-old mother of two, said she forgot about the ticket and missed a court date to resolve it. That decision triggered a warrant for her arrest, and nearly three years later, police showed up at her door and hauled her off to jail, where she stayed for four days.

“I feel like they abducted me from my house,” Beasley said this week. “I would never even make up in my wildest dreams and think I would have to go through a system like that for something so insignificant as doggy poop.”

What stands out in this story is that Beasley just “forgot” and failed to appear in court. The story glosses over that part, a rather significant detail. When a person is given a summons to appear in a criminal court, forgetting isn’t one of the options.

That she wasn’t taken into custody immediately, but handed a summons instead, is something of a courtesy.  The system relies on people being reliable. When they just “forget,” the system is constrained to issue a bench warrant for her non-appearance and do something about it. Did Beasley think her memory issues gave her a free pass?

But there is a more insidious side to the bench warrant problem, where people plead guilty and agree to pay a fine, but when the day comes to pay, they don’t have the money.  Scared, confused, embarrassed, they hide under the sheets rather than come to court to ask for more time. They get a warrant, not because they forgot, or because they are bad people, but because they are poor and handled the situation poorly.

This volume is, contrary to assertions by passionate advocates, not insignificant:

Last year, almost 40 percent of the hundreds of thousands of people slapped with tickets for low-level violations forgot, skipped or otherwise failed to show up to court to resolve the summonses.

And over time, the warrants stack up. The NYPD maintains a warrant squad, officers charged with rounding up people with outstanding bench warrants, but they barely make a dent in the numbers, while the backlog continues to grow.  At some point, the numbers grow ridiculously large.

And now, New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton wants to clean the slate.

How that might happen is unclear, and officials are still talking about the possibilities, but Bratton said he envisions a program in which people with outstanding warrants would receive a notification informing them that their risk of arrest on these matters could disappear if they agree to come forward.

But instituting a broader amnesty program could prove more complicated.

There are five elected district attorneys in New York with the authority to enforce rules as they see fit, and state judges must vacate open criminal warrants even if city officials decide on a policy level to institute an amnesty program.

The system, and particularly judges, really hate it when people “abscond,” meaning fail to appear for court when required. It jams up dockets and makes judges feel foolish for having been “kind enough” to let people walk.

Once a bench warrant issues, a defendant must “surrender” to the court and have the warrant vacated.  Many are fearful, with good reason, about showing up in court after they’ve blown a date. If it’s only by a day or two, most judges will shrug off the lapse, give the defendant a stern warning about not appearing with suggestion that if they have a problem with “forgetting,” a cell in the Tombs can cure it, then let them go home.

But defendants often want to know, in advance of returning, what’s going to happen. They want a lawyer to call the prosecutor and negotiate their return. That doesn’t happen. As a matter of policy, the district attorney’s position is surrender first, then we can talk.  Remember, not all defendants have warrants for dog poop, and some have absconded after release for serious crimes. It happens.

The notion of an amnesty, a chance for all those who had warrants to walk in, deal with their underlying offense or fine, and clean up the mess hanging over their heads forever, makes a lot of sense. These aren’t bad people, dangerous people. They may be foolish for having ignored their summons, or handled their lack of money to pay the fine poorly, but they don’t deserve jail or an additional bail jumping charge.

Their worst offense is dealing foolishly with the system.  It’s not a crime to be foolish, though foolishness is at the heart of a great many offenses. Providing them with a way out will serve everyone’s interest.  Bratton has a good idea, and now the system, the police, prosecutors and judges, need to reach a consensus on how to rid the system, and the public, of this blight.

H/T Wild Bill Doriss