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ells9824

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I read this installment from the Post Dispatch,and it looks to be a very excellent series on lack of communication between LE agencies and how it effects ordinary citizens.

This section deals with a piece of crap named Eloy Williams, who should not have seen the light of day to begin with. Already wanted for rape in Florida, he was spotted by police in Georgia creeping around an apartment complex. As it ends up, after giving a fake name to police and being caught- he spends a night in jail for lying about his name.
His original warrant was coded wrongly by a South Broward county clerk, causing it not to show in the database. Coincidentally, Miami-Dade did not enter a warrant at all for missing drug court because they didn't want to travel to pick him up.

A 14 month sexual crime spree followed.


Darrin Bates had three warrants that were not sent to the database, including one for rape.

When Bates was jailed in eastern Georgia for driving a stolen car in 2006, authorities there didn't find any warrants, so he was labeled a low-risk inmate. He escaped three weeks later and forced his way into an 88-year-old woman's home.

As she prayed aloud, he beat her face so hard he blinded her in one eye.

Full text - Part 1

Part 2 when it comes
 
Last edited:
Part 2 of 3 Monday March 3

A Post-Dispatch investigation found that authorities have long refused to pick up fugitives who have fled.

Even when their warrants are put into national databases and even when police locate them elsewhere, fugitives regularly don't face justice.

Law enforcement officials across the nation acknowledge that their inability or unwillingness to extradite merely shifts the danger to another community.

"It's a joke really," said Oregon prosecutor Ed Caleb. "And the joke's unfortunately on all of us, because these guys know they can just take off." The failure to extradite can backfire.

Today's cases

Felipe Fowlkes

Social Security notified Virginia authorities in 2000 that fugitive Felipe Fowlkes was living in New York. Fowlkes, with convictions for assault and sex crimes, was wanted on charges of felony theft and voter fraud.

But Virginia was unwilling to travel 500 miles to pick up Fowlkes.

His benefits were cut off in April 2000. Three weeks later, he tried to rob a woman in New York, resulting in three years in prison. Virginia had not filed a detainer to hold Fowlkes, so he was released when his term was up.

In 2003, six weeks after his release, Fowlkes raped a girl, 15, in Massachusetts.

Authorities in Nottoway County, Va., did not respond to questions about why they didn't retrieve Fowlkes.

Victor Batres-Martinez

In Oregon, authorities had an active warrant out for nine years for Victor Batres-Martinez, an illegal immigrant whose rap sheet included armed robbery and kidnapping. The last warrant, in 1993 in Oregon, was for drugs.

Immigration officials arrested him crossing the border into New Mexico in 2002, but Portland authorities wouldn't travel outside the Pacific Northwest to retrieve him. He was driven back to Mexico and released.

Seven months later, he made his way back to Oregon. In Klamath Falls, he came across two nuns on a bike path, and beat and raped them.

One nun died.

There was no outcry over the decision not to extradite.

Even Caleb, the man who later prosecuted Batres-Martinez, said he didn't blame Portland officials.

Oregon's budget reimburses extradition costs only in extreme cases. An informal network of police agencies will shuttle fugitives for free, but only in the Pacific Northwest.

With the state's lack of prison space, authorities usually don't pursue fugitives facing nonviolent charges, Caleb said.

"If he goes across the (state) border, everybody's glad they don't have to extradite him back now, because everybody's so overcrowded," Caleb said. "It's really a horrible way to run a criminal justice system."

Correy Major

Florida's Lee County was willing to cross state lines to retrieve fugitive Correy Major — but not all state lines.

Major had seriously injured an elderly woman in 1997 when he stepped on her face to steal her purse, and he nearly wrestled the gun away from a police officer who chased him down.

County authorities were willing to retrieve him from anywhere in the southeastern United States.

They'd go only as far north as Kentucky.

He fled Florida and was arrested two months later in a strip club in suburban Cleveland for breaking into a pickup and resisting arrest. Police there contacted Florida authorities but learned that Ohio was one state too far for Florida to travel.

So Major posted $900 bond on the Ohio misdemeanor charges. He called his mother to tell her he was being released.

"He said, 'Something ain't right,'" recalled his mother, Annie Watts. "He said, 'They're setting me up.'"

Eight hours later, police officers from a different department came upon Major selling drugs on a Cleveland street corner, records show. They had no idea he was a fugitive.

They chased him up the stairs of an apartment building. Major pulled a gun and shot at them, hitting Detective Clark, before another officer shot back, killing Major.

Officers rushed Clark to the hospital, but doctors couldn't save him. Then they learned that Major was a fugitive, in police hands just hours earlier.

"We all felt like we were betrayed," Sgt. Jerry Zarlenga recalled. "How could that happen?"

Full Series
 
Part 3 of 3 Wanted vs. Warrant

Police issue "wanted"s rather than having a judge issue "warrant"s.
Police say its based on the same structure as a warrant, just not signed. Only problem... wanteds don't show up in multi-jurisdictional databases.

When police do learn of other departments "wanteds" they tend to skip the chase if there isn't a legal warrant out for their arrest.

Story
 
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