OCPD Says Outside Counties Aren’t Picking Up Their Fugitives

The Oklahoma City Police Department is working laborious to maintain folks with felony warrants off the streets. 

Staffing shortages and different constraints from smaller businesses throughout the state at the moment are forcing them to make the drive to the county the place the warrant was issued.  

“We’re not simply just going to let someone with a warrant with a violent crime just walk around the streets here,” stated Mst. Sgt. Gary Knight with the Oklahoma City Police Department.  

A program developed in the previous few years has allowed them to arrest folks with out-of-county felony warrants, leaving the county they arrive from to extradite them.  

“Whether it is manpower constraints or budget constraints a lot of these counties are not extraditing them. They are not coming and getting the people we arrest and taking them back to their counties for prosecution,” he stated.  

The latest scarcity leaving OCPD with the time-consuming process of driving them to their county.  

As it stands, if an officer arrests somebody with a felony warrant not issued in Oklahoma County, they name their watch commander after which drive them again to the county their warrant was issued in.  

“If they are going to come take them then we will take them to our jail but if we call and say, ‘this person’s got an arrest warrant for shooting somebody’ and they’re saying ‘sorry, we can’t come and get them’ we are going to drive them right then up to that county and make sure they are in jail,” stated Knight.  

OCPD stated a number of the crimes these persons are charged with embrace home assault and battery, failure to register as a intercourse offender, assault and battery on an officer and carjacking theft.  

“We transport them there it really is anywhere within the state of Oklahoma. There are programs, overtime programs, we have looked at to address that to make sure there’s adequate officers on the streets,” stated Knight.  

So far this 12 months OCPD has transported greater than 70 folks, a quantity they stated is greater than in earlier years.