Geographical Limits on Warrants, Police and Public Risk

La Grange IL

11 April, 2022

9:34 AM

Description

This is the first of a short series of informational pieces on how legislation in Illinois and internal policies affect services delivered by the police. GEOGRAPHICAL LIMITS ON WARRANTS, POLICE AT RISK In Illinois, and specifically Cook County, getting warrants is not an easy process. To get a warrant, there are really two classifications - one is a Failure to Appear warrant. This type of warrant is issued by a judge and turned over to the local police department that originally made the arrest. That department then tries to serve the warrant or put it into LEADS, Law Enforcement Agency Data System, or sometimes put it into NCIC, the National Criminal Information Computer. The difference in the two is that LEADS is only Illinois warrants and NCIC is nationwide warrants. There is a key though, to put your warrant into NCIC you must be willing to pick that offender up nationwide - or at least have an agreement where the Cook County Sheriff's Police, or other fugitive warrant agency, will pick up the offender on your behalf. This usually is reserved for exceptionally serious felony crimes. You would think then that warrants obtained by law enforcement agencies under what's called Original Warrants, would be served in Illinois – you'd be wrong. First, an original warrant represents a warrant where the individual has never been arrested on the charge. An example - detectives investigate a case where an offender was not arrested at the scene; they develop enough evidence to get a warrant and then that warrant is put into LEADS. You would think that once that is done, police would be obligated to pick the offender up. A little known fact in Illinois, and widely used in Cook County, is geographical limitations. Agencies, and sometimes judges, put geographical limitations on the warrant. That means that the police agency won't go anywhere beyond the geographical limitations - even though the warrant stays in the system and shows up statewide. An example – it's common to issue a warrant in Cook County for six county-wide only, meaning Cook, DuPage, Will, Kane, Grundy and Lake Counties. However, if an agency had stopped that individual, the warrant still appears but they cannot arrest him or detain him on an active warrant that has geographical limitations outside of what is stated! Believe me, the offender knows they are wanted on a warrant. However, they don't know, almost always, that either a judge or police agency has put geographical limitations on it. So offenders who know they have a warrant are more likely to flee from police, fight with police, and just generally try to avoid the whole process. This puts the police officer at risk for being injured, battered, or engaging in a high speed pursuit, which would be totally unnecessary otherwise. I have always been a strong proponent (when I was police chief in Riverside) if you don't want to pick the offender up, don't put the warrant into LEADS – period. Consider how victims think about this; say you have a warrant for Domestic Battery and the offender gets stopped on the warrant in Springfield but is from a Cook County agency. The Cook County agency will not go to Springfield to pick up that warrant, because it's a Misdemeanor Domestic Battery. The victims don't know that, and many times don't even know that the offender's been stopped several times and never arrested on the warrant. Therefore, the offender can simply keep criminally reoffending over and over and over again – just as long as he isn't picked up in one of the geographical limitations communities that are put into the warrant. I know this may sound a little confusing and maybe complex – that's because it is. Getting back to my original thought – all police agencies in Illinois should not put warrants into the system if they're not willing to pick up statewide. It's a bad practice, leading to more suffering by victims and injury, or worse, to police officers. Chief Thomas Weitzel (retired)Riverside, Illinois Police DepartmentFollow Chief Weitzel on Twitter @chiefweitzel About Tom Weitzel-Tom Weitzel retired from the Riverside, Illinois Police Department on May 20, 2021 after 37 years in law enforcement, 13 years as Chief of Police. Opinions are my own. All views expressed are my own and do not represent the opinions of any entity whatsoever with which I have been, am now, or will be affiliated. Chief Weitzel can be reached at [email protected]