Wanted on Warrants

The Fugitive Safe Surrender Program

Daniel J. Flannery

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781612777382
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Corruption & Misconduct
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Since 2005, the Fugitive Safe Surrender (FSS) program has been implemented in more than twenty cities around the country. Tens of thousands of individuals with active warrants for their arrest have voluntarily surrendered to law enforcement in a church or other neutral setting. The sites are transformed for four days into complete justice systems with pretrial-intake, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and probation/parole and community services staff. The program is advertised through local media and various community-based outlets, sending the message that individuals with nonviolent felony and misdemeanor warrants can voluntarilysurrender to law enforcement and receive expedited action and favorable consideration of their cases.

Author Daniel J. Flannery has gathered information on who turns themselves in, what the warrant is for, how long the warrant has been active, and what happens to the individual. He asked participants to complete voluntarily an anonymous survey about demographics, how they heard about the program, why they surrendered, why they had not previously surrendered, what they think will happen to them, and what they might need help with in the future. Wanted on Warrants uses these site reports, media coverage, interviews with participants, and survey data to explain why FSS has proven to be such a consummate success in clearing outstanding warrants. Across all sites, less than 2% of people with warrants who surrendered during FSS were arrested. Rather, they were released to go home within hours of turning themselves in.

This collaborative initiative between local and federal law enforcement and community faith-based organizations is unique and has proven to be a successful program that is being copied and initiated throughout the country. Wanted on Warrants offers valuable insights into what happens during and after an FSS program and will be welcomed by policymakers and practitioners.

1

Officer Wayne Leon

It started out like every other day. But one decisive moment changed that day forever. Officer Leon left home at 7:00 A.M. sharp, as usual, as his three young children, Gabbey, Justin, and Nicholas stood by the window vigorously waving good-bye and calling his name through the thick living room window glass. He could not hear them, but he could see their smiles, so he slowed at the end of the drive, as he did every day, making sure that he smiled and waved back.²

The six-year veteran had won awards for bravery, which made the many other members of his family in law enforcement proud. He was respected by his colleagues. He led the Cleveland, Ohio, police district in the number of felony arrests. He was a member of the neighborhood Fresh Start unit, credited with helping the community work through its high crime rate and rampant disorganization. He played on the department softball team. The residents knew him by name. He was always concerned about safety so he would return home at night to his wife and kids. He always wore his bulletproof vest, just as he did that Sunday.

“You have this kind of feeling in your stomach,” said Leon’s neighbor Leo Mahoney. “You know he is a police officer. It is Sunday afternoon. Why are four cops walking up to her door?”³

Officer Leon had just finished providing backup to another officer on a call in his assigned patrol area, a place called the Warehouse District, an area of downtown Cleveland lined with restaurants and bars and known for its bustling nightlife. He was on his own in an area that in the previous five weeks had seen four violent crimes. On that day, Officer Wayne Leon did what he thought was necessary, and it cost him his life.⁴

It cost him his life because Quisi Bryan, a felon with a warrant for an outstanding parole violation, didn’t want to go back to prison. It cost Officer Wayne Leon his life because he decided to pull Bryan over for a traffic violation, and Bryan had decided that there was no way he was returning to prison, whatever it took, whatever the cost. The illegal gun he had with him for protection was about to come in handy.

Wayne Leon never had a chance. He had no chance because Bryan was desperate and had already made up his mind. After pulling the car over at a gas station, Officer Leon got out of his cruiser and cautiously approached the driver’s side of the car, telling dispatch he had made a stop. It was still daylight outside, and there were many people around. He was following procedure, being safe, and going by the book. As he got close to the driver, he leaned toward the open window, and then suddenly, without warning, the shots rang out. Officer Leon was shot in the head from close range. He fell by the side of the car, and Bryan took off. No words, no scuffle, no chance.

Here is my worst day experience:

Did you ever feel the sadness of losing a parent? Well, I have. My dad was a police officer and died in the line of duty. I was only four so I do not remember a whole lot, but I do have some memories. I also have a lot of memories from my family members.

It started as a normal day. He gave his kisses and said good-bye. That was about the last thing he said to us. A guy had a warrant. A warrant is like something that says the person has to be arrested. My dad saw the car of the guy. It was stopped at a gas station. My dad pulled him over since he did not want to be arrested he pulled out a gun. Then he shot my dad in the head.

A reverend was there so he took the commutation [sic] device that looked like a walkie-talkie and said, “Officer down.” My dad got rushed to the emergency room.

Then a few police cars came to my house and told my mom what happened. My mom went to the emergency room to see my dad. The doctors could not do a lot. So sadly, he died.

My mom came home and said, “Daddy was hurt so bad last night that he died and is in heaven.” He died June 25, 2000. It was just four days after his 32nd birthday. My mom said on my fifth birthday I said, “Can’t daddy just come down here for one minute?”

Gabbey Leon, age 11

People tried to help. A witness at the gas station raced over to Officer Leon and, seeing he was badly injured, screamed into the police car radio, “Officer down, officer down!” A security guard pursued Bryan in his car but stopped after his vehicle was hit by several bullets. A local pastor tried to give comfort and medical care to Leon. As soon as backup arrived, several people gave the officers descriptions of the car and its driver. This kind of community cooperation with law enforcement—concern for safety, attempts to help, and even a pastor’s willingness to give comfort and care—remain the core tenets of Fugitive Safe Surrender.

Peter Elliott had met Officer Leon during his days as a deputy U.S. marshal and an agent for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. He was a decorated officer himself, gaining acclaim for his role in tracking down Mourad Toupalian, a Cleveland university administrator who moved in high-profile political circles and who for years had been secretly involved in financing and supplying munitions to Armenians who bombed Turkish embassies around the world.

In 2003, three years after officer Leon was killed, Elliott was appointed by President Bush (and since reappointed by President Obama) to become the United States Marshal for the Northern District of Ohio. One responsibility of the U.S. Marshals Service is to track down violent fugitives and individuals wanted on outstanding warrants for violent crimes.⁵ By some estimates, more than one million active felony warrants exist in the United States, with each warrant increasing the potential for a dangerous confrontation between law enforcement and individuals in the community (Helland and Tabarrok 2004). While exact numbers are not available, states that have tried to count the number of unserved warrants (for both felonies and misdemeanors) estimate these reach into the hundreds of thousands per state (Hager et al. 2005). One way that the Marshals Service tracks fugitives with outstanding warrants is to form regional task forces made up of law enforcement from local, state, and federal agencies. For example, Marshal Elliott formed the Northern Ohio Task Force on Violent Crime, which is charged with identifying and tracking down the most violent offenders with outstanding arrest warrants. To do this, the task force coordinates efforts among federal marshals, officers from local police departments, deputy county sheriffs, state police members, and agents from other federal agencies like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The fugitive task force in the Northern District of Ohio has won regional and national acclaim for being one of the most effective task forces in the country.

As the task force began to take shape and begin its work, Marshal Elliott began to wonder what could be done to make the tracking down and arrest of individuals with warrants less dangerous, for both the officers involved and for members of the community. Historically, serving warrants has resulted in a substantial number of officer fatalities. In fact, the first recorded law enforcement officer to be killed in the line of duty was New York City Deputy Sheriff Isaac Smith, who was killed on May 17, 1792, while attempting to serve a warrant on a suspect wanted for disturbing the peace (National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund [NLEOMF] 2008). The NLEOMF maintains a comprehensive database of officers killed feloniously or accidentally in the United States. During the 10-year period from 1998 to 2007, 53 police officers were killed feloniously while serving warrants (NLEOMF 2008).⁶ The rationale for the FSS program is simple: for every fugitive who peacefully and voluntarily surrenders, law enforcement and residents face one less potentially dangerous confrontation on the streets. It was his friend Officer Leon’s death that made Elliott realize that “desperate people commit desperate acts with tragic consequences.”

2

In the Beginning

Setting Up for FSS

Implementing the FSS program requires active collaboration among all the core partners, including federal and local law enforcement, the local faith-based community, media and community partners, volunteers, local businesses (who often donate food, equipment, and materials), and all facets and principals of the local justice system. Every city that implemented the program through 2010 received technical assistance and support from the USMS, which developed a manual for training and implementation based on experiences from the 20 cities that completed the program (two cities held the program twice). Following such a manual helped ensure communities followed the core principles and elements necessary for a successful FSS program.

“I’ve been in law enforcement going on 25 years now. I feel the most comfort in my life when I’m at church. I feel the most safe when I’m at church. And I felt that individuals in the community that were wanted were basically no different than me. The FSS program takes the desperateness out of the situation, makes neighborhoods safer, and builds a new trust between law enforcement and the community. All that was needed was a place where individuals could turn themselves in to authorities in a sane and orderly way. What better place than at a church?”

Peter Elliott, U.S. Marshal, Northern District of Ohio From www.usmarshals.gov, Mar. 28, 2007

Conducting an FSS event is not quick or easy. Because of the complexity of implementing the program, some communities may take up to 18 months to plan a Fugitive Safe Surrender program. Planning is facilitated by having a subcommittee structure that addresses the core issues for implementation, including safety and security, justice system processing, community partnerships, information technology, media relations and outreach, arrest criteria, and processing warrants from contiguous or out-of-state jurisdictions. Many communities have also found it beneficial to have core partners sign a memorandum of understanding, which outlines partner responsibilities and commitments.⁷ This can be especially important as the community gets closer to the event date, when politics and resource limitations can begin to dominate the conversation. In the end, if the local judges are unwilling to participate, if the community cannot agree on a suitable physical location to hold the event, or if basic agreements about processing and jurisdictional authority cannot be reached, then it is not feasible to implement a successful FSS program.

Among the many partners in any FSS event, judges are at the core of the program’s successful implementation. For example, jurists from the participating community have to agree to set up their courtrooms at a church location for several days. FSS requires that a fully functioning justice system—complete with pretrial services, warrant checks, fingerprinting, probation/parole, courtrooms, prosecutors, judges, and public defenders—be set up on the grounds of a house of worship. Judges also have to agree to abide by the spirit of the program by offering “favorable consideration” to individuals who voluntarily surrender. All media materials disseminated prior to the program’s start make clear that FSS does not offer amnesty and is targeted toward nonviolent offenders. Every community must also establish its own criteria for mandatory arrest, such as a violent felony or high-level drug crime. If a person with such a record attempted to surrender during FSS, then that person would be taken into custody. However, the goal of the program is not to arrest but to help individuals with warrants take care of their responsibility to the legal system and to the community.

Harrisburg, PA: Faith-based organizations, over 200 courteous and friendly volunteers, community-based resources, such as Career Link, Crisis Intervention, and Firm Foundation of Pennsylvania, and counseling services worked alongside U.S. Marshals, the courts, district attorney’s office, country adult probation and parole, several local police departments, and the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole.

The Green Sheet, Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole, Nov. 2009, Vol. 2

In most communities, hundreds of volunteers were recruited to provide support to the FSS program, many of them participating through their churches. These volunteers typically greeted individuals seeking to surrender in the parking lot, helping them complete paperwork, ushering them through various stages of the criminal justice system as they are processed at the church, and providing them and their family and friends with childcare and meals. Trained volunteers could answer questions and offer reassurance that a person would be treated fairly. Volunteers were also on hand to help fugitives sign up for additional support services, such as getting a driver’s license restored, job training, or treatment services for a substance abuse problem. Often these services and agencies were present at the church location to provide needed assistance, as you can see below in the description of what happens during an FSS program (Flannery and Kretschmar 2012).

All cities that have conducted FSS to date have implemented the program over a four-day period, from Wednesday through Saturday (with the exception of Washington, D.C., which held the program over three days). In most cities, when individuals appeared at the church before the program ended for the day, they were then processed through the system that day, even if handling their case lasted late into the evening. As the technological capacity, function of the program, and number of partners grew, the program’s process also changed. Site-specific differences occurred due to physical space, security concerns, and how offenders were processed, but the components described below capture the typical procedures employed by an FSS program.

Nashville, TN: Zavier Cloyd is tired of running. With at least three warrants for his arrest on file in Nashville, he lives in fear, always looking to see whether police are nearby, waiting to pounce on him and take him to jail. “I’m trying to get my past behind me, and I’m trying to get on the right path,” says Cloyd, who says he is accused of abuse in an incident involving his seven-year-old child, an allegation he denies. “I need help,” he says. Today, Cloyd is going to do something about it. “I used to be a bad man, but I’ve changed. I’m trying to keep my life in order. I love my kids. I can’t leave them. I got to make sure they live.”

The Rev. William Bobby Harris preaches sermons of redemption and grace each week in his church. But this week, Harris is working with local and federal authorities, and he is urging criminals to surrender, avoiding an unexpected confrontation with police on the streets. “This is an opportunity to break away from the life of running, looking over your shoulder, if you’re upset, nervous, and wondering if you’ll lose your job,” Harris said. “This is an opportunity to for you to come get a second chance and get a new lease on life. This is what it’s all about.”

Christian Bottorff, The Tennessean, Aug. 1, 2007

In every city, the local community was charged with selecting the participating venue based on location, size, the reputation of the minister or church in the community, parking availability, and other practical issues. In all but one city the community decided to hold the FSS program in a Baptist church (Las Cruces, New Mexico, chose to hold the program in a Catholic church). In many ways, the success of the program has hinged on the participation, location, and reputation of the church.

The Church

The church is historically a place where individuals can find sanctuary and refuge, so people trus...