COUNTYWIDE : Police Officers Plan Warrants Roundup

A special task force of 23 Ventura County police officers will hunt down people with outstanding warrants next month, authorities announced Wednesday.

Officials encouraged people to clear up the warrants before the sweep occurs. Under a special program that ends Friday, people with minor outstanding misdemeanor warrants may pay only the original fine for the violation instead of the fine and a penalty.

The goal of the task force, which will sweep the county June 12-29, is to clear 100,000 outstanding warrants, Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Bruce Norris said.

About 54,600 warrants are for misdemeanor violations of traffic, pedestrian, bicycle or leash laws. They represent $20 million in bail and penalties. A portion of the money collected from those warrants will go to the state, but the rest will be given to county law enforcement agencies, authorities said.

The remainder of the warrants are for more serious criminal violations with bails of about $80 million.

Officers will not settle simply for checking the residences of people with outstanding warrants, Norris said. “They may be at work. They may be at a family picnic. There are no restrictions on where we’ll go to pick this person up.”

People with some minor violations will be given the chance to pay by check, cash or credit card on the spot. But if they don’t have the money, they should be prepared to go to jail, Norris said.

Law enforcement agencies will make $100 for each traffic warrant that they collect, Norris said. The seven agencies involved are the district attorney’s office, the Sheriff’s Department, and police departments in Oxnard, Ventura, Simi Valley, Santa Paula and Port Hueneme, authorities said.

The Sheriff’s Department has run similar operations three times in the past six years, Norris said. But this is the first multi-agency task force operation, he said.

During the last sweep in March, 1988, deputies made 92 arrests and brought in warrants worth $357,000, Norris said.

This year’s crackdown comes on the heels of a Warrant Recovery Program run by the Ventura County courts.

Only 1,794 of the 70,000 people with such warrants had taken advantage of the program by Tuesday.