Challenger Charges Garcetti With Failing to Serve Warrants

District attorney candidate Barry Groveman alleged Wednesday that a growing number of accused and convicted felons are roaming Los Angeles County free because they have not been arrested by police, and blamed the problem partly on a lack of leadership by incumbent Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti.

Groveman, a private lawyer and former prosecutor, charged that the number of unserved felony warrants in the county has ballooned over the last four years. While police agencies are responsible for arresting felons, Groveman faulted Garcetti for not identifying the issue as a priority and working with police on a solution.

However, figures provided by a state agency contradicted the challenger’s assertion that the unserved warrant problem is on the rise.

At a news conference in front of the downtown Los Angeles Twin Towers Jail, Groveman charged that the number of unarrested felons--which could include those who have been charged and not arrested, as well as convicted felons who fled before sentencing--should be dropping, because crime has been falling for several years.

Groveman displayed a chart showing the total number of unserved warrants in 1999 rising by 6,000 over the 1998 total. The 1999 total of 93,359 unserved warrants cited by Groveman, however, was an estimate based on the first three quarters of 1999.

State Board of Corrections figures provided by Groveman showed the number of unserved warrants actually dropped during the year, from 99,074 in the first quarter to 90,779 in the third quarter.

Bill Carrick, Garcetti’s campaign spokesman, accused Groveman of “using cooked-up statistics for a cooked-up press conference.”

Groveman also proposed assigning some of the district attorney’s investigators to the task.

Carrick and Steve Cooley, a deputy district attorney who is also a candidate in the March 7 primary, said that Groveman’s plan reflects a misunderstanding of the district attorney’s role.

The district attorney’s investigators are responsible for serving warrants only in cases initiated and investigated by the district attorney’s office, Cooley said. “Groveman doesn’t understand the proper role of a D.A. investigator, which is why he is not qualified to be the district attorney,” the prosecutor said.

Carrick said that district attorney’s investigators are “already overburdened and to suggest they take up this function is irresponsible.”

Cooley said Groveman overstated the problem. “I have had contacts with a lot of police chiefs, and it’s not a major concern in their minds,” he said.

Pasadena Police Chief Bernard K. Melekian, president of the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Assn., said he did not know if the number of unserved warrants is going up, but that “it’s a legitimate problem, and one we would love to discuss with a district attorney.”

Groveman and two supporters, former LAPD Deputy Chief Daniel Sullivan and former Assistant Dist. Atty. Curt Livesay, said that because crime is down, police agencies should now have resources to go after unarrested felons.

Melekian said that although crime is down, police departments assign most of their officers to patrol, and “calls for service are not down nearly as dramatically as the crime rate,” he said.