Monticello Live

Chief of Police Eddy Deaton addressed the City Council Thursday evening on warrant issues the department is having due to mix-ups in District Court. He told the Council that over the past few years people were being arrested on warrants for fines that they had already paid.

He stated that when someone comes in to pay a fine before their court date, the court docket does not change to reflect the payment. When the court date comes and the Judge calls for that person and they are not there, a warrant will be issued for their arrest, even though they already paid their fine.

Chief Deaton stated that he and Court Clerk Yukiko Shepherd had been working on the problem and, ““I think we’ve got that issue resolved.”

Deaton also informed the Council that two dispatchers came in and worked for 12 hours, looking over 41 warrants, to make sure they were valid. They were checked three different ways.

In order to take care of the legitimate warrants the City has Chief Deaton said, “We’re going to have a warrant round up, when I get enough warrants that are verified and good, we’re going to have extra officers come in at 5:00 in the morning, and we’re going to start knocking on doors. We’re going to start taking people to jail.” “I visited with Judge Harper this morning and he’s given myself and the sheriff the authority to do this.”

Chief Deaton and Sheriff Gober are going to meet about the issue of uncollected fines, and come up with a percentage of money that they should take off of the total fine, in order to help people begin to pay fines back.

“If it’s $500 we collect $100, give them a court date and cut them loose.” –Deaton

Money collected in this manner would go directly to paying off the fines.

Beverly Hudson asked Chief Deaton if new technology was needed in District Court to keep the warrant issues from occurring in the future. Deaton responded that, “district court probably needs to look at some new software.”

He stated it would be a time consuming process to “clean up” the issues the Court has but, “I’m willing to take the time to look at it and make it right. So we can make good arrests, valid arrests.”

This entry was posted on Monday, January 23rd, 2012 at 6:24 am and is filed under Court, Police /Legal, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.