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City Prosecutors May Purge Hundreds Of Thousands Of Low-Level Open Warrants

Emma Whitford

Published Feb 10, 2017

Modified Feb 10, 2017

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via David Tan's Flickr

Emma Whitford

Published Feb 10, 2017

Modified Feb 10, 2017

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About a year before his death, the late Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson hosted his second open warrant adjudication event in Brooklyn to combat what he described as a crisis. "There's a crisis we have in the city that nobody's really talking about, and that's the crisis of 1.2 million open warrants," Thompson said during a radio appearance in October 2015. "If you're stopped and you have a warrant out, you're going to be put in handcuffs and brought to central booking, and I think that central booking should be reserved for folks who are committing gun violence or sexual assaults."

That open warrant number has since climbed to 1.5 million, mostly for low-level or "quality-of-life" offenses like drinking in public, spitting on the sidewalk or public urination. All of these charges factor large into the NYPD's "broken windows" approach to policing, and have a tendency to land New Yorkers—more often than not, men of color—in jail for failure to pay a small fine or respond to a court summons.

Now, in a possible effort to chip away at this number, the New York Times reports that all five borough district attorneys are considering striking thousands of open warrants from the record. The group has reportedly agreed to purge 200,000 warrants that were issued at least 20 years ago, while Acting Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez and Bronx DA Darcel Clark push for a larger purge: all 800,000 warrants written 10 or more years ago.

New York immigration attorneys and advocates say these warrants are increasingly dangerous for non-citizens, as one of President Donald Trump's sweeping executive orders targets any non-citizen with an arrest on their record for deportation. "In the past, immigration enforcement officials were supposed to focus on people who had serious criminal convictions," Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration professor at Cornell Law School, told Gothamist recently. "By contrast, the new executive order allows them to prioritize even people who have only been arrested, and not yet convicted."

In a statement Friday, DA Gonzalez argued that the difference between a 10 year threshold and a 20 year threshold purge would be significant. According to his office, outgoing City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito contacted the Brooklyn DA first about a purge last summer, later looping in the other DAs.

"In Brooklyn, we have been leading the effort to tackle the massive backlog of outstanding summons warrants in the city and believe that more should be done," Gonzalez said. "We have been in discussions with other agencies to reach a consensus proposal regarding dismissal of old warrants. Vacating all summons warrants 10 years or older would achieve the goal of promoting fairness without compromising safety as those who have them have not been arrested for over a decade and simply failed to pay or respond to a minor infraction."

There's already some pushback from the NYPD, though. The department didn't immediately respond to our request for comment, but the NY Times reports that brass are hesitant to purge warrants that have "sometimes proved helpful" in pinning down "dangerous suspects."

Austin Finan, a spokesman for Mayor de Blasio, did not take a position on the 10 year purge, versus the 20 year purge.

"It's a matter of common sense and fairness that we should work to reduce unnecessary arrests in our city," he said in a statement to Gothamist. "Resolving the issues posed by outstanding warrants is an important way to achieve this. Doing so requires the participation of many entities, including law enforcement and the courts. We remain engaged with the city council and those entities in a productive dialogue to chart a path forward that balances fairness and legitimate public safety concerns."

In the meantime, they mayor is under pressure from police reform advocates to scale back on broken windows policing tactics under Trump, due to the increased vulnerability of non-citizens. In a recent interview with WNYC's Brian Lehrer regarding immigrant protections, the mayor said broken windows is "its own discussion."

The Mayor's Office has also stated that misdemeanor arrests decreased 19% between 2012 and 2015.

Last spring, the City Council signed legislation empowering the NYPD to steer certain low-level offenses to civil court, rather than criminal court. Bill sponsors estimated that the new laws would prevent about 10,000 New Yorkers per year from opening a criminal record. But the law is discretionary.

"My problem with the bill is that the guidance [as to] when a person will be issued a civil summons is still arbitrary, discretionary, and up to the officer," said East New York Councilmember Inez Barron before casting her 'yes' vote last year.

A 2016 report from attorney Peter Zimroth, the federal monitor tasked with insuring that the NYPD is moving away from stop-and-frisk policing, found that unlawful stops are still common.

Tagged

broken windows

nypd

open warrants

Emma Whitford

Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

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