East Baton Rouge Parish law enforcement and judicial officials will gather on Saturday, Dec. 5, at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center on Gus Young Avenue to hold an amnesty day in which anyone with outstanding misdemeanor warrants and traffic tickets can settle their affairs with the courts.
Judges will hold indigency hearings for those who are unable to pay the fines, East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore III says, while those who can pay will be able to do so without fear of being arrested.
“We’ll bring the court to them,” Moore says, adding more amnesty days could be scheduled if the first one is successful.
Meanwhile, City Constable Reginald Brown is taking a different approach to clearing up the city’s 160,000 outstanding warrants. He has filed an amended 2016 budget request with the city-parish for $438,000, $245,000 of which would be used to hire five new warrant verification deputies, while the remainder of the money would be used for five new vehicles and accessories for those vehicles.
Brown wants to add five warrant verification deputies so he can staff the constable’s office 24/7, allowing city police and sheriff’s deputies to check for warrants on anyone who is stopped after 5 p.m.—something that is not available right now.
The two approaches toward reducing the backlog of warrants are on the table after the Metro Council on Oct. 14 shot down a request to appropriate $500,000 raised through warrant recall fees established by the state Legislature to open the old jail beneath City Court for two-week stints as a misdemeanor detention facility.
Detractors of the misdemeanor jail have called it a “debtor’s prison” where people who have unpaid traffic tickets will be jailed. The Metro Council hearing on the item drew many protesters who spoke against the facility.
Moore refutes the “debtor’s prison” moniker, saying his goal is not to lock people up for traffic tickets, but to get people to take care of their obligations.
“I want to make sure I get it resolved and not put anyone with traffic tickets in jail,” Moore says.
The account for the warrant recall fees stands at more than $600,000 and is growing. Some judges, Moore and Brown say, are still levying the warrant recall fee.
If opened, the misdemeanor jail would be staffed primarily by deputy city constables with some assistance by the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office. Brown says he lacks the manpower at this time to staff the facility for two weeks and feels beefing up his warrant verification staff is another way to combat the backlog of warrants.
“That is the key to being able to identify offenders and reduce number of outstanding warrants,” Brown says.
Brown says he has long wanted to expand warrant verification services outside normal business hours because people with outstanding warrants know that they are safe from being arrested on those warrants after 5 p.m. on weekdays and clear on the weekends without anyone at the constable’s office to check those warrants.
“You remove that myth, they worry about it every time they’re stopped,” Brown says.
Besides Brown, there are 39 employees with the Constable’s Office, including 33 deputy constables.
Brown says he feels the money raised through warrant recall fees can be used to cover the $245,000 he is seeking in his 2016 budget and it would appease all sides of the misdemeanor jail discussion.
Moore says he is unsure that any money could be removed from the account other than to fund a misdemeanor jail, and the Legislature may have to get involved to decide if the money can be used for other purposes. He favors reimbursing those who paid the fees if a consensus cannot be found on what to do with the money.
Moore adds he and others could still go back before the council once again to try to pass the item allowing them to open the misdemeanor facility for a two-week stint.
—Ryan Broussard
