The Escambia County Sheriff’s Department took action last week to clear a number of arrest warrants off the books. The result: 39 people taken into custody. At a press conference Wednesday morning, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan announced the results of the three day initiative. "We were able to serve a total of 54 warrants and arrest 39 people. The charges ranged from cocaine trafficking, grand theft and multiple traffic offenses. This sweep did not concentrate on a certain area of Escambia County, but was done throughout our entire jurisdiction."
The sweep targeted about 70 outstanding warrants which means there are still about a dozen offenders who could not be located during the operation. Lieutenant Randy Blake is the head of the warrants division at the Escambia County Sheriffs' Office. He says tracking down transient offenders who don't have a permanent address can be time consuming. "Wherever they lay their head down is their address. So it's kind of hard to locate them sometimes." Sheriff Morgan agrees, saying "there's a lot of intelligence work that goes (on) behind the scenes. As Lt. Blake said, they don't have regular jobs. They don't have a home address and a telephone number or an IP address for a PC in their home. So our intel folks get together and it may take days or weeks to identify the individual and where they're currently at."
Sheriff Morgan also says the warrant division is constantly serving warrants and well as transporting suspects to and from other jurisdictions. As for this sweep, Lieutenant Blake says the arrests went smoothly with little resistance. Two teams of seven officers each were out on the street all three days serving the warrants and making arrests.
A total of 54 warrants were served during the sweep resulting in 39 arrests. The difference is because some suspects had multiple outstanding warrants. There were also arrests made that did not involve a warrant. Lt. Blake gave the example of Adrian Phillips who was arrested for trafficking in cocaine. There was no warrant for his arrest, but when he saw police cars pull up a few doors down he fled. He was quickly captured and placed under arrest. Sheriff Morgan quipped that "his mistake was thinking he could outrun (Deputy) Jeremy Jarman. That was a fatal error on his part."
These sweeps are done four or five times a year when the number of outstanding warrants starts to build up. Sheriff Morgan says there would be more if there were more time and money.
