Preventing crime by enforcing bench warrants

Another casualty of DC's fragmented local-Federal system

One of the most important but least-discussed forms of “underpolicing” in DC is bench warrant enforcement. Judges issue bench warrants when a defendant fails to appear in court; either while their case is open or as part of their probation. These bench warrant scenarios are sometimes pretty minor, but in other cases the defendant goes on to commit new crimes (up to and including murder) after a bench warrant has already been issued for their arrest. The bench warrant is supposed to trigger the US Marshals Service (USMS) or the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) to go make an arrest in order to bring the defendant/offender before the court. We don’t have publicly-available data on US Marshals arrest data but MPD’s arrests for “Release Violations” collapsed during COVID and have not yet recovered:

The initial COVID-era decrease in bench warrant enforcement was driven by an order of the Chief Judge of the DC Superior Court suspending the enforcement of most misdemeanor bench warrants because “arresting a person wanted on most misdemeanor bench warrants during the public health emergency presents a health risk to the person, law enforcement, and others that outweigh the interest of the public”. However there doesn’t appear to have been any kind of recovery in bench warrant enforcement as judicial operations have tried to return to normal post-COVID. Over the last 3 years there has been a steady increase in the number of “Criminal cases with an active (unexecuted) bench warrant at the end of the calendar year” based on the DC Superior Court’s annual reports:

A MPD officer shared this unofficial explanation for the change in enforcement priority: “the Marshals and MPD stopped aggressively serving warrants because of the pandemic, and because of the George Floyd protests there was no motivation to start up again.” Note how similar this rationale is to MPD Assistant Chief Kane’s narrative about morale and confidence in MPD writ large from this post:

Solving more crimes deters crime

“The Chief alluded to what occurred in 2020 that really shifted how our officers kind of [unintelligible] up. And so getting them back in the game that has really been a big push from the Chief right down to the the executive command staff and to the management that we have on the street. And so at this point what we’re really doing is rebuilding their confidence back up, right? They were beat down just a little bit. So we’re rebuilding their confidence back up, and the more they see that they’re supported, the more they see that we’re out there with them, the more work that they’re gonna do.”

It’s also worth noting that while we have no data on the US Marshals’ work specifically on DC cases (something that hopefully the CJCC or some other entity could get/track) we do know that nationwide the USMS have been making ~21% fewer “State and Local” fugitive apprehensions; from 60,441 in Fiscal Year 2019 to 47,522 in Fiscal Year 2022. Whatever the reason, the number of unenforced bench warrants has been growing in DC.

Those end-of-year active bench warrant counts actually understate the number of people that had a bench warrant throughout the year. Some defendants surrender voluntarily in response to a bench warrant while for others the warrant is executed either by USMS/MPD proactively finding them or “reactively” when they are arrested (usually by MPD) for a new crime. It’s this last scenario that is especially concerning because many of those additional crimes could have been prevented if USMS or MPD had proactively enforced the bench warrant before the person committed a new crime. It’s a huge blind spot that we don’t appear to have publicly-available data on the crimes committed by people with active bench warrants. The volume of anecdotes suggests it’s a significant problem:

• George Sydnor allegedly murdered Christy Bautista while he had an active bench warrant

• Russell Dunkley allegedly attacked pre-school teachers in front of their students while he had an active bench warrant

• Taquine Lee allegedly “stated, "Go back to your country" to the victim and then “bear-hugged her, threw her to the ground, punched her in the face & stole her purse” while he had an active bench warrant

• Ivan Dixon allegedly engaged in two armed carjackings, a robbery and an ADW while he had an active bench warrant

• Christopher Lawrence allegedly threatened people on the street with a machete while he had an active bench warrant

• Robert Thompson allegedly stabbed someone with the intent to kill them while he had an active bench warrant

• Daniel Greene allegedly engaged in a string of package thefts while he had an active bench warrant

• Ronald Branham allegedly committed a robbery while he had an active bench warrant

• Tarik Laghrib committed a series of armed robberies while he had an active bench warrant

• Antonio Smith allegedly was engaged in retail theft while he had an active bench warrant

• Melvin Richardson allegedly was engaged in carrying an illegal firearm and possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance while he had an active bench warrant

These are just examples that I had noticed while researching some of the arrests that MPD announces; which is just a tiny subset of all of the arrests MPD makes each year. Unfortunately the fact that a suspect had an active bench warrant at the time of the crime and/or arrest is rarely mentioned in media accounts which helps this problem avoid scrutiny.

Another underreported issue is that the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) has almost stopped pressing charges when felony defendants fail to appear in court. Under DC law, anyone charged with a felony who fails to appear in court (which would trigger a bench warrant) can be “imprisoned not less than one year and not more than five years” and notably this sentence would be consecutive to any other sentence they receive. For the USAO, which claims that they want to “incapacitate” repeat offenders with more prison time, one would expect them to bring these charges in every instance. However data from the DC Sentencing Commission shows that the number of sentences for this offense has plummeted in recent years despite the increase in bench warrants for felony cases. This dataset only includes felony cases but given the USAO’s overall prosecution trend it’s very likely that prosecutions for misdemeanor failure to appear have also fallen significantly. That same dataset also shows that DC Superior Court judges have shifted almost all of the 1 year mandatory minimum for that charge to a suspended sentence:

Some have claimed that changes in how DC Courts simply “advise” defendants of their next court date instead of having the defendant sign a notice of appearance has significantly changed how (or if) the USAO can prosecute these cases. Overall it appears that both the enforcement of bench warrants and any consequences for failing to appear have weakened in recent years. This was inadvertently reinforced during the “Operation Trident” press conference announcing a sweep of 48 people with outstanding warrants when the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA) representative said "God I hope so" that these kinds of arrests would happen more often. That same press conference resulted in the damning line “Authorities could not on Thursday directly say why they had not been arresting these alleged violators all along, before a task force was launched.” While the Bowser administration enjoys using the phrase “lawlessness” to describe other problems in DC, this massive breakdown in bench warrant enforcement on their watch hasn’t yet received much attention from them.

Fixing bench warrant enforcement in DC is going to require that the US Marshals, MPD or both finally decide to prioritize it. Given MPD’s circumstances, there ought to be significant “prioritize DC” pressure on the US Marshals (and their chain of command in the Department of Justice and White House) from Washingtonians and members of Congress worried about crime in DC. As a Federal agency, the US Marshals have the ability to flex resources to parts of the country that need help. Given how violent crime is up in DC at the same time it is falling in many American cities, it would make sense to shift more Federal resources to DC. Given that the Federal government’s often unhelpful role in DC’s criminal justice system helped get us into this mess, there’s additional moral cause (for whatever that is worth) for the DOJ to reposition resources from the US Marshals (and honestly other Federal law enforcement agencies) to help deal with DC’s crime spike.

When the US Marshals do prioritize a city they can deliver pretty significant results. They recently led an operation in Baltimore that resulted in the arrest of 226 fugitives. This is in contrast to the aforementioned “Operation Trident” in DC which only captured 48 fugitives. This is one of many things that are going better in Baltimore than DC (like improved firearms prosecutions) that seem to be contributing to a falling homicide rate in that city.

Chief Smith and her leadership team should also consider how MPD should prioritize bench warrant enforcement. It would be quite risky to depend on the US Marshals and there are good reasons to believe that bench warrant enforcement is an above-average use of a police officer’s time. Trying to find people with active bench warrants is much more targeted than generic patrolling and has much less blowback from the public or courts than regular police stops. Given the recidivism risk of people with active bench warrants, and the simple need to enforce the court’s orders, bench warrant enforcement ought to be a MPD priority. It’s also possibly an easier way to reduce crime than other policing activities. As one retired MPD Detective told me:

“Many of the issues you spotlight can be attributed to the bad-fit relationship between D.C., as a city, and the federal gov. There is no county or state entity to support-complement law enforcement functions. For example, bench warrants. There is no county sheriffs dept to go out and lock up these violators. The DC Superior Court, a federal entity, has US Marshals as the court "police" -- but, personally, I've never seen or known them to go out and enforce bench warrant. Actually, as a young cop, I would get the latest printout of wanted b/w [bench warrant] violators and knock on last known address, mom's house. They're usually on the couch watching TV.”

When I asked if there were any barriers to officers making these kinds of proactive arrests he said:

“No. A b/w arrest is remarkably easy because it's an order from a judge to arrest Joe Doe who didn't show up to court as agreed (90% of b/w's). Once you ID Joe Doe, it's an arrest with minimal processing, he's simply transported to the central cell block. All MPD officers have the authority to make these arrests. Between radio runs or a quiet day, I would knock on doors and lock these guys up. As I said, usually at mom's house. They're not on-the-run in any sense.”

We also saw a recent example of officers who knew their beat recognizing that a person had an active bench warrant, making an arrest and actually finding evidence that linked the suspect to a separate burglary:

If bench warrant enforcement were a MPD priority, there are probably ways to make that information more visible for officers on patrol. With MPD’s BOLO app, the upcoming “Real Time Crime Center” and other innovations there are probably opportunities to better integrate bench warrant enforcement into MPD’s regular workflows. In addition MPD could choose to simply dedicate more officers to focus on warrant enforcement.

No one should be happy with DC’s bench warrant status quo. The DC Superior Court should have some indignation about their warrants not being enforced and the USAO ought to want to finish their cases (though both may not mind the reduction in caseload). DC’s leaders should be upset with the US Marshals for allowing so many alleged and convicted criminals to be out free on DC’s streets. Washingtonians, especially those victimized by suspects who had active bench warrants, should be insisting that MPD prioritize bench warrant enforcement on their own if need be. It’s scandalous that the problem has gotten this bad and with crime at unacceptable levels there’s no excuse for not tackling this now.