RUMFORD, Maine — Fugitives have learned an easy way to escape justice: simply by changing their ZIP codes.
On Dec. 12 in Brooklyn, N.Y., Peter Figoski, a 22-year veteran with the New York Police Department, was shot and killed by Lamont Pride, a man who was wanted in North Carolina for another shooting.
Pride had been arrested twice this past fall in New York on the Greensboro, N.C., warrant but was released both times because the warrant was for in-state extradition only.
The warrant had been entered into the National Crime Information Center database, which alerts law enforcement officials if a person has a warrant in another state.
Nationwide, an estimated 1.8 million warrants are entered into the NCIC.
Even with this information, law enforcement’s hands are tied if the warrant states it is non-extraditable. The officer has no choice but to let the fugitive go.
Norman Croteau, district attorney for Androscoggin, Oxford and Franklin counties, said most states are plagued with criminals trying to avoid the justice system in other states. The problem boils down to resources, Croteau said.
He said expenses can rack up when transporting a fugitive from state to state, because of lost manpower, plane tickets, hotels and other costs.
“For some states with a large number of extraditable warrants, it can be financially crippling,” he said.
In Maine, each prosecutorial district has an extradition account that is funded when a criminal fails to appear in court. That person’s bail money is requested to be turned over to the district for the extradition account, Croteau said.
However, there is a yearly cap of $20,000, he said.
“It’s a resource issue and as a state or district attorney, you have to set your priorities on who needs to be extradited,” Croteau said.
Rahoda Cook, who founded Citizens United to Find Fugitives, agreed with Croteau.
“Its not a moral issue,” she said. “It comes down to resources, and it shows how deep the economic times have affected us.”
Cook, who lives in Colorado, started the nonprofit group, known as CUFF, 14 years ago after she fell victim to a con artist who had five outstanding warrants in Florida for similar crimes.
Cook said the process of locating him and extraditing him back to Florida took three years of hard work on her part.
CUFF has since worked in conjunction with law enforcement in several states to push the issue of extradition and to find fugitives who are avoiding being prosecuted, Cook said.
“It really comes down to changing the mind-set of these cases in the public eyes and showing they need to fund law enforcement agencies,” she said. “Until they are willing to do that, no one is safe.”
Cases can be found across the country that highlight the issue of states refusing to extradite criminals on outstanding warrants.
In one case in June 2010 in Tampa, Fla., Dontae Morris, a man with a non-extraditable warrant for writing bad checks, shot and killed two police officers.
In December 2010 a tip led a local NBC News reporter to a man who had a non-extraditable warrant and was living in Overland Park, Kan., less than 15 to 20 miles from Missouri, where the warrant originated. The warrant was related to a six-year-old charge in which the man had sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl.
After calling police in Kansas, the reporter was told there was nothing authorities in that state could do because the warrant out of Missouri was non-extraditable.
Authorities in Kansas filed for a governor’s warrant, which is issued when one state requests the extradition of a fugitive from another state.
The governor’s warrant was approved and the man was arrested by the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department’s fugitive squad and extradited to Missouri after years of avoiding justice.
Resource programs for law enforcement to help catch fugitives also have been hindered.
In March 2011, the U.S. Marshals Service ended a nationwide program known as Fugitive Safe Surrender. The program allowed fugitives accused of nonviolent crimes to safely surrender themselves at churches.
Under the program, 34,000 people in 20 cities have turned themselves in since 2005. Of those who surrendered, 10 percent faced felony charges, including rape, robbery, child abductions and murder.
Spokesman Jeff Carter said in previous news articles that funding for the program was dropped because the agency could not sustain the unfunded initiative.
Andrew Matulis, assistant district attorney in Androscoggin County, said he processes two to five fugitive-from-justice cases each month.
Matulis, who used to work as an intern in the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office, said he saw about the same number of cases there. With those numbers, that would mean Androscoggin and Cumberland counties see 24 to 60 cases a year.
Matulis works diligently to ensure other states will extradite those criminals.
During court proceedings, judges are allowed to set bail and release fugitives in extradition cases, Matulis said.
“Most of the time I promote that no bail be set, so the individual doesn’t have a chance to flee to another state,” he said.
Croteau said a fair number of fugitives are brought back to Maine through the extradition process.
“Some of these cases need to be extradited regardless of the cost,” he said. “It shouldn’t be a free ticket.”
To see more from the Sun Journal, visit sunjournal.com.
Unbelievable. But how much can the taxpayer carry. Justice is expensive for sure. We just have to set priorities. Stop extraditing small crimes. The states they flee to will just have to deal with them. Petty criminals will no doubt do it again and get caught in the state they are in. I have seen Maine law enforcement go to Alaska, Florida etc. to pick up burglars who have stolen just 0ver 1k in property at a cost of 5-6k. Just leave them there. They are sure to do something similar and end up in a out of state jail. I know the victim wants their stuff back or at least someone punished but it costs everyone to get it.
Now I have to look up the laws on interstate flight. This is probably one issue that can be solved by the Federal Government. Some of these crime may seem petty but they certainly aren’t petty to the elderly who get scammed or young who get molested.
If a person is wanted in connection with a violent crime it should not matter where this person is hiding. Once they are found he or she should be arrested and sent back to the State and town where the warrant was issued and the paperwork and cost of transporting them should not be that extreme. There are too many laws to protect the criminal and not enough to protect the innocent!
and these laws are what you get with years of democrats in control.
Amen
It is up to each individual district attorney to decide how far they will go to extradite someone on a warrant. Not all DAs are democrats.
I”m a pox-on-both-your-houses Independent, not a Democrat. Your comment politicizes something that does not seem to be related to the topic. This virtually clinical obsession with blaming the other guy for everything is probably a more serious issue than warrants. That said, the law enforcement community generally share Republican not Democratic (or for that matter democratic, small “d”) sentiments. The thing is that it is arrests and convictions that are the measures of success for law enforcement and prosecutors, respectively. Consequently, we have a low threshold for arresting someone and high threshold for clearing them or bringing them back into the system under warrants. If you get rid of frivolous and anal-retentive obsession with drug laws (ala Ron Paul’s philosophy, for example), you would have plenty of money for inter-state transport. Also, the costs of transport needs to be borne by or charged to the agency issuing the warrant.
Increase bail amounts…and use the bail amounts (not “request” to use these bail amounts), to fund extradition…in-state or out…and scrap this “cap” foolishness.
How about this foolishness…the United States Constitution states that the ONLY requirement for bail shall be to insure the presence of the defendant at trial. All the historically recent extra requirements for bail are all part of the watering down of our God given inalienable rights.
“God given” … ?? News flash — God wrote the United States Constitution! C’mon …
Criminals have bank accounts,cash and or assets. USE theirs!
they are not criminals until they have gone to trial.
good point. Adjust the cap to allow the AG’s some lee way. Say up to 50k , what ever is not used, then it stays. At the next budget, less will have to be raised to get it back to 50K, just make sure each year there is 50K (or whatever each feels is adequate based upon experience). I bet in alot of instances, the full pre set amount won’t have to be raised each year.
They ARE criminals. They just aren’t convicted criminals.
yes, and the US Constitution is just a piece of paper.
You miss the point. In the eyes of our court system, of course you are correct that they are innocent until proven guilty, but in REALITY the vast majority of the people we are discussing ARE criminals. This discussion is about reality. If you tried, I’m confident you could discern whether we are talking about what actually happened or what has been proven in a court of law up until this point in time. BTW, you never seemed to feel it was important to make this point when people were calling GWB a criminal…….
Innocent until proven guilty is not a fad, it’s what our country is based on. And I am not aware of anyone calling GWB a criminal, so….I’m not sure what throwing some political barb out there has to do with this subject
Deleted duplicate post.
Don’t try to change the subject to avoid the truth, I didn’t say or imply it was a fad. I said that you were correct that innocent until proven guilty is true in the eyes of our court system, and I agree that is as it should be, but in REALITY, there are many criminals who are not yet convicted of their crimes and fleeing to another state is one of the ways they avoid being convicted of their crimes. But that makes them no less of a criminal than the offender who sticks around and is prosecuted/convicted quickly. This discussion is NOT taking place in a court of law and none of us are currently serving as jurors or lawyers or judges, so the use of the term “criminal” is not subject to the same strict legal definition that would apply in court. The REALITY is that the vast majority of those who move to another state and avoid extradition to avoid prosecution are CRIMINALS in every common sense definition of that word.
If you happened to witness someone murder your loved one in cold blood, would you insist that nobody call them a murderer or a criminal if they fled to another state to escape justice?
all i am saying is i believe in due process. that’s all.
But that’s not what you said, and nobody else has said they didn’t believe in due process. You apparently assumed that and thought it was your job to lecture them about the Constitution based on them calling someone a criminal who had thus far avoided prosecution. I believe in due process just as strongly as you do, but that doesn’t mean that I have to speak up and lecture everyone who, in a conversation outside of our criminal justice system, calls someone a criminal who is not yet convicted of a crime. You’ll avoid this confusion in the future if you keep in mind that due process and the rules of evidence are things that we all are rightfully entitled to IN COURT, but not during discussions between private citizens.
each one of my comments is less than 3 lines. you how ever, have written a diatribe and accuse me of lecturing.
smoke another one jt
But my “diatribe” is directly pertinent to what you wrote, whereas your comment suggesting that someone didn’t believe in the Constitution was a huge, judgmental, assumption on your part and was irrelevant to this story, which was about the extradition of fugitives who had left the state where they are wanted for crimes.
calm down. the guy i responded to was stating the ‘criminals’ don’t require a trial. and you think referring to the Constitution at that point was inappropriate?
jt. less coffee, ok?
We don’t have enough money to fund our justice system because we waste too much money on victimless crimes. We shouldn’t waste our police resources babysitting people and telling citizens what they can and can’t put into their own bodies. The Gov’t didn’t get that authority from the U.S. Constitution. Let’s spend our money on crimes that have actual victims awaiting justice.
I’d like to agree with you, but am afraid it’s just not as simple as you suggest. There are huge costs to society associated with letting everyone use any drug they might want to. Drug users act irrationally and even dangerously and become burdens to the rest of us, are unable to perform their jobs at a high level so the rest of us eventually are expected to support them, and then pay for their rehab when their whole world comes crumbling down. If druggies would sign a release saying they they assumed ALL financial responsibility for themselves, including all rehab costs, and somehow it could be guaranteed that they would remain with the walls of their own house while under the influence, THEN I would be fine with allowing anyone to put anything in their body that they want to. But as long as they are part of our society and expect to interact with the rest of us and share in social services, we need laws to discourage self destructive behavior such as the use of illegal drugs.
Where do you live ? China or Iran?
Yes…why would we as Americans try to interject such trivial things as our Constitution. Obviously you dont hold our rights as sacred as a real American should.