In a 1996 Kentucky case, Sandra Colston was shot to death by her estranged husband, Donald, a paraplegic then confined to a wheelchair. A convicted robber, he had been wanted by police for violating parole. But faced with 9,000 other outstanding warrants, Kenton County, Ky., officers had not picked him up. An arrest warrant lay unprocessed in the Charles County district court clerk s office. Mack had obtained a warrant for Bobbitt s arrest on charges of attempted assault and kidnapping, but it was never served.
Officials acknowledge a treadmill quality.
We ve made a minor dent in our backlog and that was with every initiative we could pull out of our hats, said Sgt. Bill Ament, spokesman for the Prince George s County sheriff s office. But the U.S. Marshals Service, ordered in 1998 by Attorney General Janet Reno to reduce its 24,000-warrant backlog, reported that its housecleaning paid off. In one year, the agency found 219 felons among the worst of the bad and caught three of its 15 Most Wanted, according to Arthur Roderick Jr., head of the service s fugitive investigations division. One quick fix being discussed nationwide is linking criminal data centers to state motor vehicle bureaus and barring anyone with an outstanding warrant from renewing a driver s license.