Anyone have any tips to improve data reporting (CR-43s/CCP 60.10) in general? In particular, old theft by check cases that have been filed with a warrant issued, but no arrest? Thanks in advance.

[This message was edited by JW on 09-10-10 at .]

From the discussion at the Elected seminar, it sounds as though there is no way to get those off the "open" list. Major problems include - unarrested folk (such as out of state misdemeanors), situations in which persons are arrested for multiple offenses but the prosecutor chose to only take one, bond forfeitures. These will all show as "open", and for small counties, can easily skew the results.

One person indicated that the DPS reps comment was "you could just dismiss them..." I'm not going to!

Lisa L. Peterson
Nolan County Attorney

I meet with prosecutors and investigators about once a month. They bring old, no-arrest cases. We make decisions whether to leave pending or dismiss.

I think you do have to make decisions to dismiss at some point for old cases that have little chance of ever being successfully prosecuted.

For our felony cases, we generally get serious about looking at such an option if a case has been pending unarrested for ten years. Obviously, the seriousness of the offense plays a big part in the decision.

But, an even better approach is to develop an active approach to pursing arrests in recent, open warrant cases. We have formed a team of agencies that make such arrests. Constables, sheriff's deputies, U.S. Marshall's office, etc. Works pretty good. It has already cut our pending no-arrest felony warrants in half.

This is a timely question given that many counties have been "asked" by the Legislature during the last session to form committees to improve the reporting percentages in CJIS. See Article 60.10 in the CCP if you weren't already aware of this new requirement.

Williamson County voluntarily created such a committee even though our reporting percentage was already at 90% and we have begun meeting. Our first step is to do a comprehensive look at which agencies actually participate in the reporting process. Clearly prosecutors and clerks, but when you have multiple law enforcement agencies doing reporting I think it's a good idea to find out who is actually doing the reporting for each agency.

Stay tuned for future findings. I think it's a great goal to improve reporting. It can be really frustrating and even dangerous for law enforcement to be out with a suspect and not have reliable information about their criminal history. I hope everyone will really work towards this goal. If you need any help or have questions, just ask.

In my office, the watchword has been "review." It's far too easy to have a filing cabinet full of open cases that you consistently ignore thinking "Eh, those are the ones with warrants." My office has had above average turnover with both our elected attorney and my position (the lone assistant). I cleared a large number of cases this month just on the basis of review.

Some of them are cases where the charges should have never been filed. Some were JP appeals that I've pressed attorneys into finally resolving. Some were cases that we couldn't prosecute because the officer was deceased. Some of them the *defendant* was deceased. Some were just 5 year old POM cases involving an out of state college student and two grams of marijuana. There was a wide variety of reasons for dismissing a case and some creative ways to resolve cases without dismissal, but unless you're actually looking at them you'll never know what you've got.

I think the other essential piece is to review caseloads with your LEOs. At the very least, if you let them know that you're trying to clear your cases, you may get a little assistance. But it's also pretty amazing to find out what happens to evidence and the ability to prosecute cases when they start sitting. Our local university PD is embarking on some internal reforms that may shake out some of our own cases as non-prosecutable. But again, if you're not laying eyes on the cases to know what you have and talking with the PD to know what THEY have, then those just continue to sit and collect dust...