Essex, Union Officials Promote 'Fugitive Safe Surrender'

Law enforcement officials from Essex and Union counties gathered at Bethany Baptist Church in Newark on Monday afternoon to announce a "fugitive safe surrender" program, through which non-violent offenders with outstanding warrants are encouraged to turn themselves in in return for favorable consideration in judicial processing.

Scheduled for Nov. 4 to 7 at the church, officials are anticipating that upwards of 3,000 fugitives could turn themselves in, and while the effort is the result of a multi-agency collaboration in Essex and Union counties and will be promoted in local municipalities, anyone with outstanding New Jersey warrants is welcome.

There are approximately 9,000 outstanding warrants for non-violent offenses in Essex County and about 1,000 in Union County. Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontaura explained that most such warrants are only resolved when offenders are pulled over by police cars for other reasons, and then they take hours to move through the system in the course of police and judicial processing.

"Do the math and see how much time, effort and money that takes," he said.

Fontoura's Union County counterpart, Sheriff Ralph Froehlich, touted the initiative for its collaboration with the faith-based community.

"I have never, ever seen this kind of an operation in all those years," he said, referring to his 52 years in law enforcement.

Newark will become the 17th city in the U.S. to be the site of a fugitive safe surrender program and the second in New Jersey, following Camden, where 2,245 fugitives surrendered in November 2008. According to U.S. Marshal James Plousis, the first such effort took place in Cleveland in August 2005 after a police officer was shot and killed while attempting to serve a warrant.

In Plousis's view, the purpose of a fugitive safe surrender program is two-fold: to give offenders a chance to accept responsibility and mitigate their sentences and to protect police officers and the public at large from the violence that frequently ensues when warrants are served. He also noted that 10 of the 133 police officers slain last year were killed while serving warrants.

"This is not an amnesty program; this is a second-chance program," said state Attorney General Anne Milgram, who noted that the four-day program will be funded through her office with federal stimulus dollars, and $100,000 has been budgeted. Processing will be conducted across the street from the church at New Community Corporation by judges who will have the authority to adjudicate cases from any municipality in the state.

While the initiative is targeting non-violent offenders who can sometimes clear their records by simply setting up a payment plan for a fine, and Plousis says many of the outstanding warrants are for traffic violations, the program is also prepared to address more serious offenders.

"Nobody will be turned away from Bethany," said Plousis, who noted that nine people who came to the program in Camden were taken to prison, including a man who had committed armed robbery in Newark 22 years earlier, but they understood before coming that they would have to do jail time.