Wanted Posters Go High-Tech

Ever do anything you regretted in Linn County, Iowa? If so, the past may have just come back to haunt you.

Tuesday morning the Linn County Sheriff’s Office and Gazette Communications watched a collaborative project come to fruition. Over 2,000 arrest warrants – the oldest dating back to 1965 – have been massaged into a database, searchable via the internet.

“We had so many outstanding warrants,” Sheriff Don Zeller explained, “that they filled two large filing cabinets. Our office attempted to serve these warrants, but addresses were bad. We followed up on leads, but have reached dead ends.”

Under Iowa law, an arrest warrant is confidential until it is served. The only exception to that rule is when a law enforcement officer, county attorney office official, magistrate or other official court employee releases the information. Even then, the official must act within the realm of her public role. These rules allowed law enforcement to work cases without fear of alerting suspects.

Zeller says there was a great deal of discussion before the data was released. “I personally spoke with the County Attorney and others on the subject of public record and confidentiality,” he said. “It was the consensus that this was an appropriate interpretation of the law.”

Ben Stone, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, agrees with the Sheriff, but remains cautious.

“If you have an arrest warrant out on you, that’s something law enforcement can release as public record,” he said. “The concern is the potential for harassment and the potential for vigilantism. Accuracy is also very important and the public needs to be assured that steps have been taken to ensure the information is accurate.”

According to information on the site, inactive warrants will be purged from the database weekly and the new arrest warrants added every three months. Warrants appearing in the database are at least 30 days old. Warrants on the site, according to Zeller, represent the vast majority of arrest warrants in Linn County.

In addition, users are specifically asked (in text under the database search form) not to confront people they believe to be in the database. Instead, users are asked to contact the Sherriff’s Office by either phone or an email address listed on the page.

Stone said he hoped this initiative would lead to further discussion and debate. “It’s important to look not only at the short term, but also at the long term to determine if the system is causing more good than harm.”

When asked to evaluate the first two days of the venture, Zeller stated the response had been “tremendous.”

“A number of users are checking on people they are dating, engaged to or people they employ,” he said, noting that on an average day the Gazette would receive 18,000 hits. At 10 p.m. on the first day of this launch, the site had jumped to over 106,000 hits, according to Zeller.

On that first day, he added, two individuals called and wanted to turn themselves in after finding their names on the list. Both the email and phone had been used by other various tipsters yesterday and today.

At this time only the warrants from Linn County are available on line, but that could soon change.

“We’ve found such great success with this – and I can’t emphasize that enough – we’ve had nothing but good comments about it,” Zeller said. “It’s my understanding that Johnson County, Iowa City and Coralville have also been approached and are considering use of the same system.”