Photo by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado
AURORA | Aurora’s municipal courts cancelled 73 arrest warrants for 56 people during an amnesty program held earlier in December.
When people don’t attend their court date and receive an arrest warrant for failing to appear, it affects not only the person, but the entire court system, Chief Public Defender Elizabeth Cadiz said. Programs such as Aurora’s recent amnesty event, which are common on a county level, encourage people to come in and resolve their court cases, allowing the court system to move forward.
“Not only does it put the person who has a warrant in a bad situation, it also delays the resolution of the case,” Cadiz said. “There’s a benefit to resolving cases in a timely fashion for all involved.”
The municipal court launched its Fresh Start Week from Dec. 9 to Dec. 12, allowing people with non-violent, non-weapon-related warrants to go to two locations and have the warrants cancelled.
The event to cancel warrants issued by city courts are rare compared to similar amnesty programs in Arapahoe, Adams, and Douglas counties. Cadiz said she hopes there will be more events.
“I’ve worked here since 2012, and I’m aware of only one small warrant-clearance event that happened many years ago at a library,” Cadiz said. “This is the first time we’ve done something on this scale.”
The event focused on failure-to-appear warrants or cases in which someone already had a court date but missed it. More serious “probable cause” warrants, issued when police file an affidavit identifying them as a crime suspect are generally not part of this specific push, Cadiz said.
The Aurora Municipal Court canceled 73 warrants for 56 people, and of those 73, three cases were resolved by a plea bargain, three were dismissed, and the remaining were put back on the court’s docket for a future setting, Cadiz said.
The public defender’s office canceled 53 warrants after 42 individuals walked in for the event. Another 20 eligible warrants were cancelled for 14 individuals whom the defender’s office located in area jails, Cadiz said.
“Another 13 people walked in but were not eligible; however, one of those cases was resolved by plea while the defendant was present at the event,” Cadiz said.
The idea was initially proposed by former Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky, after she and Cadiz discussed ways to clear old warrants from the system. Jurinsky announced the possibility at a Public Safety Courts and Civil Service Policy Committee meeting in September.
“We talk about all of these warrants that we have on the books,” Jurinsky said during the meeting. “Some dating all the way back to the 80s.”
She said a couple of things stood out, including that people who have had a warrant for five years or longer have therefore not come into contact with law enforcement in that time. She also mentioned that some of these people could already be in the Department of Corrections and still have their warrants outstanding.
“If they are sitting in DOC, that’s obviously on a charge that is bigger than whatever their municipal charge is out of here,” Jurinsky said during a September city council meeting. “I think that would be grounds to forgive that warrant.”
It costs the city $252.91 per day to keep an inmate at the Aurora Detention Center, according to the city’s latest 2023 figures. There are also costs to the police department for the time it takes to bring someone in and file the paperwork, as well as costs to the court for having someone in front of a judge within 48 hours. Programs such as this help the city save money while also getting people in front of a judge to move their cases forward.
“We were seeing a high volume of people in jail purely on old warrants, not new charges,” Cadiz said earlier in the month. “Our detention center has limited space. Our officers have limited time. Every arrest on an old municipal warrant pulls police away from more serious calls and triggers court and jail costs. If we can prevent that and keep people from being further destabilized by incarceration, everybody benefits.”
Under the Aurora Municipal Code, a missing court date typically triggers a failure-to-appear fee of about $25, and an additional fee when the warrant is issued, often bringing the total to around $100 in added court costs. There is also a $1,000 cash or surety bond set when a failure to appear happens, which can be converted into a personal recognizance bond, meaning no money has to be paid to stay out of jail, Cadiz said.
The added and building costs are often cited as reasons people don’t make good on court warrants.
“Between June 10 and Dec. 3, the Detention Center listed 973 people for court,” Cadiz said in an email. “Of those 973 people, 447 were arrested on warrants,” with 407 being failure to appear, and 40 were probable cause warrants.
The remaining 530 were held on new charges, and 60 of those were new domestic violence cases. Probable cause warrants are usually domestic violence cases as well, “so it is reasonable to assume a total of 100 out of 973 were in custody on DV cases,” Cadiz said.
“Domestic violence cases are the only type of municipal charge that actually requires arrest and a non-bond hold until the defendant can be seen by a judge and a protection order can be issued,” Cadiz said.
It is more crucial for the detention center to have space for domestic violence cases, which were also not included in the program.
On 20 individual court days, Cadiz said her team flagged 53 of 215, or 25% listed/held in detention were homeless. Of those, they had a total of 81 Aurora court cases, with one summons per case and 117 charges. Of those charges, 41 of 117, or 35% were either trespass or camping ban violations, and another eight were vagrancy offenses such as standing in a street median.
It hasn’t been decided yet whether more of these Fresh Start Weeks will take place, or whether the city will team up with any counties for a joint amnesty week at a future event. Cadiz said it is one of many steps she and the city attorney’s office are taking to clear out old warrants still in the system.