North Las Vegas currently has a backlog of 33,000 unpaid Municipal Court warrants and they intend on getting them paid. The city just released a statement saying that the municipal court is targeting serious misdemeanors: such as driving under the influence. So, if you have a warrant you think you’ve been avoiding or a traffic infraction now is the time to be proactive and get ahead of it.
On January 7th, City Council approved spending $500,000 to address the unpaid warrants. Their plan is to give marshals more freedom to pursue the warrants by hiring more bailiffs to handle Municipal Court security. Currently marshals spend on average 4 days a week for 10 hours a day locating offenders, where with the more freedom they will be enabled to spend 6 days a week for 19 hours a day. A substantial increase and bad news for individuals with outstanding warrants.
The crackdown will focus on serious misdemeanors, with a focus on DUIs and domestic violence. That being said, the majority of all warrants are traffic related and wouldn’t leave anyone with a warrant safe. The numbers show that 13% of North Las Vegas could be affected, not only their time, but also their money. With the marshals shifting the focus of their job, it’s safe to assume they will also become more effective. The marshals are looking for instant compliance with the law, and with an average of $300 per warrant, the city will generate a great sum of money at a high percentage of some unfortunate residents’ expense.
It’s possible that this initiative also isn’t a fool-proof way for the city to generate income though. The money spent on paying more bailiffs to free up the marshals could actually cancel out the income generated from getting the warrants paid. In addition, there is the possibility that some of the warrants offenders would be unable to pay their warrants. They could be in jail on other offenses, have died, have insufficient funds to pay the warrant, or even live some outside of Nevada.
This is not reason to feel safe safe, however. If you don’t fall under one of those categories, your time avoiding the Muni may be coming to an end. It may be time to take care of those old tickets and outstanding warrants before the marshals come and do it for you.