Warrant sweep nets 31 arrests

Eight law enforcement agencies hunt down absconders

By Anthony Roberts

The Clackamas Review, Feb 2, 2010

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Thirty-one people who had been avoiding law enforcement officials found themselves in the Clackamas County Jail Thursday night after an effort to serve hundreds of absconder warrants.

Twenty law enforcement agents from the sheriff’s office and seven county police departments took part in the first Operation Absconder Recovery, an eight-hour warrant sweep to arrest parole and probation violators.

Absconders are people who are under probation or post prison supervision who fail to check in with community corrections supervisors.

“We do fugitive recovery all the time,” said Capt. Chris Hoy with Clackamas County Community Corrections, the agency charged with supervising people on parole. “We have a number of people on absconder status, and we decided it was time to make a specific effort to bring those folks back in.”

Hoy said the sweep was modeled after a domestic violence sweep that county law enforcement agencies have done in the past.

Officers started with 200 absconder warrants, and in addition to the 31 arrests, officers contacted 105 people in Clackamas, Washington and Multnomah counties. In many cases, if officers weren’t able to track down an absconder, they tracked down relatives, friends and associates to gather information about a fugitive to pass along to other law enforcement agencies.

“Let’s say somebody was in Eugene, we would notify local law enforcement with whatever information we have,” Hoy explained.

He said there was one brief pursuit on foot, but otherwise, the arrests went smoothly.

The police departments involved were: Milwaukie, Oregon City, Molalla, Canby, Lake Oswego, West Linn and Sandy.