A recent warrant sweep organized by a federal task force closed out only a little more than 1 percent of the warrant backlog at the Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Office.
“Obviously, Prince George’s County had some issues with a backlog of cases and some outstanding violent crime,” said Tom Hession, U.S. Marshals chief inspector and member of the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force. “The warrants aren’t getting the attention.”
A Sheriff’s Office spokesman said the backlog is about half what it used to be, but the department continues to receive scores of new warrants daily.
“We haven’t neglected our duties,” Cpl. Mario Ellis said Thursday. “We’re still in a rebuilding stage after being neglected all of these years.”
Operation Nemesis ran from May 15 to 26 and included law enforcement officers from 23 county, state and federal agencies working on felony warrants handed over from the Sheriff’s Office. The squad worked around the clock, made 182 arrests and cleared out 250 warrants, some of them several years old, Hession said.
“Basically, we’re a force multiplier,” Hession said. “Most agencies can’t afford to have 25 to 45 people working on their cases.”
Ellis said the task force’s help was welcome at a department where outstanding warrants once numbered about 40,000.
The department’s nine-person warrant squad has other duties, Ellis said, and there’s always a steady stream of new warrants arriving.
“We do our best every day to knock ’em out,” Ellis said. “But it’s like sweeping the floor with the wind blowing. You look up and that spot is clean. You look behind you and there’s all the dust.”
