by Steve Schulz,
Editor
Wadena's Most Wanted List, published weekly in this and other newspapers, is not only catching criminals, it's saving department resources, said Sheriff Mike Carr, Jr.
The list, which includes the name and usually the photo of someone who has outstanding warrants in Wadena County, was an idea brought by incoming Chief Deputy Bill Cross, who used the idea successfully in Beltrami County, Carr said.
Though Carr said he had a few complaints about the wanted list, the positive comments have outweighed the negative comments by a large margin.
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"I have gotten excellent response from people in Wadena County," he said.
More important than a good response, Carr said, he's gotten results.
"One of the very first weeks, we got [a suspect] on the Minnesota-Iowa border," he said.
Other tips from readers have captured people in Hibbing, Anoka, Beltrami County, Todd County, and of course, in the Wadena area. And some don't wait for their friends and neighbors to turn them in.
"Since we've started this, people are just turning themselves in," Carr said.
It's made a good dent in a large case load of people who have, for one reason or another, skipped court appearances or violated their probation, and are unreachable. Carr said as of last week, there were 149 people on the outstanding warrants list, and an average of about five or six are added every week.
He said the challenge for his department is using limited man hours to track down 149 people. For instance, he said if he has to send a deputy all the way to Huntersville to check if someone is home, when likely they are long gone, that takes a good hour, hour-and-a-half, with no results. Take that problem and multiply it by many places a suspect could have gone, and multiply it by 149 cases, and it is an overwhelming problem.
"We don't have the manpower to go out and pick up 149 warrant violators," Carr said.
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But with the published list, tipsters are allowed to confidentially give information about a person's whereabouts, and save the department time and money.
"This is a proven system," Carr said. "It works in other counties."
Some people have complained the publicity is unfair to those who may have committed a crime such as passing bad checks. But Carr said it's not just a matter of not balancing your checkbook. He said good people make mistakes, and then are called to court to answer and correct those mistakes. It's only when suspects dodge court dates that they make the wanted list.
"They are violating a court order signed by a judge," Carr said. "I work under a judge. It's my obligation to pick these people up on warrants."
He said it's also important to remember he's not saying these are bad people -- they just haven't paid their debt to society and need to do so.
"A lot of good people have made a mistake," he said. "Once they've paid their dues and their fines and gone to court, they've cleared their debt to society."
