Amnesty period over for municipal court warrant roundup

By: Rachel Nelson
www.universitystar.com

Students with outstanding warrants may soon find themselves in handcuffs for neglecting to take action on past offenses.

A one-week amnesty period which allowed persons with pending cases to appear before a judge without posting bond ended Friday, meaning officers have put forth special efforts to seek out and arrest persons with outstanding warrants in San Marcos Municipal Court.

A press release sent out by the City of San Marcos states, “People with outstanding warrants for traffic violations, city ordinance violations and other misdemeanor charges filed at Municipal Court are urged to contact the court immediately to avoid arrest at home, work or school.”

UPD Officer Otto Glenewinkel said serving warrants on campus or tracking students down at their residences is not an uncommon practice. Police sometimes wait outside of a classroom to arrest a student with a warrant.

“Warrant roundups happen all the time, and there are constables who come up here to serve warrants,” Glenewinkel said. “They usually publicize it two or three times a year to get people to come in voluntarily.”

It is unlikely a student would be served a warrant during class, Glenewinkel said.

“Usually as a rule we don’t pull students out of class for someone to serve a warrant,” Glenewinkel said. “We can wait 50 minutes to serve them when they are coming out of class. We have served warrants when people have been in class, and the only reason why we do that is if we think they may be violent. Usually if we do it while they are in class, they have a tendency not to be violent.”

Glenewinkel said one reason for the warrant roundup is to boost money for the city.

“There’s a lot of revenue that they don’t get because people don’t pay their citations,” Glenewinkel said.

A list of people with outstanding warrants can be found on The Municipal Court’s Web site.

“We urge anyone who has delinquent cases in San Marcos Municipal Court to contact the court to take care of the matter immediately,” said Rusty Grice, deputy marshal with the San Marcos Marshal’s office.

Glenewinkel encourages people with warrants to take care of them promptly to avoid future problems.

“It’s hard for anyone to go though life and not make contact with a law enforcement officer at one time or another,” Glenewinkel said. “Eventually I would think everyone sooner or later gets contacted by the police.”