Wheeling Police Department’s Active Warrant List Grows to 875
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WHEELING -- The city's police department has a significantly high number of warrants out for the arrest of individuals in Wheeling and elsewhere, according to city police.
The Wheeling Police Department has about 875 outstanding warrants on its active warrant list, a document that is 20 pages long, said Philip Stahl, WPD spokesman.
The majority of the warrants are misdemeanors, Stahl added.
The list is expected to continue to grow, said Police Chief Shawn Schwertfeger, but the department hopes to reduce the number in the future.
"Obviously that's a significant amount of warrants," Schwertfeger said. "When a warrant is obtained for homicide, that goes to the top of the list. The list grows when ... we don't encounter them or don't have staffing to actively pursue them. Larger departments have warrant units that focus only on that."
The department has to prioritize warrants due to its staffing levels, Stahl said. The department currently employs 64 officers and has eight vacancies.
"We have to triage warrants and look for the most serious cases," Stahl said. "It's always a challenge and part of our strategic plan to reduce the amount of warrants that we have."
Schwertfeger confirmed that the department plans to work on reducing the number.
"We owe it to the citizens to serve all those warrants," Schwertfeger said.
Schwertfeger said he plans to do a "spring clean up," starting by running a newspaper advertisement listing all significant warrants. Officers would take a full week to run an operation to pursue the warrants, he said.
Schwertfeger also aims to ask the city for additional personnel once WPD's eight vacancies are filled, he said previously at a Wheeling Public Safety Committee meeting.