Thursday Update: RPD working to serve old warrants

By Staff
Melissa Cason
The Russellville Police Department is taking a pro-active approach to serving old arrest warrants.
Police Chief Chris Hargett said the department currently has over 3,000 old arrest warrants that haven't been served by officers because of time constraints on the department.
"These old warrants date back to before we were all here," Hargett said. "We figured we needed to address this problem because it wasn't getting any smaller."
Hargett said the department began assigning a warrant officer for every shift. This officer will spend his time serving warrants while on duty as long as the department does not get bombarded with calls for service.
"If we get a bunch of calls, the officer assigned to warrants will answer calls for the department. This new policy will not affect our call response time in any way," Hargett said.
The new warrant policy has been in affect since June 17, and 65 warrants have already been served under the plan.
Hargett encourages anyone who knows they have warrants out on them to report to the police department at once.
"We are serving these warrants around the clock, and weekends," Hargett said. "If we arrest you at night or on weekends, you will have to stay in jail until the you can be arraigned by the judge."