How does a arrest warrant work?

Answer 1

a judge's order to law enforcement officers to arrest and bring to jail a person charged with a crime. The warrant is issued upon a sworn declaration by the district attorney, a police officer or an alleged victim that the accused person committed a crime.

Answer 2

If a law enforcement officer has probable cause to believe a crime was committed by a specific person, they can write an application for an arrest warrant. The application must have in it all of the facts and circumstances which would lead a reasonable person to believe a crime has been committed, and that the person named in the warrant committed the crime.

After the warrant application is written, it is reviewed by a prosecutor (an attorney who represents the state or the United States, sometimes called a district attorney, state's attorney, or United States Attorney.) If the prosecutor agrees there is probable cause, the warrant is submitted to a judge. If the judge signs the warrant, there is now a warrant for the subject's arrest.

The warrant is an order from the judge for any law enforcement officer to take the person named in the warrant into custody. The officer serving the warrant does not need to know anything at all about the case or the evidence or the circumstances of the investigation. If a law enforcement officer (possibly in another town or even another state) finds the suspect, he need only verify with the originating agency that the warrant is valid, and that the person he has stopped or is in contact with is the person named in the warrant.

Answer 3

More then likely its something you have did b4 and got away with it. When the police caught you,. They take you to jail for it.

An arrest warrant is issued when a law enforcement agency or prosecutor's office presents the court (the judge) with a sworn statement, called an affidavit or an information. This document describes one or more offenses, the person believed to be responsible for them, and some brief details of the evidence they have to justify an arrest. If the judge finds the details contained in the information or affidavit to be complete and in accordance with the law, he signs an order commanding the law enforcement officers of that city, county or state to arrest the person named in the warrant and bring that person before the court. That order is called an arrest warrant.

If the law enforcement agency requesting the warrant knows where the accused person is located, they may go and arrest them directly. In some cases they will tell the person or their attorney they have the warrant and agree on a time and place for the accused to surrender. If this procedure is followed, the acused person will often arrange bail beforehand, so they can be released to await trial immediately after they are booked on the warrant.

Far more commonly, the arrest warrant is for a relatively trivial offense, such as the failure to appear after being issued a traffic citation, or writing a bad check. Since the police often don't have the manpower to actively search for an arrest these people, the warrant is entered into a computer database and then placed in a file.

Law enforcement officers in the field frequently "run" people they encounter for "wants" or warrants. The officer either keys the person's name, date of birth, gender and race into an in-car computer or dictates it over the radio to a dispatcher. Either way, this information is used to query that warrant database to see if the person has a matching warrant there. If there is a match, the dispatcher or officer will contact the law enforcement agency holding the original warrant to ensure it is still valid, and verify the description to ensure the person named on the warrant and the one in the officer's custody are the same. If everything matches, the person is arrested, booked into the jail, and held there until they appear in the court that signed the original warrant.

It can be costly for law enforcement agencies to travel to other jurisdictions to pick up persons held on their warrants, and many won't bother if the offense named in the warrant is not a serious one. On the other hand, people have been extradited from other states or even foreign countries when their charges are serious enough to spend the money for the necessary travel and salaries of the officers.

Warrants are valid until served or recalled. An arrest warrant may sit in a file many years before it is served. For instance, a person might get a traffic citation and not pay it, then forget about it. They could go for years without encountering the police, but one day they are pulled over for a minor violation, the warrant is discovered, and they are arrested. There is no "statute of limitations" once a warrant is issued.