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Police Nix Forming Warrant Task Force

POSTED: 8:06 pm MST April 8, 2009
UPDATED: 8:57 am MST April 9, 2009

Valley law enforcement agencies will soon receive millions of dollars of stimulus money; however, they have decided again using any of that money to hunt down wanted felons.

“Everybody wanted to keep every dollar that they could for their own purposes,” Amy Rex said.

Rex is managing the money given to Maricopa County from the U.S. Justice Department.

The department recently gave Maricopa County law enforcement agencies $10.5 million in stimulus funds, which will be divided between the county and 15 local police departments.

The county proposed using some of the money to create a task force to serve felony warrants.

Rex said there are about 40,000 unserved felony warrants in Maricopa County.

“It’s a public safety issue,” Rex said. “Felony warrants are generally for those who would be deemed the more dangerous, certainly in many cases, the more violent offenders."

Right now, county officials said there are around 40,000 unserved felony warrants in Maricopa County.

However, local police departments turned down the task force proposal.

“Several of them expressed that they already have their own warrants task forces and to convene another task force and bring everyone together at this point they just did not feel that would be beneficial for them, so we dropped that idea,” Rex said.

There are already task forces in the west and east Valley devoted to serving felony warrants.

Rex also said several departments wanted to use the stimulus money to create and save jobs.

A CBS 5 News reporter contacted several of police departments Wednesday.

No department was able to provide an on-camera interview or explain why they turned down the task force.

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