A burly, goateed police lieutenant knocked on a door in this windswept farming town of 2,200 Tuesday morning. He was looking for Daniel Castillo, who had become a wanted man.
There was a good chance that Mr. Castillo knew the law was after him: his picture was posted on a community bulletin board at the post office and on the plate-glass windows outside the police station, and his name was published on Friday in a local newspaper, The American.
The lieutenant, Brandon Richardson, held the warrant for Mr. Castillo’s arrest as he knocked. But the manhunt lacked a certain tension. Mr. Castillo was hardly a desperate killer on the run. In fact, he was wanted for failing to take care of a traffic violation — lacking proof of auto insurance — and his fine was $868.
In some other state, perhaps, Mr. Castillo’s failure to address his outstanding warrant for a traffic violation might have been a private matter or might have been a low priority for law enforcement. But this is Texas, and this is the week of the Great Texas Warrant Roundup, an annual statewide event that functions as a sort of “America’s Most Wanted” for an unromanticized subset of the Texas outlaw: the misdemeanor kind.
Each year in late February and early March, dozens of law enforcement agencies and municipal courts in big cities and small towns across the state take to the airwaves and to the streets seeking out, apprehending and otherwise rounding up Texans who have ignored their unpaid speeding tickets and other minor infractions for too long. None are wanted for violent offenses like murder or robbery. The focus, instead, is on those with outstanding warrants for misdemeanor traffic, parking and city ordinance violations — going 80 miles per hour in a 70-m.p.h. zone, writing a bad check — who failed to resolve their ticket or case by paying a fine or appearing in court.
260 agencies and courts involved this year
No other state holds an event quite like the weeklong Warrant Roundup, now in its sixth year. More than 260 agencies and courts are taking part in the roundup, which in most jurisdictions started last Saturday and ends March 4. By the end of a typical Warrant Roundup, thousands of people will have been arrested and millions of dollars in fines and court fees will have been paid across the state. Last year, the Houston police arrested 4,110 and the city’s municipal courts collected $2.5 million. This year, Waco arrested 32 on Saturday, and San Antonio apprehended 39 on Monday. Abilene has collected $49,966 so far.
“If everyone gets a ticket and says to hell with it, that defeats the purpose,” said J. C. Mosier, the chief deputy for Harris County’s Constable Precinct 1, which made 42 arrests on Saturday as part of the event. “Our files are full of traffic warrants and hot-check warrants. The only people that gripe are the ones getting arrested.”
Few towns or cities have been conducting as enthusiastic a roundup as Hale Center, a town about 34 miles north of Lubbock that has one restaurant (Owl’s Café) but zero bars (all alcohol sales are banned). The city spent roughly $600 on the two-page ad in Friday’s six-page paper: a list of the names of nearly 600 men and women with outstanding misdemeanor warrants in Hale Center, along with their offenses. The chief of police, Dennis D. Burton, covered the two plate-glass windows outside his office with about 60 fliers bearing pictures and names of those wanted in the Roundup. Since there were no mug shots available for many of them, Chief Burton used their driver’s license photos, so the lawbreakers look out with unusually bright smiles on Main Street and the bare flagpoles outside the municipal building.
The city has collected nearly $25,000 in fines this month, more than double the monthly average. Chief Burton said he sought to motivate, not humiliate. “We’re not saying these people are bad people,” he said. “We’re not judging these people. We’re just reminding them.”
Outside the house where Lieutenant Richardson believed he would find Mr. Castillo, relatives said he was not there. The next warrant Lieutenant Richardson focused on belonged to Patricia Salas, 21. She owed $42 for a dog-at-large offense. No one answered the door, but later in the afternoon, Ms. Salas showed up at the court clerk’s desk in the municipal building to pay her $42.
“I just think he takes it a little bit too far, especially with all the pictures,” Ms. Salas said of Chief Burton.
She had no idea her name was on the list, and said she had paid a portion of the fine but did not realize that $42 remained. She was happy about one thing, though. It was just her name, and not her picture, that had been posted around town.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 29, 2012
A photo caption in an earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the chief of police, Dennis D. Burton, as Bruton.
This article, "," first appeared in The New York Times.
