Bremerton has the most ‘bad guys’

Bremerton has — or had — a lot of bad guys running around.

Kitsap County Sheriff deputies, the county’s four cities and the Washington State Patrol conducted the third outstanding warrant-service dragnet on Friday, March 29.

The comprehensive effort resulted in 40 arrests, according to Kitsap County Sheriff Steve Boyer.

The dragnet lasted eight hours and helped clear courts of outstanding warrants. There were 89 outstanding warrants for the 40 suspects, including 14 felony warrants. Forty-four were out of South Kitsap. As for the cities, 26 warrants were out of Bremerton, three out of Bainbridge Island, one out of the Port Orchard, and one out of Poulsbo.

Officials said another 33 suspects reported to District Court as a result of the dragnet.

Total bail posted on the warrants hovered around $255,000, said officials.

Since the project’s initial run last December, law enforcement officials calculate the county has gathered $750,000 in warrant collections.

Boyer said the money doesn’t necessarily all remain in the county, since some of the warrants originated from the state.

Kitsap County is choking on a backlog of about 8,000 misdemeanor and felony warrants, which means thousands of cases have yet to be adjudicated through the courts, said officials.

Other jurisdictions such as King County with similar backlogs have simply purged their electronic files.

Not Kitsap.

“Other jurisdictions have tried this same effort but they haven’t been successful because they can’t get all the entities to click together,” Bertholf said. “We (Kitsap County) are not going to dump these warrants.”

“This program increases not only public safety but increases accountability among those with outstanding warrants,” Boyer said.

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