SYRACUSE -- Syracuse Police say they have a simple message for those with outstanding warrants who think they can avoid the law.
Sergeant John Savage heads up the Syracuse Police Department's Outstanding Warrants Squad. "If you have an outstanding warrant we are going to go after you. It may not be today it may not be tomorrow but we are aggressively going after active warrants," he says.
Aggressively going after active warrants often times means going into some of the toughest areas in the city. A danger officers like Deputy Marshal Robert Rosato are well aware of. "These people know that they are wanted and they're probably going to jail. It just takes that one situation where they pull a gun and it's your life on the line,” Rosato says.
As they approach a house on the city's south side, officers fan out and call for back up. After a short search the suspect, a man police say is a known gang member with two outstanding warrants, is arrested and taken away. The officers on the street are part of a larger task force of more than 70 federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies who have joined forces this week for “Operation Rolling Thunder”.
Sgt. Savage says having so many officers on the streets has been a big help. "Just having those officers out there looking for people has also driven people into our office and the city court office to turn themselves in," he says.
Everyone with outstanding warrants had a chance to turn themselves two months ago as part of “Operation Safe Surrender”. More than three hundred people with outstanding warrants did just that.
Syracuse Police spokesman Sgt. Tom Connellan says those that didn't are now paying the price. "We warned people that we'd be coming and there is a lot of people that didn't believe us or were quite surprised to see us," he says.
For more information visit the Syracuse Police website.
