CASS COUNTY, MO (KCTV) -
Troopers, deputies and police from multiple agencies swept Cass County on Wednesday looking for people with outstanding warrants.
The county has 3,400 outstanding warrants, so authorities picked the ones with addresses most likely to be current and planned to have quite a crowd in cuffs before the night was done.
Fifty officers, deputies and troopers rallied to cover 700 square miles in Cass County during a warrant sweep that affirms its name, Operation Express Lane.
The mission was to track down people with outstanding warrants from the county and surrounding cities for crimes big and small, going after a targeted list of 800 open warrants. Half of those were city warrants and half county.
"[These are] major misdemeanors or felons who decided they would be better off not being in court. We will have burglary suspects, maybe some armed robbery suspects and we want to get those people off the streets," Cass County Sheriff Dwight Diehl said.
One arrest in Raymore was for non-payment of child support. But the express lane is not to jail, like one might think, but to court.
For the first time in all the years of warrant sweeps in Cass County, a judge set up a night court that ran into the wee hours.
"If we can get these people in front of the judge, maybe some of these judges, some of these arrests can take care of their business without actually ending up in jail for the night," Diehl said.
After all, a lot of people would end up posting bond after their two hots and a cot.
One other element different in this year's sweep included compliance checks on 155 sex offenders. The sheriff said it made sense to combine the checks when they already had the manpower.
Copyright 2012 KCTV (Meredith Corp.) All rights reserved.
