“Free to Flee”

Fugitives can flee and don’t have to hide, an investigation by Joe Mahr of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch showed. Mahr’s three-day series reported that hundreds of thousands of felony arrest warrants from across the nation are not entered into the FBI national fugitive database, including warrants for violent crimes such as homicide, rape and robbery. He found that while all states check a national database to see whether an applicant for a drivers license or state ID has a suspended license, only six states check to see whether an applicant is wanted on a felony warrant. Other stories showed that even when fugitives are found, they frequently are not extradited, and that in St. Louis, officials don’t seek warrants in thousands of cases.