Clarke lets prisoners go without warrant check

Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who likes to preach about efficiency in government, was cast in a prominent role -- and in a negative light -- in a recent WTMJ-TV investigative report.

The station found that Sheriff Clarke's jail is letting people go free who have outstanding arrest warrants from the city of Milwaukee for unpaid fines and tickets.

It would seem like an excellent opportunity to clean the slate and get everything paid off, but Clarke wants to do no such thing. Scott Friedman reports:

So why is the jail letting people some people wanted on warrants walk out the door? It turns out the jail does not check inmates for city of Milwaukee arrest warrants - before releasing them.

We asked Sheriff Clarke why. His response: "We have no way of knowing there are open municipal arrest warrants with the city of Milwaukee."

But that's not exactly right -- all they'd have to do is look on the internet. City warrants show up on the municipal court's website. We told the sheriff that.

"It's available on-line - your people could start doing this this afternoon just like we did to make sure people aren't being released with warrants."

His response: "And at what point does this become so labor intensive that it's not efficient anymore."

We press further. "A simple internet check would be too labor intensive?"

"Well yeah - who are we going to have check that internet source?" Sheriff Clarke says.

The sheriff blames the problem on the Milwaukee police - he says they should enter city warrants into the state's warrant database. But the police department says that would actually cost taxpayers more money. If warrants go statewide -- officers would have to drive all over the state to pick up people arrested on city tickets. The judges argue the sheriff should fix the problem - by just using the web.

To give you an idea what these unpaid tickets would cover: the $34 million would pay the salaries of every firefighter in Milwaukee for a year. Or you could train 200 police officers to fill the 200 vacant positions on the force.

Here's the complete story with video.