My warrant problem — and ours

Iam a wanted man.

There are 1.1 million outstanding summons warrants in the naked city, more than 250,000 in Brooklyn alone. Mine is for coasting on my bicycle to an empty patch of Flatbush Ave. sidewalk to get away from a driver veering between lanes. She sped up and ran a red when the police car’s lights went on. A voice came from the speaker: “You, on the bike.”

I’d name the cop, who sure as hell seemed to be filling a quota, but the ticket he signed eventually fell off my fridge and turned into a warrant after I missed my court date.

That makes me one in a million, so to speak (some people have more than one summons warrant, and some have left New York or this Earth), who, if stopped here for any reason, will spend a day, and maybe a night, in jail. By definition, none of us will be locked up for a serious offense — you don’t get a summons if, say, you assault someone — but for things like drinking from an open container, walking in a park after dark or, yes, riding a bike on the sidewalk.

I stand out in one way: I’m white. As the News reported last year, a staggering 81% of the 7.3 million people hit with violations over the Bloomberg years were black or Hispanic, a share that matches up with what I’ve witnessed in many trips to summons court — as a defendant in my misspent youth and a reporter in my misspent middle age — an unspeakably depressing low-stakes, slow-moving parody of an actual justice system. (Court-appointed lawyers, for instance, literally know nothing about each case until it’s called.)

Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson — who’s making a habit of pressing the de Blasio administration on justice reform issues, going back to marijuana possession — says he has a better way. I agree.

On Father’s Day, he held a “Begin Again” event at First Emmanuel Baptist Church in Clinton Hill. There, in an atmosphere quite unlike the miserable summons courts, a line stretched around the block as a cross section of the city came to meet with judges, prosecutors, legal aid attorneys and the NYPD and clear nearly 700 outstanding warrants, pay a fine and walk away with a clean slate.

“When somebody who has an outstanding warrant is put in handcuffs and brought to Central Booking only to have their case adjudicated quickly, it is a waste of our limited resources,” Thompson told me. “We need to deal with gun violence, sex assaults and more serious crimes.”

If you’ve never been to Central Booking, keep it that way. A day, night or even a weekend there (if you’re unlucky enough to get arrested on a Friday night) is at best very unpleasant. If you can’t reach your baby-sitter or your boss, or if you end up getting rough treatment, it can be much worse.

In a letter to Mayor de Blasio and state Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman sent Wednesday and first reported here, Thompson calls on them to take his program citywide. “These outstanding warrants for minor offenses,” he opens, “are eroding the public’s trust in the fairness and effectiveness of our justice system.”

While the other four DAs (at least one of whom has already reached out about Begin Again, the only program of its kind in New York State) would need to buy in, the mayor could bring political momentum and money to scale this up as other cities, like Philly, have successfully done.

This is, Thompson told me in a phone interview Wednesday, “a citywide crisis that needs a citywide approach.”

While the NYPD joined Thompson’s pilot effort, the city has yet to fulfill de Blasio’s pledge to simplify the system. The summonses officers hand out still don’t track race, as promised, or mention that you’re liable to be arrested if you miss your court date.

New York ain’t Ferguson (revenue from tickets, a rounding error here, pays for government there), but our system makes small criminals out of way too many New Yorkers — again, most of them black or brown.

While the “peace dividend” touted by Commissioner Bill Bratton means many fewer tickets are being given out, the million-warrant overhang lingers. The system still leaves no room for discretion, with cops compelled to lock people up who’ve committed no crime. If you spit on the sidewalk and didn’t show up in court, you go to jail when you get stopped.

The idea of the warrants is to prevent people from just crumpling up tickets, but the cure is worse than the disease. More summonses turn into warrants than convictions; for those who make it to court, one in five tickets is immediately tossed. But for those who miss court, warrants can jam up job, school, loan and housing applications, immigration checks and more.

“We have to chart a different course,” said Thompson. “To reserve the criminal justice system for those who belong in the criminal justice system.”

He’s holding his next Begin Again on Sept. 12, in East New York. I’ll be there, if I don’t get brought to “justice” before then.

Ken Thompson has a fine idea. Will de Blasio listen?