Boulder County District Attorney’s Office Offers Fresh Start

The Fresh Start program is an initiative of the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office that offers people with an outstanding warrant on a low level offense a chance to deal with the warrant and deal with the charges. Michael Dougherty, the Boulder County District Attorney says that outstanding warrants for issues like traffic offenses can significantly impact people’s lives.

“The reason this program is so important and it’s very innovative, but it’s so important because the opportunity for individuals who are out on low level warrants in cases where there’s no victim but these individuals are worried about being arrested and taken to the jail and having to stay overnight in the jail missing work missing child care possibly losing their jobs and so on. This gives them an opportunity come clear those warrants and get their case and possibly their lives back on track.”

DA Michael Dougherty says people with low level offenses who have failed to appear for their court date are eligible for the program. “The judge has issued a warrant for the individual’s arrest and if law enforcement comes across the individual either on the street or during a traffic stop they would be required to arrest the person and take them to jail. It will likely result in them having to stay in the jail overnight. And again miss work miss family and so on. So for example someone trespassing is a shoplifting case very low level cases such just traffic cases a majority of them are traffic cases where individuals had failed to appear for court and they likely scared to come back to the court right now because they’re worried about being arrested and held overnight at the jail.  What’s really interesting about the first four star program we did in April is we sent notices to everybody who’s eligible for the Fresh Start program. Over 90 percent of the people who came to the courthouse on that Saturday had received their notices at their home address. In other words may have. These are not people who are on the run or heading to another country. These people were still living at their last known address. We save law enforcement from having to go track them down.”

The “Fresh Start” event will be held at the Boulder County Combined Court, 1035 Kimbark Street, Longmont, Saturday November 2, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. At that time, individuals with warrants in qualifying cases can speak with a representative from the District Attorney’s Office to either resolve the case or set the case for a new court date. Regardless of the outcome on that day, the warrant for the individuals’ arrest will be vacated if they appear for court on Saturday, November 2, 2019. You can find out more at https://www.bouldercounty.org/district-attorney/

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