Ohio to streamline warrants, TPOs, more

VW independent news

COLUMBUS — Ohio has launched its new eWarrants system, a statewide criminal justice database that will improve the accuracy of state and federal background checks and streamline the process to file warrants and protection orders in Ohio.

The new eWarrants interface is a shared information technology system free for use by courts and law enforcement that simplifies the process of uploading warrant and protection order information into Ohio’s Law Enforcement Automated Data System (LEADS) and the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), which are the background-check systems used to prevent inadvertent gun sales to wanted criminals and to aid law enforcement in identifying those with outstanding warrants and open protection orders.

Governor Mike DeWine ordered the development of the eWarrants technology after an analysis by his Warrant Task Force discovered that an untold number of Ohio arrest warrants and protection orders were slow to be – or never – entered into LEADS and NCIC due to the fragmented, inefficient, and technologically-obsolete warrant entry practices in use by many courts and law enforcement agencies in Ohio.

Meigs County Common Pleas Court, which was the first agency to bring the eWarrant system online, has reduced its bench warrant filing time to as little as 12 minutes, as opposed to the previous days-long process that involved the hand-to-hand transfer of paperwork between agencies and duplicative data entry into multiple case management systems.

The Ohio Department of Public Safety is currently conducting outreach to additional agencies in all 88 counties to encourage use of the free system.