Police in ET tackle warrants backlog : ServeNow.com

Police in ET tackle warrants backlog : ServeNow.com: "Budget, worker shortages mean busy deputies must also serve court papers

The papers keep piling up, and they do little good until they're served.

Sheriffs around East Tennessee say they're struggling to deal with a backlog of outstanding warrants. Hamblen County Sheriff Esco Jarnagin estimates that he inherited nearly 9,000 warrants when he took office in September, all of them waiting to be served.

'There are a lot of felonies, and there are a lot of misdemeanors. There are time limits on some of them. Some of the people involved have died or moved out of state.'

Other sheriffs say they're seeing the same kind of problem.

'Some of them are simple things like bad check warrants,' Grainger County Sheriff James Harville said. 'But we're the ones who have to serve them.'

In an era of budget cuts and manpower shortages, some sheriff's departments do without process-server jobs. That leaves court papers to be served by deputies already busy with regular patrol duties. "