March 29, 2024
How to Check If you Have a Warrant in New York

How to Check If you Have a Warrant in New York

If you think you might have a warrant out for your arrest in the state of New York, you’ll probably want to know how you can go about doing a New York warrant search. These searches can be easy but they can also be difficult depending on which method you use and which tools you take advantage of. If this is your first time doing a warrant search or you just don’t know much about warrants in general, stay tuned. We’re going to be covering a bunch of information as concisely as possible.

This information can be found if you know where to look for it. The internet has made doing a warrant search easier no matter what state you live in, and you can even do a lot of warrant searches in the middle of the night if you wanted to because the internet is never closed. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking into warrant information for yourself or someone else, you can get the information that you seek hassle-free if you just know what you’re doing, and that can make your life a whole lot easier in the long run.

Why Would Someone Have a Warrant Out for Them?

A lot of people simply don’t understand why a warrant would be issued at all, and that’s understandable. A lot of people assume that warrants are only issued for serious crimes so they think that they could never have a warrant out for their arrest because they would never commit a serious crime that would result in a warrant being issued for their arrest. With that in mind, anyone can have a warrant out for their arrest for any number of reasons. There is no one crime that justifies a warrant.

In fact, any crime where the suspect isn’t at the scene of the crime can have a warrant out for their arrest. That, of course, includes serious crimes like murder, burglary, assault, grand theft auto, and lesser crimes such as shoplifting and vandalism. You still might be saying to yourself that you’d never commit any of those crimes so it would be impossible to have a warrant out for your arrest, but that’s not the end of the list. Warrants can also be issued for missing jury duty or even not paying your parking tickets. There are seriously a lot of things that can result in a warrant out for your arrest.

In fact, any crime can have a warrant issued for violating it. The severity doesn’t matter. Even jaywalking can have a warrant issued for it, although that’s incredibly unlikely. That being said, anyone could unknowingly have a warrant and that can cause them some major issues in their life. Not knowing if you have a warrant out for your arrest or not could seriously ruin your day and lead your loved ones to have a lot more stress than they need to have. But why?

The Consequences of Not Knowing You Have a Warrant

Now, you might assume that it wouldn’t be a big deal to not know you have a warrant. After all, what’s the worst that could happen? Well, things can get pretty messy if you are unaware that you have a warrant out for your arrest. In the best-case scenario that means having to be taken downtown to be booked at the police station. In the worst-case scenarios, you could potentially have to be dragged out from your car and taken to the same destination. Either way, it’s not a fun place to be.

The reason why things can get so messy is actually pretty simple. A warrant out for your arrest allows for police to take you into custody on sight, no matter what you were doing. You got pulled over for a busted tail light on the way to work? If they find a warrant, it’s straight off to jail. You were going to your grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving and a police officer thought you were driving a little too fast? Assuming you have a warrant, be prepared to be taken into custody. It doesn’t matter what day or time it is, if you have a warrant the police can take you in.

This can have disastrous effects on your life. If you were on your way to work, they would count you as a no-call no-show and you might have to hope that they’ll be willing to reason with you. If you were on the way to your family’s house, they’ll have to worry about your wellbeing until you were able to get in touch with them. If you’re smart and use your first phone call to call your attorney your family will have to wait even longer to hear from you.

That being said, it’s important to note that most inmates get up to three free local calls, depending on the state and jurisdiction. If the call is long distance, it’s usually charged to the arrestee by way of collect calls. That means that if you or your loved one is arrested, you don’t have to worry about them only calling their lawyer and then having to be broken the news by that person. We just wanted to mention that to bring you a little peace of mind just in case you find yourself in that situation at any time in the present or future.

Locating New York Warrant Information

Depraved Indifference, Scope of Warrant and Other Significant Opinions | New  York Law Journal

Now to the fun part, learning how to do a warrant search in New York state. There are a few ways to go about this search, and not all of them will fit your needs perfectly. Before we proceed, think about exactly what kind of information you’re looking to obtain from this search. That’s going to be the best way to make sure that you end up leaving the search with everything you want the easiest way possible, without having to do things the wrong way first. That just wastes time and nobody wants that.

This first way is really only good if you’re only looking for warrant information within your own county. Keep in mind that this method isn’t perfect, but it can work if you’re only looking for local warrants. To do this, all you need to do is check your local law enforcement website. This can work out fantastically if you happen to live in a county that provides these kinds of databases. In fact, there are many counties that do a great job at making these databases easily available to the public as well as regularly updated.

That being said, not every county is so good about this. Some counties don’t regularly update these databases, which means that you might be looking at old information. On the bright side, a lot of the counties that are good about keeping their databases up to date list how often things are updated. There are also counties that don’t provide these databases at all. There’s no law requiring any county to provide this information which means that they don’t have to if there is any reason that they don’t want to. Sometimes they have really good reasons like maybe it would cost too much. Sometimes they just don’t feel like their local citizens would really use it or just don’t want to shell out the money for more digital infrastructure.

Regardless of their reasoning, there are many counties that don’t make your search that easy. On top of that, none of these databases are connected at the source. That means that if you check in Nassau County you won’t be able to expect to find anything from Queens county. That can put a hamper on your search if you want to search a large area in a short amount of time.

If you are looking for a lot of information from a large area and don’t want it to take a lot of time, it may be worth looking into a warrant search service on the internet. With one of these services, you can check through the entirety of the state of New York or even the entire United States. These services can provide instant search results which makes them an incredible tool to have in your bag of warrant search tricks. People from all over the country use warrant search services to help them get warrant information quickly and efficiently every single day.

New York Warrant Searches Made Easy

The majority of Americans have to do at least one warrant search in their life for one reason or another. When the time comes that this is something that you need to do, being sure that you know just what you’re doing can help save you a lot of time and hassle during your search. Knowing the right resources to use for your needs can help speed your search up significantly so you don’t waste a bunch of time on inefficient search techniques. Whether this is your first search your one hundredth, you deserve to know the best ways to do it.