How to Proactively Deal with a Warrant

Realizing you have a warrant for your arrest can be a stressful event. We get it. But now is not the time to panic. It is the time to proactively deal with the warrant to get it recalled ASAP. In this video, San Diego criminal defense attorney David P. Shapiro outlines the many ways you can deal with an arrest warrant, some better than others. Office Address: Law Office of David P. Shapiro 3500 5th Avenue Suite 304 San Diego, CA 92103 619-295-3555 https://www.davidpshapirolaw.com/ Hi, my name is David P Shapiro. I'm the owner and managing partner of the Law Office of David P. Shapiro located in San Diego, California, where my firm helps good people regain control of their future when charged with a crime. In this video, I want to talk to you about many ways you can and should address an arrest warrant once you find out about it. An arrest warrant is where a judge orders your arrest and gives law enforcement the authority to arrest you and to book you into jail. There's many types of warrants. There's an arrest warrant, where charges have been filed, you may not even know about it. A prosecutor or law enforcement goes to a judge and asks for a warrant for your arrest, so they can go out and pick you up with that warrant and its legal basis. There's also bench warrants if you don't show up for court or you miss a deadline on certain things you're supposed to do. But how you want to deal with an arrest warrant is pretty much the same. So the first thing you want to do is assuming you find out about the warrant, is you want to reach out to a local quality experienced criminal defense law firm to talk to them about, "Okay. Hey, I have a warrant for this." Either you know about it or you don't, you explain that to the law firm. Then they should be able to advise you of the many ways you can deal with it. The first way you could deal with it is you could try to post bond proactively without having to be booked into custody. How does that happen? Well, you could go through a bail bondsman and they will take 7-10% of the bond. In many instances, they could post that bond administratively. Let's say for example, you find out that you have $100,000 bail and you don't want to surrender, you don't want to be booked into jail and be processed and everything that comes with it. You could reach out to a bail bondsman with the assistance of a quality criminal defense attorney and possibly post seven, eight grand, somewhere along those lines, a discussion that you will have with the bondsman. Then the bondsman will post the bond, and you will be given a court date. The warrant would then be recalled, so you can exhale, you don't have to worry about the warrant being held over you anymore. Whether you're traveling internationally, at the airport, you get pulled over for rolling through a stop, whatever the case may be, this warrant shouldn't be an obstacle. It's also important to be proactive with a warrant because then your attorney can bring that to the court and the prosecutor's attention that you proactively dealt with it. You found out about it and you dealt with it within a reasonable amount of time compared to how a lot of people deal with warrants wrong, they sit on it, or they just forget it, or they don't want to invest in handling it right on the front end. It winds up costing them exponentially on the backend, in dollars, but more importantly in how their case goes and what even the best attorneys out there can do. So first step to be proactive. Can you post bond through a bondsman? Can you post bond or bail without actually having to be booked into jail? The other option will be sometimes you can get a prosecutor to stipulate to a release or a lowering of the bond in unique situations, and then you might be able to post that bond proactively. Might save you some money. Another way you can deal with it is you could be booked into custody, surrender on the bond, and have a bondsman lined up before you go in. That way, you know that you're getting booked, it's going to release the warrant once you surrender, and then a bail bond can be posted for you. So the main lesson is be proactive, not reactive. And don't do it alone. Don't try and do it on your own because more often than not, you're going to be in over your head and dig yourself into a hole you may not be able to get out of. There are resources out there, quality locally experienced criminal defense law firms. Whether my firm or any other in San Diego that has this type of experience, background, knowledge, we'll be able to walk you through that process, how you can address the warrant short-term, and long-term how you can best deal with the case. Whether it's getting reinstated on probation, getting ready for your first court date, whatever the case may be, anything from one extreme to the other, we can and will be able to help you out in all likelihood, even if it's just pointing you in a better direction than you came to us in. (619)-295-3555.