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Warren Shield nets about 60 arrests, filling jail and Warren Municipal Court docket but not treatment facilities
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
A bevy of police officers made about 600 traffic stops in the Warren area Friday morning through Sunday morning and made about 60 arrests, taxing the Trumbull County jail all weekend and Warren Municipal Court on Monday morning.
Sheriff Thomas Altiere said the jail’s head count Monday morning was 326, which is about 50 more than the ideal number of 260 to 280.
But his staff worked with local judges before the start of the 48-hour Warren Shield operation to reduce the jail population so there would be room for new arrests.
A check by The Vindicator showed there were 63 people booked into the county jail between Friday morning and Sunday morning. By comparison, there were 36 during that same time frame the previous week.
At municipal court, 107 criminal charges were processed from this weekend, which is more than double the 52 processed the weekend before that.
The Ohio State Highway Patrol assigned more than 100 troopers to Warren Shield. They were assisted by about 30 Warren police officers, about 20 deputies with the sheriff’s office and officers with several other county, state and federal agencies.
A large percentage of the arrests were for warrants, many of them for drug-related crimes. Several arrests appeared to be unrelated to Warren Shield, however.
Warren Police Chief Eric Merkel said preliminary indications from the highway patrol are that four guns were seized, 23 drug-related offenses were charged and many more charges resulted from warrant arrests at people’s homes.
There were 19 drunken-driving arrests, Merkel noted, some of which wouldn’t show up in the jail’s bookings because they were issued a summons and not taken to jail.
Though people in the community apparently realized within a few hours Friday that the town was full of police, it didn’t stop a Lordstown woman from purportedly driving through town at 2:59 a.m. Sunday with suspected crack cocaine in her possession.
Warren police charged Samantha Albright, 31, with felony drug possession and a misdemeanor charge of drug-paraphernalia possession. She was arraigned Monday and posted $1,500 bond.
April Caraway, executive director of the Trumbull County Mental Health and Recovery Board, said the drug counselors on hand at the city police department command post throughout the 48 hours spoke with 14 of the people who were arrested, but only one was able to receive immediate drug treatment.
The others did not meet the criteria for treatment because they had not abused drugs recently or were not eligible for a drug-treatment program at First Step Recovery in Warren because they needed to remain in jail.
However, the time spent during the two days with an official from the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Recovery demonstrated to the official how difficult it is to find a place to send people from the Warren area who need a monthslong residential treatment program, Caraway said.