Chandler, Arizona rests in Maricopa County and nestles just east of Phoenix, Arizona—the lively capital and largest city of the state. Famous for its array of tech manufacturing companies, Chandler shines brightly as one of Phoenix’s more affluent suburbs. The Chandler Police Department handles keeping the city safe and maintains order across its 58 square miles, with almost all of it being land and just a tiny splash of water at 0.1 square miles.
Mesa, Arizona is the third largest city in Arizona, trailing behind Phoenix and Tucson, and is a suburb of Phoenix. The Mesa Police Department provides law enforcement services for the 133.13 sq. mile area of the city, 132.93 sq. miles of it being land and 0.2 sq. miles of it being water.
The Tucson Police Department is the local law enforcement agency for the city of Tucson, Arizona. It is composed of around 1200 sworn officers and 200 civilian staffers. According to their website “The mission of the Tucson Police Department is to serve the public in partnership with our community, to protect life and property, prevent crime, and resolve problems.”
The Phoenix Police Department (PHXPD) serves as the local law enforcement agency for the city of Phoenix, Arizona. It is responsible for patrolling almost five hundred and sixteen square miles of the city, which is the six largest in the United States of America. According to their website:
“The mission of the Phoenix Police Department is to provide community-oriented law enforcement designed to protect life and property, and maintain order, while assuring fair and equal treatment for all.”
Outstanding warrants from Arizona are judicial orders that authorize custodial detention. Not different from active orders for arrests, these directives are simply old warrants that could not be served due to one or another reason. Just because a warrant is pending does not mean it has lost its powers. Far from it, outstanding warrants become all the more potent.
A specific procedure is used as laid down by the criminal statutes of the state of Arizona for processing adult offenders who are accused of commissioning felonious infractions. Cases pertaining to minor misdemeanors are handled by municipal court while those that have to do with juveniles are heard by juvenile courts. Prosecuting an adult offender often involves the issue of an Arizona arrest warrant which is handled by the court of the magistrate.
The Arizona Department of Public safety hosts the Records and Identification Bureau (RIB) which maintains the Crime History Records Section. The RIB is in charge of providing responsive crime history information to justice agencies as well as the public. The agency collects feeds on arrests, the issue of active warrants, case dispositions and the occurrence of criminal matters from law enforcement agencies and the state judiciary. The reach of the agency as well as the extensiveness of the work it does can be gauged from the following figures:
The Arizona judiciary comprises of several tribunals distributed across five judicial rungs. At the tip of the pyramid, in the apex position is the Supreme Court which is the highest judicial entity in the state. It has administrative responsibility over the other tribunals in Arizona. The Supreme Court bench comprises of 5 justices who are appointed by the governor to six year terms. From these five judges, the chief justice and the vice chief justice are chosen who preside over the court.
Arizona active warrants are issued by the tribunals with criminal jurisdiction. Unlike bench warrants that are released by the court of its own volition, arrest warrants call upon the cops to furnish information about the criminal matter to the court. The sheriff’s office presents all the proof collected in front of the bench.