Bellevue police put warrants on Web

BELLEVUE

There he is. Michael Paul Mottram. A wanted man.

His full-color, forlorn mugshot is posted for all the world to see - along with his birth date, address, eye color and weight - right on the Bellevue Police Department's Web site.

"DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DETAIN ANY PERSON LISTED," the new listing warns.

Mottram is charged with drunken driving, a misdemeanor, the site announces. His bail for failing to show up in court: $10,000.

"It sucks, and I don't like it," said 35-year-old Mottram of Bellevue, who acknowledged he's been shirking the charge.

Too bad, police said. Mottram is now one of 22 stars on the Bellevue Police Department's unprecedented Internet site, unveiled this week. It features people with warrants for their arrest on misdemeanor charges such as petty theft, simple assault, trespassing and pot possession. Bellevue is the first department in the Puget Sound area to take such measures.

Police tout the site as a bold move to snare slippery scofflaws who won't answer the call to justice. But some of the wanted people, their families and local defense lawyers blasted the site as an over reaction that paints harmless, minor criminals as public enemies.

"I'd like to think the Bellevue police would make an effort to execute the warrant themselves, instead of attaching a scarlet letter to people," said Bill Bowman, a Bellevue defense lawyer and county bar-association leader.

"The purpose seems to be to publicly humiliate people, and it just seems outrageous to me."

But Bellevue police said the site was born from their frustration. They said they don't have the resources to round up some 3,000 people in the city who have misdemeanor warrants for their arrests.

Police in Vancouver, Wash., have had a similar Web page for more than a year and tend to net a couple of wanted people every few weeks. The Bellevue Police Department gets about 27,000 hits on its Internet home page every month. So they think they can do even better.

"This is so people who know these people can rat them out," Bellevue police spokeswoman Marcia Harnden said. "This is a way that the public can be involved in crime fighting in their community."

Still, other police agencies in the area, including the Seattle Police Department, said they have no plans to follow Bellevue's lead because they don't have the time or the staff.

"It sounds like a logistical nightmare," King County sheriff's spokesman Gregg Walker said.

Harnden conceded it's labor intensive, requiring weekly checks to ensure the warrants still exist.

For example, police cast the first rogues' gallery from 25 thick volumes of outstanding warrants. They based the choices on the severity of the misdemeanor, Harnden said. Drunken driving and domestic assault ranked high, as did people who have repeatedly failed to show up in court.

Police don't plan on posting people accused of minor traffic infractions, Harnden said.

The selection was screened to make sure there was a range of ethnic backgrounds, she added.

"We didn't want to be accused of targeting a certain group because that's not the way we operate," she said.

Mottram made the list because he has never shown up for court in the two years since he was cited for alleged drunken driving.

Yesterday, though, he said he planned to go to court and finally take care of business. And he said he didn't fault police for putting him up on the electronic equivalent of the post-office wall.

"That's their job, isn't it?" he asked. "It's not their fault what I did."

But for the mother of 38-year-old Eric Floyd Miller of Bellevue, her son's entry into the Internet was humiliating. Miller, who was away fishing in Alaska yesterday, hasn't shown up for a 1997 drunken-driving citation he received after crashing his car into a tree, police said.

"If the guy had killed someone or robbed a bank, that would be a different story," said Miller's mother, who wouldn't give her name. "He's just a guy who's out there trying to make a living. The Police Department isn't just hurting him, but they're hurting the rest of the family."

Worse, lawyer Bowman complained, the site ignores the fact that Miller, Mottram and most of the others on the site have never been convicted.

"You're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but they're putting people on public display in a way that's making them appear guilty," he said.

But Bellevue police remain unapologetic.

"They're charged with a crime, and their guilt or innocence has to be decided, but they need to show up in court to decide that," Harnden said.

"I'll take your name down as soon as you turn yourself in or you get caught."

---------------------------

Police Web site

The Bellevue Police Department home page is at www.ci.bellevue.wa.

us/police.