Thousands seized in large dragnet

WASHINGTON — In an operation that was equal parts police work, public relations and lobbying, the Justice Department said yesterday it had conducted an unusual 168-hour sweep with state and local authorities that yielded the arrest of more than 10,000 fugitives wanted for murder, rape, kidnapping, robbery and drug offenses.

The dragnet, which the government said it orchestrated to coincide with National Crime Victims' Rights Week, involved more than 3,100 law-enforcement officers nationwide and agents from 25 federal agencies, led by the U.S. Marshals Service.

The sweep, accompanied by camera crews whose footage was aired on television news programs shortly after the arrests were announced, netted 162 murder suspects, 154 alleged gang members and 106 unregistered sex offenders, as well as guns, drugs, cash and real property.

Eighty-one of the fugitives were apprehended in Washington state.

The statistics were rolled out at a news conference at which officials said the exercise was an opportunity to show the benefits of cooperative traditional law enforcement in an age of terrorism — and to score points with Congress.

The roundup was funded under a program Congress established four years ago requiring the Marshals Service to help state and local crime-fighters clear the streets of the most violent criminals. The program has netted more than 147,000 fugitives.

This week's arrests represented a small fraction of the number of fugitives taken into custody by law-enforcement authorities around the country every year, and just 1 percent of the roughly 1 million fugitives in the FBI national database, according to the Marshals Service.

Among those caught in the web was an alleged sex offender with prior arrests for arson and drug dealing who was nabbed in a makeshift cellar of a home in Atlanta. Police in Dallas arrested a man sought in connection with a shooting after leaving a drug house in February.

The arrests also included 16 international fugitives, including 11 who allegedly committed crimes in the United States and fled to other countries, and four suspects who were wanted in Mexico for homicide and had entered the United States illegally.

Such sweeps take allegedly dangerous people off the streets and also have a deterrent effect, sending a message that "the long arm of the law is still there and that they can't stop looking over their shoulder," said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston.

"But that assumes these dragnets are done repeatedly, not just one time during victims' awareness week," Fox added. "If that were the case, the fugitive would probably take a vacation during victims' awareness week and go hide."

The number of arrests in Washington state was provided by Knight Ridder Newspapers.