Twenty times last year, 18 different police officers cited Kaimuki resident Mark H. Gilmour for driving without a license.

Over and over again, Gilmour missed court appearances on those charges and others. Traffic Court judges repeatedly signed new warrants for Gilmour's arrest.

With nothing to prevent him from getting back behind the wheel, Gilmour just kept driving. Police officers kept citing him and judges kept issuing warrants for his arrest — until he finally turned himself in to police the morning after Thanksgiving and appeared in court Dec 9.

Each warrant took as long as six months to be entered into law enforcement computers, adding to O'ahu's enormous backlog of unserved traffic warrants that now numbers about 51,000 and grows by the day.

The endless cycle of warrants piled on other warrants as seen in Gilmour's case is not unusual.

Judges issue as many as 500 traffic arrest warrants a week on O'ahu, forwarding them to the Sheriff Division of the state Department of Public Safety. Officials there say they are undermanned and can't keep up with the workload. Only occasionally do they try to serve handfuls of the warrants, but more likely they are simply filed away.

"We don't have the resources," said Frederick "Cappy" Caminos, first deputy sheriff.

Gilmour, 48, pleaded guilty to 16 charges of driving without a license and 15 charges of driving without no-fault insurance. At his court hearing, Gilmour said he was sorry.

"I'll never drive illegally again, ma'am," he told District Judge Lenore Lee. Gilmour said his problems with the law were related to a life-threatening medical condition that has since gone into remission.

But the judge noted the number of Gilmour's offenses since February 2005 and told him, "There's going to be a price to pay."

Lee suspended Gilmour's right to drive for a year and ordered the weeping defendant to serve 45 days in jail and perform 100 hours of community service once out of jail.

When Gilmour finally came before a judge, 15 police officers had to appear in court to testify against him. After nearly five hours of waiting in court — time they could have spent working on the streets — the officers finally left without taking the stand because Gilmour reached a plea agreement and didn't stand trial.

Gilmour was cited again Feb. 2 for failing to have a valid bicycle or moped tax decal, according to traffic records. Three outstanding warrants were served on him the next day. He was in custody until Feb. 13 and faces another traffic court hearing at the end of this month.

TWICE-MONTHLY SWEEPS

Only 12 of the sheriff's staff of more than 100 deputies are available for warrant duties and just seven of the 12 are assigned to serve traffic warrants, First Deputy Sheriff Caminos said. Other deputies are attached to a fugitive task force with the U.S. Marshals Service or provide security at the courthouses, airports, state Capitol and other locations.

Prompted by inquiries from The Advertiser about the backlog, Sheriff John Lum recently ordered his deputies to step up warrant service, conducting twice-monthly arrest "sweeps" of people wanted on serious traffic charges.

About two dozen outstanding warrants have been enforced during each of the sweeps conducted to date, according to data from Lt. Frank Dela Rosa of the Sheriff Division.

Deputies Aaron Wolfe and Rich Tomas serve outstanding traffic warrants full time. They are one of three two-man teams in the Sheriff Division devoted to finding and arresting traffic scofflaws.

"We clear maybe 10 to 20 warrants a week," Wolfe said. But he and Tomas acknowledge they're fighting a losing battle with hundreds of new warrants entered into the system every week.

"We can't keep up. No way," said Wolfe. "We just take 'em one at a time. There's always gonna be somebody else to go get tomorrow."

Tomas hopes the new twice-monthly warrants sweeps will convince people "they're going to get caught so they'll start turning themselves in and take care of the problem before it gets worse."

But Wolfe said there should be a way to break the cycle of violators who are arrested, let go and arrested again.

"Ninety percent of the people we arrest are released again right away. Some of them, the crumbs, will go out and do it all over again. You see families where everybody is wanted on warrants. It's a learned trait," Wolfe said.

OLD WARRANTS PURGED

Early last year, the total number of outstanding arrest warrants was actually around 75,000, but the state Judiciary, working with prosecutors and other law enforcement agencies statewide, eliminated more than 25,000 old warrants from the system. Officials explained that the backlog was unmanageable and many of the old warrants could never be served.

So warrants for all pending major and minor traffic cases created before July 1, 1994, were recalled and purged from the files. Warrants after that date through 2001 were also purged except for more serious offenses such as drunken and reckless driving and driving with a suspended or revoked license.

The courts and prosecutors kept alive one other category of very old bench warrants: cases in which defendants were found guilty but failed to pay fines and court fees or perform court-ordered community service.

Renee Sonobe Hong, a Honolulu deputy prosecutor, said in such cases, "a judgment has already been imposed, and it is the defendant's responsibility to resolve his outstanding payments and obligations to the court."

One 1985 warrant, for instance, calls for the arrest of a man who failed to pay a $10 traffic court fine. Another warrant issued in 1988 seeks a man for improper attachment of a license plate or license plate decal. His fine: $35.

Hundreds of these sorts of warrants fill the files at the Sheriff Division, including many for drivers who committed traffic crimes while serving in the military.

Taken together, the unserved warrants represent a potential loss of millions in revenue to taxpayers.

A random review by The Advertiser of nearly 1,000 unserved traffic warrants in the sheriff's files placed the average value of unposted bail bonds and uncollected fines at more than $400 each. Based on that rough estimate, the value of the roughly 51,000 unserved warrants could rise to as much as $20.4 million.

The lost value of the 25,000 warrants dropped from the system last year may represent another $10 million.

Gov. Linda Lingle's office referred questions about the problem to Attorney General Mark Bennett, who acknowledged the impact of the backlog. He said law enforcement agencies, the courts and the Legislature should form a task force to address it.

"Ninety percent of the people we arrest are released again right away. Some of them, the crumbs, will go out and do it all over again. You see families where everybody is wanted on warrants. It's a learned trait," — Sheriff Deputy Aaron Wolfe

Reach Jim Dooley at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com and Ken Kobayashi at kkobayashi@honoluluadvertiser.com.