Unserved summons pile up at DPS

Court processes that remain unserved have now reached more than 5,000, with only two policemen tasked to do the work. About 3,000 processes pertain to traffic cases, most of them bench warrants.

Because of this immense backlog, the Department of Public Safety will stop serving Superior Court processes other than criminal summons and arrest warrants effective Sunday.

This will seriously hamper the activities of the judiciary, as it includes serving summons to prospective jurors and processes for civil and small claims cases.

Court processes are documents that are served to parties in court cases to notify them of the proceedings.

In a recent letter to Superior Court presiding judge Robert C. Naraja, police major Juan S. Salas, who is temporarily acting as DPS commissioner, said the department could no longer keep up with the high number of court processes due to manpower shortage.

“For many years, the DPS has been investing its time, effort and resources in assisting the court by serving documents. The tremendous quantity of summons puts a strain on the department and its officers,” Salas said.

“We simply cannot keep up with the demand based on the number of personnel assigned there. The workload is simply too much for us to efficiently accommodate this task. Furthermore, private attorneys have threatened DPS because the delay in distributing these documents affects them adversely,” he added.

Salas told the judge that the DPS would only accept and process penal summons, arrest warrants and bench warrants in criminal cases effective May 8.

Naraja could not be reached for comments as of press time.

DPS commissioner Santiago Tudela said that financial woes hamper the department’s ability to resolve its manpower shortage. The department shares approximately $15 million with the new Department of Corrections in the fiscal year 2005 budget, since the government is operating under the same budget as that of FY 2004 due to the failure to adopt a new one for the new fiscal year.

The deployment of some 21 Army reservists to Iraq on Aug. 21, 2004 worsened the manpower shortage at the department. The DPS has not hired any new police officer since then, except for former boating safety officer Tony Diaz, who joined the department’s patrol section last February.

The DPS’ summons and warrant office only has a staff of three, including officer-in-charge Ronald Dela Cruz, but one of them has been on-leave for some time due to medical reasons. Dela Cruz said he needs about three more additional staff to carry out the job effectively.

More than 6,000 court processes have reached his office since 2004, according to Dela Cruz, but only about a thousand of them had successfully been served.

About 2,000 unserved processes pertain to civil and small claims cases, while unserved criminal processes have reached more than 100, Dela Cruz said.

Serving summons for one case could take up to three days, Dela Cruz said. If the person is not in the same location, or has moved to another place, the service process takes longer, he added. He also said that serving jury summons is an easier task.

The department’s manpower shortage has also affected other aspects of operations, including those of the patrol and traffic sections. DPS spokesman Eric David earlier said that, while the department has about 154 employees, there are only 44 policemen patrolling Saipan’s roads to ensure public safety.

Thirty-three policemen belong to the patrol section, while 11 others work for the traffic section. The manpower shortage compels those assigned with the traffic section to work on 12-hour shifts.

The DPS said that the manpower problem would continue this year, as it could not augment its workforce due to funding woes. David had said that the department would have to allow the training of some 75 cadets at the police academy before cadets could be sworn in as police officers to fill in vacant positions.