For nearly four years, Nakia Parrine had difficulty getting a job to support her family. Wanted on minor drug charges, she said she constantly looked over her shoulder, aware that any interaction with police might result in her arrest and hours at Central Booking.
But in less than a few hours Wednesday, that was all behind her. As part of a program called Safe Surrender, she turned herself in, got booked, faced a judge, had the charges dropped, and began the expungement process.
"Dismissed!" Parrine, 26, told her brother over a cell phone after public defender Cynthia Christiani informed her that the charges were finally cleared.
""I've been on pins and needles all this time," Parrine said. "It worked out for me. It's a blessing."
The Safe Surrender program kicked off Wednesday at the New Metropolitan Baptist Church on McCulloh Street in West Baltimore, with authorities aiming to take a bite out of 40,000 outstanding warrants. The idea is to provide a comforting environment for residents wanted for nonviolent crimes to turn themselves in and get their lives back on track.
More than 70 people were lined up in the rain early Wednesday, and by the end of the day nearly 200 had resolved their cases. Some with warrants for violent crimes showed up — four people were taken into custody, including one who was being sought for attempted murder and another on a handgun charge.
The setup at the church and the nearby Bethel Outreach Center is something to behold.
A small army of court clerks, law enforcement officers, attorneys and judges are working in shifts in recreation rooms packed with laptops and powered by huge generators. Behind a black curtain in the basement is the makeshift public defender's office, and five rooms along a short orange and yellow hallway on the second floor have been converted into courtrooms, each hardly bigger than the bathrooms in the actual courthouses.
"How are we doing?" Judge Jeannie J. Hong asked two attorneys who walked into her "courtroom." Hong sat in her black judge's robe behind a meeting table, with two folding chairs across from her. The prosecutor read the case number aloud and said the state recommended dropping the charges.
"Case dismissed," Hong said. "That was easy."
The program, which runs through Saturday, is funded in part through the U.S. Marshal's Service, which has held similar events in 16 other cities with mixed results. In Detroit, more than 6,500 people turned themselves in, but Washington only had about 500.
"It's really good for the community, if it works," said District Court Administrative Judge John R. Hargrove Jr. "But we don't know if it will work. All I know is we're here, and we're ready to go."
Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy has said that those who turn themselves in will receive "favorable consideration" in their cases, though it's no guarantee they will avoid jail time. The program is geared toward fugitives with misdemeanor or nonviolent felony warrants, such as traffic cases, minor drug charges, loitering and urinating in public, or shoplifting, though authorities had contingency plans for fugitives with warrants requiring closer scrutiny.
In the lead-up to the event, prosecutors were able to clear hundreds of cases in which the victim or police officer who made the arrest were not available, meaning the case had virtually no chance of being adjudicated anyway. Hargrove and Kimberly Barranco, executive director of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, said officials plan to continue exploring ways to clear such cases without an arrest or having to coordinate such a huge event.
Octavia Talbert, 54, was the first to arrive Wednesday, getting in line at 6:30 a.m. Slowed by a broken ankle and moving with the aid of a walker, she admitted that it took some coaxing from friend Carie Osburne, 34, who came with her for moral support. Nobody wants to turn themselves in, Talbert said.
"Freedom," she said when asked what the program represented to her.
Talbert was wanted for failing to appear on charges from early 2007 of driving on a suspended license and running a red light. Inside the community center, staffers set up a fingerprint station next to a coffee maker and on top of a stack of water bottles to accommodate her disability.
Later, public defender Larry Rogers popped his head into a waiting room to let her know the charges had been officially dropped. Even then, Talbert said, she wouldn't rest easy until she was in a cab and on her way back home.
Though the program uses churches as a safe haven, the building and area outside New Metropolitan Baptist were blocked off and crawling with dozens of law enforcement officers from multiple agencies who were simply milling around. Any semblance of the church and community activities that normally take place in the buildings was virtually gone. Talbert said the heavy police presence made her feel uneasy.
"I seen them take a whole bunch of plastic cuffs into one of the rooms," she said. "It's really scary."
After the initial queue of people who arrived early, things seemed to slow and the line vanished. Sheriff John Anderson said officials expect attendance to pick up as residents who attended go back to their neighborhoods.
"Those folks will say, 'Hey, this is for real,' " Anderson said.
Parrine and Shantel Butts, 35, had never met before Wednesday's event. But they were high-fiving and giggling as they rode the elevator to get their cases expunged. Parrine had three minor drug charges, and Butts had a theft charge dating back to 2001.
"I've got so many jobs on standby," Parrine said. "Only the warrant was holding me back."
Like Talbert and all others who went through the process, Parrine and Butts could have turned themselves in and cleared the warrants long ago. Butts claimed the charge was bogus to begin with — "it's only because I got smart with police" — but she said Central Booking is a "process you do not want to go through." By the end of the day, the Maryland Judiciary Case Search website already reflected that her case was closed.
"You learn to deal with it. I kept telling myself I'll turn myself in," Butts said, saying the warrant prevented her from getting jobs or a driver's license. "Now I can do other things."