The overall number of outstanding warrants being pursued by Regina police is down five percent.

While there are 222 fewer total outstanding warrants, there are just two fewer people wanted on the warrants when comparing numbers taken on June 30th to January 1st stats.

Chief Evan Brays said he’s unsure of how many high risk warrants there are, as those are typically investigated first.

“There’s a lot of other work that is being done with corrections and probation services to try and dig into those what I would call ‘higher risk warrants’ in the community as well,” Bray said. “There is focused effort and attention on it, but I don;t know the actual number.”

Chief Evan Bray explains how warrant investigations work.

“Often times when we’re investigating a crime, we can prove the crime happened, we can maybe even prove who did it, but if we can’t get the person that did the crime, a warrant goes out for their arrest,” Bray said. “That warrant could be issued by another jurisdiction as well; it doesn’t always mean that it’s something that’s generated by our police service, we have people in our community that have warrants from other areas, so that’s part of what we look at as well.”

Bray said when it comes to the number of warrants, it comes down to prioritization.

“When a member has an ownership of a file, I think that takes on something different as well, if I’m investigating a file, it’s a serious assault, and I know the suspect is and that person is arrestable, often time those officers will continue to maintain their vigilance on that file to try and locate that offender and hold them accountable.”

Criminal code warrants are up slightly to 3 thousand 108. It is believed that about 86% of people that currently have an outstanding warrant are wanted on a criminal code warrant.