A Police initiative that could help thousands of people avoid arrest for outstanding warrants is turning out to be a flop.

And it is no fault of the Bermuda Police Service which set up a dedicated phone line (299-4500) at the beginning of the month for people with outstanding warrants or those who suspect they might have outstanding warrants to call and make arrangements to settle the matters in court, without additional penalties.

With just a week left for the programme to run, thousands are at risk of being arrested if they do not make the phone call.

The programme was planned to last through the month of September in an effort to clear a massive backlog in the courts system.

Police spokesman, Coleman Easton, told The Royal Gazette that the programme had not been as successful as they had envisioned.

He could not provide any figures. "But it has not been a tremendous amount of people who have called," he said.

"And also it's coming up to a weekend period which means we traditionally have a few warrants issued."

He said fines for parking and other traffic offences "were relatively easy to take care of" but offenders risked the "inconvenience" of being arrested if they did not. Arrest warrants are issued for those who do not pay the fines.

"Some people forget and some people think they can evade the system," said Mr. Easton. "But it eventually catches up with them."

In announcing the service at the start of the month, Police said there were "several thousand" outstanding traffic and criminal warrants. "Police have made several arrests in an effort to clear the backlog with the courts system," stated a press statement.

"Although this approach does alleviate some of the problem, Police are planning to provide an alternative that will reduce the inconvenience of actually being arrested."

As the programme is expected to be discontinued at the end of this month, arrests for outstanding warrants is bound to skyrocket. Mr. Easton said that he could not confirm whether there will be an extension of the programme. There are about 7,000 warrants outstanding, the majority of which are for traffic offences