Winburn still promoting Rapid Purge

Former city councilman Charlie Winburn has become a one-man promotion machine for a proposal to start deleting old misdemeanor warrants.

Winburn (who insists he is not running for anything) teamed up with Municipal Court Judge Nadine Allen last month to draw up a proposal and present it to the judges, who have to approve it. Read the story here. The judges haven't given a green light yet, but that's not stopping Winburn. He's been out drumming up support for his Rapid Purge proposal with community leaders and churches.

He also sent a letter to Cincinnati's Interim City Solicitor Patricia King. The letter, which urges support of the proposal, also takes King and the city to task for letting the old warrant problem get so bad. Winburn said 60 percent of the old petty warrants were generated by Cincinnati police and that the city should have tried harder to serve them.

"Instead warrants now just sit in the computers and cruisers until a person is caught running a red light, for example," he said in the letter.

He also suggests that Cincinnati may be violating the constitutional right to a speedy trial by failing to serve the warrants in a timely manner.

"The city solicitor, police and judges should convene to solve this administrative nightmare," Winburn wrote. "I will support any proposal they develop which equivocates my Rapid Purge Process and accomplishes the same goals to stop the waste of taxpayer dollars, misuse of jail space and unjust policies."