TPM: How New York Ended Up With 1.2 Million Open Arrest Warrants

TPM: How New York Ended Up With 1.2 Million Open Arrest Warrants by Allegra Kirkland:

Growing up in a “dysfunctional family” in Gainesville, Florida, with an alcoholic uncle, a drug-addicted mother, and a wheelchair-bound grandmother, Howard dreamed of moving to New York and making it in the film industry. After a few unsatisfying years at Gainesville’s Santa Fe Community College, he dropped out and moved to a town in New Jersey, right across the Hudson River from Manhattan.

Soon enough, Howard, a tall African-American man with a deep voice and hazel eyes, began booking modeling and acting gigs and working as a waiter at Le Pain Quotidian to keep a steady income coming in. He quickly moved up the ranks, and now, at 30, owns his own production company, lives alone in a two-bedroom apartment, and has an eleven-month old daughter, Lian, whom he dotes upon. From his perspective, he’d beaten the odds. He’d left Florida and built the life he wanted.

But one afternoon this May, Howard found himself sitting behind bars at the NYPD’s 5th precinct in Chinatown.