18 arrests made in Clackamas Co. DV sweep

PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) - On Wednesday the Clackamas County Sheriff's Department hosted its 21st annual domestic violence warrant sweep in October, which is domestic violence awareness month.

The goal of the DV warrant sweep was to send a message that violence in Clackamas County, especially against family members is not acceptable and that the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office will hold abusers accountable.

There are hundreds of outstanding warrants for domestic violence offenders in Clackamas County and on Wednesday they tried to serve as many as they could.

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"Behind each warrant, there is a hurting family behind each warrant there is a survivor who cried out to us for help and needs us to follow through now," Clackamas County DVERT Detective Aaron Hawkins said.

With warrants in hand, these Clackamas County deputies spent their day knocking on doors looking for the offender. Not every warrant leads to an arrest. But the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office said that each knock kept these cases alive.

"There is a statute of limitations for warrants that are not served," Clackamas County Sheriff Angela Brandenburg said, "the benefit of attempting to serve these warrants even if we don't arrest the perpetrator is that the district attorney's office can show in good faith that we are working the case, we are doing our best to locate that offender."

When an arrest is made, like a Milwaukie woman who is facing domestic assault charges, it brings a family one step closer to closure and makes their homes safer.

"We want to send the message that we believe you we support you and we want to work with you to hold your abusers accountable," Sheriff Brandenburg said

At least eight local police departments and the US Marshals teamed up with the sheriff's office to execute these DV warrants. By 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, they had made a total of 18 arrests.