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GREENSBORO — Lamont Pride was a wanted man. But it became clear last week that Pride wasn’t wanted everywhere — just in North Carolina.

Now he sits in a New York jail, charged in the shooting death of New York City police officer Peter Figoski.

Pride was arrested twice in New York City before Monday’s fatal shooting.

After the second time, on Nov. 3, New York police saw warrants for Pride’s arrest in a nonfatal Greensboro shooting. The warrants indicated Pride was to return to North Carolina only if he were arrested within the state.

By the time Greensboro police requested extradition nationwide, it was too late. Pride was already back on the street.

Both New York and Greensboro police have said the person ultimately responsible for Figoski’s death is the person who pulled the trigger.

Pride’s case, however, highlights a little-known choice that police and prosecutors make every time they put a warrant out for someone’s arrest.

They have to ask themselves how far they would go to get a suspect.

“There’s not a formula,” said Jeff Welty, an assistant law professor at the UNC School of Government.

“It’s a judgment call, and the factors that are sometimes considered are things like how serious the offense is, how substantial the defendant’s prior record is, what kind of sentence the defendant is potentially facing, and the difficulty in getting the defendant back from another state.”

Extradition — the transfer of a wanted person caught in one state to another state for trial — is a complex process.

Papers and signatures and money are not easily transported across state lines.

The Guilford County district attorney’s office and police decide if extradition or in-state transfer is warranted on a case-by-case basis.

Extradition isn’t solely based on the charge or offense, said Greensboro police spokeswoman Susan Danielsen. So police don’t always push for blanket national extradition orders for shooting suspects, as in Pride’s case.

Assistant District Attorney Howard Neumann says he considers other factors when a detective requests his approval for extradition:

• What are the facts of the case?
• Can it be proved in court?
• Was it a violent or non-violent crime?
• If caught, do authorities fully intend to pick up the person?
• Is it worthwhile to spend money to retrieve the person?

Authorities have to pay travel costs, including meals, lodging and transportation for the officers and the wanted person.

Extradition can involve many agencies, including the police department, sheriff’s office, district attorney’s office and the U.S. Marshals Service.

The final decision is shared among all involved, Danielsen said.

Neumann said extradition is automatically approved in almost every homicide warrant in which the suspect is not arrested at the crime scene.

“We want to make sure that if they’re found in Tennessee or Idaho or wherever, that they’re apprehended,” he said. “And we also want to make sure that the U.S. marshals will help us.”

Extradition can be applied to North Carolina from one state, from surrounding states and from states east of the Mississippi River, for example.

Greensboro Detective M.V. Francis had no inkling that Pride would flee to New York. From the information he gathered, police thought they could pick Pride up locally.

Francis consulted with the district attorney’s office, which agreed to approve the fugitive’s return to Greensboro in-state only.

When Pride was arrested on Nov. 3, a New York officer called the Greensboro Police Department’s records section listed on the warrants at 10:44 p.m., police said. He told staff that Pride was in custody and asked about the extradition order.

The Greensboro clerk reviewed the records, which were entered into a national criminal database, and confirmed that there was no approval for national extradition.

Pride was released from jail Nov. 4, unbeknownst to Greensboro police.

A New York officer called at 1:43 p.m. Nov. 8, asking if Greensboro police would reconsider the order.

The clerk then contacted Francis, who discussed extradition with the New York officer.

Francis and the district attorney’s office approved nationwide extradition, entering it into the national database at 3:08 p.m.

Greensboro police Chief Ken Miller said the department might examine whether records clerks should contact detectives sooner if they get extradition inquiries. But on Nov. 3, the clerk acted according to protocol.

“If we tried to, in the middle of the night, undo all these every time there’s one that’s not in there or there’s a no-extradition indicator… then the process is meaningless,” he said.

“So we have to look at our process and say, is there something we should be doing differently there so that we’re getting the meaningful cases in there,” Miller said. “And up to this point there’s been no question about whether or not that process works.”

In the end, officers can’t predict someone’s bad behavior, Miller said.

“There’s a process established for a reason. The D.A. doesn’t have unlimited resources. We don’t have unlimited resources,” he said.

“Somebody made a choice to do something really, really bad for a reason that really made no sense,” he said, speaking of the Figoski shooting. “And he’s responsible for that.”

Contact Dioni L. Wise at 373-7090 or dioni.wise@news-record.com