GA - Woman Wrongly Jailed Blames System

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Y2K discussion group : One Thread

In the first part of this report, 11Alive News Investigative Reporter Jennifer Leslie focused on problems with some information in the National Criminal Information Computer System that led to as many as 25 percent of all arrest warrants in Metro Atlanta being inaccurate and incomplete or invalid.

In the second part, Leslie's report focuses on what happens when police officers arrest the wrong person because of problems in the system.

Before giving birth to her daughter Sophie last October, Melissa Long had quite a scare. “I had one baby and I was a high-risk pregnancy and I didn’t want to get upset,” she said.

In late August, when she was eight-and-a-half months pregnant, a police officer stopped Long and her husband because they did not have a license plate on their new car.

After running a check on Long’s driver’s license, the officer returned with a pair of handcuffs.

"I was like hey, what are you doing to my wife? She's pregnant. They said calm down," Long’s husband, Chad Long, recalled.

The officer said he had an outstanding warrant against her for a domestic violence charge. Long was photographed, fingerprinted and eventually taken to the Spalding County jail.

"I was locked in a cell with five other women that couldn't have been six by eight feet and I had to lay on the floor and here I am 35 weeks pregnant,” Long said.

Six months later, the fear remains fresh in her memory.

Officials later realized another woman with the same name was the one police really wanted. According to Long’s attorney Bruce Millar, a Griffin police officer apparently took out an arrest against a different Melissa Long and mixed up the two women’s middle names and birth dates.

An employee with the Spalding County Sheriff’s Office then added the wrong Social Security number before entering the warrant in the National Criminal Information Computer System.

After ten hours in jail, her family finally convinced officers that she was not the one they wanted.


The Spalding County Sheriff said his department relied on what turned out to be bad information Griffin police admitted their officer made a mistake that they tried to correct as quickly as they could.

Meanwhile, the other Melissa Long is still wanted by police.

"There was a major breakdown in this case because we had a warrant that had incomplete information, that was not double-checked at the time of entry and that entry was not verified by a third person,” Millar said.

In Long’s case, she was listed as a witness in the county’s computer system in another unrelated case. Because her information was on file, police apparently used some of her personal details to fill out the warrant arrest against the other Melissa Long.

To avoid that kind of mistake, local law enforcement agencies are required to double-check every warrant they enter in the system to make sure the information is accurate via a process known as warrant validation. After 90 days, they are supposed to check the warrant entry a third time and than again once every year.

"It is the duty of every agency to properly validate all of their record entries," said George Emfinger of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI).

The GBI monitors state entries in the computer system by sending auditors to police and sheriff’s departments across the state for a spot check of warrants every two years.

Recent GBI audit reports from 11 Metro Atlanta law enforcement agencies show an average error rate of 25 percent – in plainer terms, one out of every four warrants. It is an average which is eight times higher than the national average of three percent.

The most common mistakes as researched by 11Alive News were warrant entries that were incomplete or inaccurate.

"This is exactly what the system is designed to catch, and if you're not following the rules, you're going to end up with people being arrested like this," Millar said.

With guidance and training from the GBI, some agencies have lowered their error rates.

The Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Department, which scored an error rate of 28 percent two years ago, brought that number down to six percent last year.

Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway said overtime help has played a role in the reductions. “It's a budget buster, but it's something that's important and we're committed to do,” he said.

Officials told 11Alive News that there is nothing that can be done to prevent a case of mistaken identity, meaning that anyone with a common could be at risk -– making it all the more important that law enforcement improve the way they keep their records.



-- Anonymous, February 25, 2003


Moderation questions? read the FAQ