Christina FourHorn is suing the Denver police department in a bizarre mistaken identity case that led to her jailing — and an alleged refusal of police to listen to repeated efforts to show that they had the wrong person. It is only the latest in such mistaken identity arrest cases.
FourHorn was surprised by three police cars that came screeching into her front yard as she was setting out to pick up her daughter at school. They arrested her for robbery and threw her into jail for five days. It took five days for her husband to get loans from friends to bail her out.
She and her family repeatedly tried to get the officers at the scene and at the station to give them some idea of what she was being accused of but were rebuffed. It turns out that they were looking for a Christin FourHorn, who happens to live in Oklahoma. A Christina FourHorn in Colorado was deemed close enough. It did not matter that Christina is about 100 pounds heavier than the suspect, has a different middle name, does not have a telltale tattoo, is seven years older, and looks nothing like the suspect.
The ACLU is taking the case and charges that such mistaken are all too common in Colorado — the organization has identified 237 such cases.
Not only that, her family will not get back the $3,500 that they paid the bondsman to get her out of jail.
For the full story, click here.
“The real problem here is not only that the police are “bulletproof” when they screw up, but that the public has gotten ambivalent to these abuses, unless it happens to them.” – rafflaw
Since the court found in the plaintiff’s favor, it doesn’t appear the police ARE “bulletproof.” Based on the comments to this post, I would also argue that the public isn’t ambivalent.
“No one is extrapolating the actions of these officers to the other 1500 officers of the DPD, or the hundreds of thousands of police officers nationwide.” – Gerty
“Helps if you read the comments prior to calling them ridiculous.” – Gerty
“So even the ‘clean’, responsible, and upstanding cops are almost always dirty in my book – because they knowingly and passively allow thier co-workers to violate peoples rights and break laws. It’s better to just assume you are dealing with a dirty cop and later be proven wrong than to be in a cop-said/perp-said situation.” – AJ
Yeah, I stick by my comments, Gerty. Ridiculous.
I am waiting for the next “mistaken” identity victim to end up in Gitmo. The real problem here is not only that the police are “bulletproof” when they screw up, but that the public has gotten ambivalent to these abuses, unless it happens to them.
“Instead of making it all or nothing, give the police a tool to detain someone without arresting them while the facts are sorted out.”
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I have no idea why Alan would want to give a government agent with no probable cause to arrest the “right” to detain someone for up to four hours. The reason that the cops have the probable cause standard is that we have a fundamental distrust of the government’s coercive powers. We have seen in our history that no matter how benign at the outset the “reasonable safety measure” appears, it inevitably degenerates into abuse. See FISA Court as just the most recent example where we gave an inch and the government took a mile and then said that a mile wasn’t enough.
How about we make the cops follow the law that has served us well for centuries and quit making excuses for folks whom we pay and provide guns to as they exercise police powers in our name?
“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
~ C.S. Lewis
“It sounds to me like DPD might need to adjust its policies for identifying suspects. If the officers didn’t follow the policies, they need to be disciplined and possibly terminated.” -Coloradan
Gee ya think?
“Extrapolating the actions of these officers to even the other 1500 officers of the DPD, let alone the hundreds of thousands of police officers nationwide, is ridiculous and counterproductive” – Coloradan
No one is extrapolating the actions of these officers to the other 1500 officers of the DPD, or the hundreds of thousands of police officers nationwide.
No one is doing that.
Its the thousands and thousands of OTHER actions in addition to these that people are talking about.
Helps if you read the comments prior to calling them ridiculous.
The officers in this case didn’t want to arrest the wrong person. Anyone who says they did is obviously letting their animosity color their logic. No one wants that sort of thing on their service record. The Police Department obviously didn’t want this to happen, either. No P.D. wants to look incompetent and then pay out a huge settlement.
The fact that these cases of mistaken identity happen despite the fact that no one wants them too tells me that it’s not a matter of malfeasance. Something is wrong with the system by which individuals’ identities are verified.
Having formerly been a police dispatcher, I’m curious as to how it took 5 days for this to be cleared up, since the suspect clearly didn’t have the same social security number or date of birth as the wanted subject. Also, you can gain or lose weight, but how do you completely lose a tattoo without even a mark to show for it?
It sounds to me like DPD might need to adjust its policies for identifying suspects. If the officers didn’t follow the policies, they need to be disciplined and possibly terminated. Extrapolating the actions of these officers to even the other 1500 officers of the DPD, let alone the hundreds of thousands of police officers nationwide, is ridiculous and counterproductive.
@ Jay – I completely disagree. I have known many cops, both in my family as well as casual aquaintenances over the years. To a person, every single one can cite stories about thier fellow cops that take advantage of thier powers in some illegal manner. So while there may be idiots in my office, there two things that are worth pointing out keeping that in mind:
First, my coworkers don’t carry a gun, a baton, a tazer and the general intimidation factor that goes along with being a cop which includes the ability to take away someones rights – violently if you do not cooperate as nicely as they would like regardless of your innocence or guilt. Second, IF one of my co-workers was stealing or committing a crime, and I DIDN’T report it – I would be fired and in my professional industry likely subject to criminal prosecution as well. That’s different for cops. They willingly and enthusiastically look ther other way and are all too comfortable covering (lying) for one of thier own (ever notice how different police accounts are of incidents compared to when all of sudden a video shows up?).
So even the ‘clean’, responsible, and upstanding cops are almost always dirty in my book – because they knowingly and passively allow thier co-workers to violate peoples rights and break laws. It’s better to just assume you are dealing with a dirty cop and later be proven wrong than to be in a cop-said/perp-said situation.
In the USA, the current law only permits the police to stop and briefly prevent you from leaving while they investigate, and then only if they have a reasonable suspicion you may have been involved in criminal activity. See http://supreme.justia.com/constitution/amendment-04/13-stop-and-frisk.html and http://www.fletc.gov/training/programs/legal-division/the-informer/research-by-subject/4th-amendment/terrystopupdate.pdf
Alan
Don’t we have that now? I’m not an attorney, but it seems to me the police CAN detain individuals (“holding a suspect for questioning”; “…in a holding cell”, etc) and have some number of hours tually or days to actually charge that person with a crime or release them. Perhaps my understanding or my terminology is wrong and they must actually ARREST the person and wait for specific charges.
I say that sounds like a pretty reasonable approach towards reform.
Wish I’d thought of it.
I do think however it would need to be supported by the return of 4th Amendment protections and a stricter oversight for abusers.
Actually, I think this is a societal problem that we could fix by changing the law. The problem is that if the police have the right person but don’t make an arrest because they are uncertain, they will never hear the end of it. On the other hand, if they simply make the arrest, even a sketchy arrest, there are few consequences for them.
A contributing factor in this problem is that the police have only two choices, arrest or not–its all or nothing–and once they make the arrest, it takes on a life of its own (arraignment, bail, criminal charges, an entry in the newspaper’s police log, inquiries from friends and neighbors, mugshots on thesmokinggun.com, an arrest record that remains the rest of person’s life, etc.)
My proposed solution is to address that contributing factor. Instead of making it all or nothing, give the police a tool to detain someone without arresting them while the facts are sorted out. For example, the police could be permitted to detain someone for up to four hours while they gather info and apply to a judge for further detention. With the court’s permission, the maximum period of detention without making an arrest could be as long as 48 hours, and repeated detentions of the same person for the same suspected crime would be prohibited. This would be a win-win situation for both the suspect, society and the police. I personally would much rather be detained for a few hours than to be arrested, with all that entails. Of course, if the police abused the detention process to harass someone, that would still be subject to a civil tort.
What say ye?
K. Santel
I agree with Rich that the problem is that police get away with this stuff. It was a huge missed opportunity when President Obama boneheadedly got himself involved in the Henry Louis Gates incident last year. Out of personal regard for Obama (in my opinion), Dr. Gates went along with appeasing the cop by going to Obama’s inane “beer summit” rather than sue the cop and the Cambridge police force. Dr. Gates had the law on his side; the case would have been high profile; and the result would have been real change because the department and the individual cop would have been held accountable.
Obama’s handling of that incident put an end to me thinking he was smarter than I am, Columbia College, Harvard Law Review, University of Chicago notwithstanding.
===============================================================
Agree
This was the first inkling I had that the President, the man I voted for, was not the stellar intellect advertised. That moronic beer-fest was pure high school.
Dr. Gates eventually came out looking best but only because he sent flowers to the woman the police and news media scapegoated and the President ignored.
Gerty,
Don’t forget the bride groom in NYC that was shot over 50 times with no fault found on the part of the police officers.
“Then again, if the police didn’t screw up now and again, what fun would Professor Turley’s web-site be.” – Jay
“now and again”?
Do you read this blog?
Try every stinkin day.
In fact, read the last 5 article entries.
3 out of the last 5 are about police abuse.
Police arrests grieving father for not being “calm” while watching his son dying.
Police run over citizen, then claim intoxication is an excuse.
And this one, police arrest someones MOM, and toss her in jail for 5 days for nothing.
As Rich pointed out, cowtowing to them is not the answer. Calling every day incidents “now and again” is little more than bootlicking and does little to help return America to a free state instead of the police state its become post 911.
I agree with Rich that the problem is that police get away with this stuff. It was a huge missed opportunity when President Obama boneheadedly got himself involved in the Henry Louis Gates incident last year. Out of personal regard for Obama (in my opinion), Dr. Gates went along with appeasing the cop by going to Obama’s inane “beer summit” rather than sue the cop and the Cambridge police force. Dr. Gates had the law on his side; the case would have been high profile; and the result would have been real change because the department and the individual cop would have been held accountable.
Obama’s handling of that incident put an end to me thinking he was smarter than I am, Columbia College, Harvard Law Review, University of Chicago notwithstanding.
One wonders sometimes whether budget problems leave state or local government with less ability to hire because they don’t have the money to pay top dollar. Is personnel quality going down?
Over 40 states qualify for Chapter 9 Bankruptcy.
Usually financial insolvency precedes procedural insolvency.
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2010/02/states-of-war-budgets.html
Years ago, in college, I was almost arrested under similar circumstances. That I had ID and was younger and had a somewhat different name didn’t make any difference to the sherrif’s deputies. This was in a small college town in Ohio. The problem isn’t that law enforcement officers area “bad group”. It’s that they get away with this staff and always have. There’s an unwillingness to anatagonize them, as they often will stand behind someone who’s obviously a screw-up. DAs want that FOP endorsement and other people don’t want the potential of police harrassment the next time they have a burnedout headlight.
Out of the article, this was a 2008 case and she settled, but still won’t get back her bail money. Well depending on how much was settled for it might not make too much of a difference.
“We are trying to demonstrate that this is a widespread practice,” said Mark Silverstein, an ACLU attorney who filed FourHorn’s suit in 2008. FourHorn’s case was settled, and the terms remain confidential.
All too often, people complain about the cases that the ACLU takes, etc. I do remember a case a few years back where a black fellow at the ACLU represented a Klansman right to burn crosses.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2472&dat=19981114&id=svAyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=oggGAAAAIBAJ&pg=7048,3279712
If I also recall his name was Baugh or something like that. He was an Appointed Federal Defender. He basically called a White judge a racist on the record soon after he found himself with a discipline, removed from his appointment and in private practice.
He is damn good by the way. If he is still living and you get in trouble in the VA area, he is the one you want.
I strongly disagree with Tootie. The majority of police do a great job and it does a great disservice to everyone to lump them all into one big group. Of course there are lazy idiots out there, and some of them happen to be police officers.
Look around your office, if you can’t find the lazy idiot(s), it might just be you.
Then again, if the police didn’t screw up now and again, what fun would Professor Turley’s web-site be.
Cops: the new criminal class.
Defund your local police. Send them out to find honest work like the rest of us must do.