Week 7: News Article - Elizabeth

"Jailed by Mistake; wrongful arrests jail about 100 people for over 2,000 days"

By Robert Patrick & Jennifer S. Mann

http://www.stltoday.com/news/multimedia/special/st-louis-wrongful-arrests-mount-as-fingerprint-mismatches-are-ignored/html_b153a232-208f-5d0b-86a1-ba3256f7a941.html

For this week’s blog, I read an article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch about citizens’ repeated arrests and incarceration due to mistakes made by our police department. By mistaking suspect’s fingerprints, failing to follow up on names, birth dates and basic identities, false arrests are occurring much more frequently than we realize. In fact, a federal jury has put the police department on notice after they were forced to pay $10,0000 in damagers after failing to heed a fingerprint mismatch warning. Once again, the police department finds itself back in court, where allegedly more than 80 wrongful arrest cases will be brought against them.

The article talks about Shannon Renee McNeal who was locked up due to a clerical error combined with essentially sloppy fingerprint examination cost her her home, financial stability and temporarily her job. This is just one of the many stories used to exemplify St. Louis’ apparent “arrest first, investigate later” stance. What I find really frustrating about this issue (aside from its established pattern of occurrence) are some of the responses from prominent, influential people involved with our justice system, regarding the “fingerprint mix-ups.”

A former police officer turned judge remarked “Your research seems to suggest that there’s at least more that could be done, and if there is, we should do it…human beings make mistakes. The question is, do we have the procedures in place to see a mistake has been made and then take corrective action?” Apparently not. Another reaction to the issue, specifically concerning Ms. McNeal was that she put herself in such a vulnerable position because she was already in the system to begin with. So essentially, if you are in the system, in addition to facing a variety of stigmas and difficulties re-entering society (no right to foot stamps potentially, black mark on your resume, financial struggle, etc.) you now must expect to be repeatedly taken into custody and shown any regard to your personal freedoms because of a previous incarceration? Very forward thinking of you, St. Louis. Executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri explained that he felt as though the issue of wrongful arrests/incarceration/fingerprinting is being handled far too lightly , and if you were to put the same attitude in the context of a medical mistake it would be a whole different story. Along the same lines of logic, many St. Louis citizens feel that this issue would receive a lot more attention if the people being victimized by these mistakes were primarily white, upper class individuals. This issue is further manipulating those that do not have the financial resources and social power to combat these issues properly. There is already a fear and mistrust of law-enforcement in many of our communities in St. Louis and this type of suspicious and destructive oversight only enforces a feeling of hopelessness where safety and protection is concerned.

Hearing about injustice within our police department (either in St. Louis or anywhere in the U.S.) is nothing new, however I find it really unsettling that this article was buried, and not front page, not at all prominently displayed. I had never even heard of there being a REPEATED and FREQUENT issue with faulty fingerprinting that inadvertently targeted those in the system.

To clarify and outline some basic complaints of error on behalf of the police department the article outlined some important bullet points:

-Police failed to verify the identity of people they arrested, especially those who provided someone else’s name. In almost every wrongful arrest found, police and other officials overlooked a fingerprint report warning that they either had the wrong person or someone who used an alias.

-The protests of those wrongly arrested often were ignored.

-Officials failed to differentiate between the people who gave false names and the people who suffered for it. 

-Authorities downplayed the cases where their own mistake caused a wrongful arrest.

-Officials failed to correct errors in records, setting up repeated wrongful arrests and leaving authorities unsure of whom they were holding or who committed which past crimes.

What do you guys think about this issue and what it means for St. Louis youth and other vulnerable individuals’ already unstable relationships with law enforcement? While the statistics alone are scary, it speaks to an even deeper lackadaisical attitude and blatant disregard for equality that really makes these community relationships appear bleaker than ever.