Up to 450 mistakenly jailed on warrants for others in one California county over 5 years, suit says
An August 2015 traffic stop in Colton, California, put Manuel Bravo Martinez in jail in lieu of a $100,000 bond after he was mistaken for another man with the same name who was wanted on a warrant.
Although his date of birth is different, and the correct suspect’s fingerprints were on file, Bravo says he got out of jail the next day only because he was able to get family members to make bond for him. He feared he would have lost his job if he had stayed in jail, Courthouse News reports.
More than a week after his arrest, at his second court appearance, the judge threw out the case because the real suspect’s birthday was different, Bravo said.
His case isn’t unusual, Bravo contends in a Riverside federal civil rights suit that seeks class-action status. It says as many as 450 people have been wrongfully arrested on warrants in San Bernardino County over a five-year period. That happens, the suit alleges, because authorities have a practice of ignoring inconsistent dates of birth when then make arrests and failing to confirm suspects’ contested identities with readily available fingerprint technology.
“It’s a fairly significant problem,” Bravo’s lawyer, Donald Cook, told Courthouse News. “What’s so upsetting is that the police figured out how to do this decades ago.”
In addition to the county, the suit names as defendants the city of Colton, its police department and the county sheriff’s department. The article doesn’t include any comment from representatives of the defendants. Courthouse News says they didn’t respond on Friday to emailed requests for comment.
See also:
ABAJournal.com: “Jailed based on mistaken identity, some who did nothing wrong are held days, weeks or months”
ABAJournal.com: “9th Circuit OKs civil rights suit by man mistakenly jailed on warrant for another man”
