Wrongful jailings prompt L.A. County sheriff to create task force - latimes.com
"Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said Tuesday that he will create a task force to minimize the wrongful jailings of people mistaken for someone else.
Baca's move came in response to a Times investigation that found hundreds of people have been wrongly imprisoned in recent years, with some spending weeks behind bars before authorities realized their true identities.
"It's a horrible reality of what is basically the imperfect nature of the criminal justice system," Baca said in an interview. "No one who is an innocent person should ever be tied in with the criminal justice system....There's a difference between saying 'I plead not guilty.' It's another thing to say to anybody 'I'm not that person.'"
Baca said his task force to minimize the problem will probably be headed up by his detectives chief, a patrol commander and a jail captain.
The wrongful incarcerations occurred more than 1,480 times in the last five years. Many of those mistakenly held inside the county's lockups had the same names as suspects or had their identities stolen.
L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas called the jailings "a travesty of justice" and another blow to the sheriff's jails, which are under federal investigation over allegations of inmate abuse and other deputy misconduct.
This "further erodes confidence in the County jail system — just as we are struggling to restore public confidence," he said in a statement. "It's not enough to say that accidents happen."
The Times found that the jailings occur because of breakdowns not just by jail officials but by police who arrest the wrong people and by the courts, which have issued warrants that did not precisely identify the right suspects.
Because multiple jurisdictions are involved, Baca said his task force would present its recommendations to other local police agencies, with the hope that they too would adopt the reforms."
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