This was not just piss poor police work it is more accurately defined as malfeasance

[Dave Grubb]

You have to read this account---I'll get too wound up to have to repeat it.

In short, a young doctorial student in Philadelphia---who happened to be black---spent 6 days in jail on a warrant from Harris County Texas. The fact that she had never been in Texas is only one small problem with this.

I'm damn sure she now has a a line of "Philadelphia Lawyers" at her door

[Mike]

Not enough information in the article I found. Somebody probably needs to dust off the checkbook.

[Dave Grubb]

Wrong link

Try this one.

[Mike]

That's the one I found. The story creates more questions than it answered.

[Dave Grubb]

My take away was:
1. The thought that the "evidence" justified asking for a warrant is dubious at best.
2. Whoever issued the warrant failed to do any level of due diligence.

Imagine where that young lady might be today had she ever been in Texas

[Honda]

I agree with Mike there's a lot of questions unanswered. I'm sure it will all come out. It sounds to me like an unfortunate administrative error. If anybody did anything "piss poor" It was the DA's office.

[Sandman]

Definitely something wrong at Texas end.. pretty hard to shoplift I’m Texas, the woman had never been to Texas..

[Mike]

My take away was:
1. The thought that the "evidence" justified asking for a warrant is dubious at best.
2. Whoever issued the warrant failed to do any level of due diligence.

Imagine where that young lady might be today had she ever been in Texas

1. Unless you read a different article, no "evidence" was presented.
2. The article does not give us enough information to draw that conclusion, although it is seemingly so.

I have no idea how this warrant was obtained or even why it was obtained. Shoplifting is usually a fairly small value crime and is not something that most jurisdictions are going to go to the expense of extradition to prosecute. That alone makes me ask what is really going on with this case. Maybe someone shoplifted some high-value item that was improperly secured. We don't know.

Arrest warrants (and search warrants) can be obtained a number of ways in Texas. Most jurisdictions have procedures defining how to go about getting one. It usually involves going the the DA's office and presenting them with a probable cause statement which is used to write up a warrant which is then taken before a judge for his signature. In Harris County, unless things have changed since I retired, that is the preferred way, but not the only way. I also occasionally wrote my own arrest warrant and hand carried it directly to a judge if a really fast turnaround was important. The DA doesn't like it this way but tough cookies! The downside is any mistakes in the warrant are yours, and don't belong to the DA's office.

What happened in this case? I have no real idea, but my guess is that the investigating officer had enough information, name and age, to look the name up on the internet and came up with a picture of the defendant. They then showed the picture to the store clerk who positively identified the internet picture as being the person who did the deed and the rest is history.

If this story stands as reported, heads may roll and Harris County will pay the victim a nice chunk of cash, as will the business for falsely identifying your citizen.

I still feel this is not all to the story. Not to imply that your citizen is guilty or involved, but rather as to how it all went down from the theft to the arrest. Something is not normal or right and your citizen somehow got caught in the middle.

[on edit] I forgot to mention, when arrest warrants are entered into NCIC there are rules about extradition and how far the entering agency is willing to extradite. This could have been a mistake by the entering agency and indicated extradition when none was intended. It does nothing for the identity issue, but it helps clear part of the puzzle in my mind.


*throughout this I refer to the victim as "your citizen" because I can't freaking spell Pennsylvania! Damn! I just did!

[Mike]

Here is how ABC Ch. 13 News in Houston is REPORTING THIS. Again, not much information.

[Dave Grubb]

I have read about this now from multiple sources and there is general agreement--and as you point out general absence of some details. One such detail is the name, the "authorities" have said this girl's name was "similar"----not the same---doesn't that mean different? How they got the name of the shoplifter is a mystery to me. Next is the claim that a LEO went on social media looking for a match to the security video they had---of dubious quality---and "matched" it to a photo they found somewhere on the web Anyone who has used Google image search knows how questionable that is.

How anyone (Judge) could equate that to justify a warrant is beyond me

[Mike]

The internet, even with all of its shortcomings, is an invaluable tool we have today that we didn't have when I started my career. Information gathered there, just like anywhere else, must be vetted and due diligence must be done just like before the internet. Someone possibly took shortcuts and really screwed this one up. I hope it all comes out so we can find out just what happened. Whoever presented the warrant to the judge for his signature is in a world of worry. That judge is not going to be happy!

[Honda]

We all strive for perfection and we all fall short. I guess that makes us piss poor

[Sandman]

And..

This is a shoplifting warrant.. shoplifting..

Not murder..

And after all of the grief that the Pennsylvania woman was put through, would Texas even pay to transport a shoplifting suspect suspect to Texas (not back to Texas, the innocent woman had never before been to Texas)

[Dave Grubb]

We all strive for perfection and we all fall short. I guess that makes us piss poor

Why the drama, you said that not me.

[UTAH]

This is a shoplifting warrant...

Exactamundo.

Hunter