The New Wanted Posters
Matt Lait reported in yesterday's LA TIMES that The Los Angeles misdemeanor prosecutor, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, is presently enduring scrutiny because of his wife's driving record ("Delgadillo's wife named in 1998 arrest warrant"). Michelle Delgadillo had a collision with a city-owned vehicle she wasn't supposed to be driving; the city paid for the repairs; and now it turns out that there has been a warrant out for her arrest for nine years, on vehicle charges for which she failed to appear in court.
The article goes on to discuss briefly the mystery of why police citing her for a moving violation in 2005 failed to address the fact she also had a suspended license, or how she managed to obtain, and then renew, the suspended license without a hitch. There is mention of the fact that the original Santa Monica citation was under her maiden name; that the arrest warrant misspelled her name as "Michele" Delgadillo with one L instead of two; and that "records from other states sometimes are inaccessible."
Of course, although her expired driver's license was from Montana, she was caught driving illegally in California, so that's no answer.
Maiden name? Misspelled "Michelle"? Are you kidding? Can you spell "driver's license number"? Standard police procedure is to take the driver's license, walk back to the patrol car, and "run" this number, that is, use the radio to have a computer search conducted for "wants or warrants" associated with the driver's license, as part of a vehicle stop. All within minutes. Any discussion of misspellings or maiden names would customarily have happened back at the police station, with Ms. Delgadillo in double-locked handcuffs and her car impounded. These explanations are bogus, too.
By the way - is there a warrant out for your arrest?
The correct answer is: I don't know. Any of us could have a warrant out for their arrest on a traffic or any other charge, of which we are guilty or not, without knowing about it. It's left to the law enforcement authorities to decide if they want to pursue the subject of an arrest warrant, or even notify the subject of its existence. As the Delgadillo incident illustrates, these warrants can stay in the system virtually forever, giving the police the authority to jail the subject at any time - even, as here, nine years later on a mere regulatory violation.
Our country's computerized filing system has created a method whereby government officials can quietly render any of us a second-class citizen with a few key strokes. These government computer files may erroneously tag us as "no-fly" terrorist sympathizers ("Constitutional law scholar on no-fly list" http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/04/10/news/
18014.shtml); as gang-associated ("What's In A Name: Gang Monikers" http://www.fbi.gov/
publications/leb/1997/may972.htm); or as wanted criminals - often without our having a chance to challenge or rectify the classification, often even without our knowledge, until, for some reason or another, law enforcement decides to play the card against us, in a game where the stakes may be our rights, or our freedom.
And remember: an arresting officer may end up lawfully killing you if he thinks you are resisting or threatening. Which you reflexively might do if you find it hard to believe a real police officer could have any reason to drag you or a family member out of your home at 3 in the morning. Even if the killing turns out to have been unlawful, you're still, of course, dead. And if you have a serious health condition, a weekend in jail can also end your life. So any arrest warrant is potentially a death warrant.
It's not a system where everyone gets the same deal, as the Delgadillo episode demonstrates. Law enforcement either didn't bother to check the records of the prosecutor's wife, or they didn't care about what they found. So it's not a fair system. But that's how it works.
The article goes on to discuss briefly the mystery of why police citing her for a moving violation in 2005 failed to address the fact she also had a suspended license, or how she managed to obtain, and then renew, the suspended license without a hitch. There is mention of the fact that the original Santa Monica citation was under her maiden name; that the arrest warrant misspelled her name as "Michele" Delgadillo with one L instead of two; and that "records from other states sometimes are inaccessible."
Of course, although her expired driver's license was from Montana, she was caught driving illegally in California, so that's no answer.
Maiden name? Misspelled "Michelle"? Are you kidding? Can you spell "driver's license number"? Standard police procedure is to take the driver's license, walk back to the patrol car, and "run" this number, that is, use the radio to have a computer search conducted for "wants or warrants" associated with the driver's license, as part of a vehicle stop. All within minutes. Any discussion of misspellings or maiden names would customarily have happened back at the police station, with Ms. Delgadillo in double-locked handcuffs and her car impounded. These explanations are bogus, too.
By the way - is there a warrant out for your arrest?
The correct answer is: I don't know. Any of us could have a warrant out for their arrest on a traffic or any other charge, of which we are guilty or not, without knowing about it. It's left to the law enforcement authorities to decide if they want to pursue the subject of an arrest warrant, or even notify the subject of its existence. As the Delgadillo incident illustrates, these warrants can stay in the system virtually forever, giving the police the authority to jail the subject at any time - even, as here, nine years later on a mere regulatory violation.
Our country's computerized filing system has created a method whereby government officials can quietly render any of us a second-class citizen with a few key strokes. These government computer files may erroneously tag us as "no-fly" terrorist sympathizers ("Constitutional law scholar on no-fly list" http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/04/10/news/
18014.shtml); as gang-associated ("What's In A Name: Gang Monikers" http://www.fbi.gov/
publications/leb/1997/may972.htm); or as wanted criminals - often without our having a chance to challenge or rectify the classification, often even without our knowledge, until, for some reason or another, law enforcement decides to play the card against us, in a game where the stakes may be our rights, or our freedom.
And remember: an arresting officer may end up lawfully killing you if he thinks you are resisting or threatening. Which you reflexively might do if you find it hard to believe a real police officer could have any reason to drag you or a family member out of your home at 3 in the morning. Even if the killing turns out to have been unlawful, you're still, of course, dead. And if you have a serious health condition, a weekend in jail can also end your life. So any arrest warrant is potentially a death warrant.
It's not a system where everyone gets the same deal, as the Delgadillo episode demonstrates. Law enforcement either didn't bother to check the records of the prosecutor's wife, or they didn't care about what they found. So it's not a fair system. But that's how it works.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home