The old riddle asks how we know that a tree that falls in the forest makes a sound if nobody hears it tumble.
So goes the logic in Denver’s jails: The fact that the city won’t hear the outcries of people it has locked up wrongfully doesn’t mean that it has no problem with mistaken identity.
I wrote Sunday about Antonio Sanchez, 21, who spent months behind bars under another man’s warrant. He says he filed at least three grievances begging deputies to check his mug shot, fingerprints and other IDs against those of Tony Sanchez, the real suspect.
Mayor John Hickenlooper’s office says it can find “no record” of the grievances — including one filed as recently as last week.
This refrain is all too familiar from a city that has ignored other victims of mistaken-identity arrests and agreed to launch investigations only after prodding by lawyers or journalists.
Like Sam Moore, who was locked up four times, including once for eight days, mistaken for a suspect who was long dead. When he asked for an internal investigation, he says, officers told him to get a lawyer and get lost.
Documents confirm that Moore complained in November 2007. The city didn’t investigate until his story appeared last June.
Muse Jama served eight days behind bars, also for another man. He says Internal Affairs officers refused to file his complaint. Denver started probing the case when I reported it seven months later. Christina FourHorn received no response after complaining to police about being hauled off to jail for five days, mistaken for a woman who is 90 pounds lighter. The city investigated after her case was covered two years later.
And the pregnant wife of Jose Ibarra pleaded with officers to release him from a warrant issued for another man only to be told that he was lying to her about his identity.
Which brings me back to the tree, the forest and the possibility that a city capable of disappearing Antonio Sanchez for an estimated 137 days also may be capable of misplacing paperwork detailing his grievances.
Problems in the Safety Department run so deep that it apparently can’t — or won’t — say how many people have gone lost, voiceless, in its system.
A 2007 internal transcript suggests that screw-ups were so common even two years ago that they “happen every day.” A deputy questioned in the case of a black man held on a white man’s warrant “indicated that at times, males are delineated as females on the warrants because of errors in the system.”
Independent Safety Monitor Richard Rosenthal has yet to publicly address the identity mix-ups other than to say Wednesday that one officer so far has been disciplined.
“These cases have not gone nowhere,” he assured me.
Safety Manager Al LaCabe said in a statement that the city will work “with our partners throughout law enforcement and the courts” to prevent and resolve such arrests.
“We have been developing a new information management system that will help us accomplish this and which will come on line in six to eight months.”
Figure it out, Denver. And start listening up.
Because new cases are filling my inbox. Readers may wonder how many more columns need to be written about people disappearing into Denver’s echo chambers.
I’m pretty sure Mayor Hickenlooper would like the noise to fade away, too.
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
