After the Columbia Police Department mistakenly arrested an innocent Columbia woman, the Citizens Police Review Board has brought the issue of clerical errors and data entry mistakes to light.
Assistant City Counselor Rose Wibbenmeyer recognized Columbia police officer Joel Mueller at the review board’s October meeting for sorting out the wrongful arrest.
“He executed a search warrant that was active and arrested this person, and when he was doing the booking process at the police department, he discovered there had been an error,” Wibbenmeyer said. “He checked into it and discovered the initial officer had entered the wrong pedigree information.”
CPD spokeswoman Jill Schlude said this type of erroneous arrest is rare, and most incidents occur because an old warrant hasn’t been cleared.
“I’ve been here for seven years, and I can’t remember that ever happening before,” Schlude said. “Usually it’s a clerical error, like something that wasn’t taken out of the system that should have been. In this case, it was a data entry error on our part.”
Wibbenmeyer said though this type of wrongful arrest is rare, overall they happen more often than she would like.
“Oftentimes, the problems we see are things where there’s an old warrant that’s outstanding and should have been purged, or that they went and paid their fines and the warrant was never pulled,” Wibbenmeyer said. “We see that happening, unfortunately more than it should.”
Incidents like this occur approximately once or twice every six months, Schlude said, but exact numbers are hard to nail down, since a wrongful arrest can occur for multiple reasons and have different outcomes.
“Someone could just be yanking your chain because they don’t want to be arrested, or they could be trying to talk you out of it, not knowing we’re required to arrest you,” she said.
Board member Betty Wilson said she was disappointed this happened in the first place, and wrongful arrests are too commonplace in her experience as an attorney.
“This is the kind of thing that comes through fairly often, from when I used to do criminal law,” Wilson said. “I’ve objected before that it was an erroneous arrest, and no one paid any attention to it. I’m glad Officer Mueller did this, but it’s not a once-in-a-while occurrence.”
Schlude said one major reason for these mistakes is that the department only has 30 minutes to verify a warrant is valid before the officer is required to make an arrest.
“What usually happens is that there’s a warrant from St. Louis or Kansas City, which is usually something traffic-related, and it may have been paid six months ago, but we can’t do anything about it,” Schlude said. “We have to arrest you by state statute.”
Most complaints of a wrongful arrest by Columbia police officers are made to the other agency involved, Schlude said.
“A lot of these complaints we won’t know about because their complaint is with the other agency that failed to clear the warrant,” Schlude said. “It has nothing to do with us.”
Schlude said all state warrants are verified by the Missouri State Highway Patrol each year, and CPD takes certain steps to verify all its warrants are active before making an arrest.
“Our municipal warrants are something we keep in a file and audit ourselves,” Schlude said. “If we want to look you up, we have to call to the front desk and someone has to physically find the actual warrant.”
