Patent Law

To live and be fingerprinted in LA?

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Police have arrested innocent people due to faulty fingerprint analysis but have not determined how many cases were affected by such errors, police officials said.

A confidential police report details two cases in which charges were dropped after problems with the fingerprint analysis were discovered, the Los Angeles Times reported late Thursday. Police blame shoddy work and poor oversight for the mistakes.

"This is very, very serious," said Rhonda Sims-Lewis, chief of the Police Department's administrative and technical bureau. "We feel very compelled to take quick action when something like this arises. Guilty people can be set free and innocent people can be jailed."

Full post as published by IPBiz on October 17, 2008 (boomark / email).