I think back over the number of marginal people I’ve met, many of whom are in altered mental states either temporary or permanent, who claim to be secretly Rothschilds, or spurned princes, or reincarnated deities, or representatives of extraterrestrial species… while the long delay in applying technology here delayed the fix to a travesty, I understand why the policy for the routine use of that technology may be what it is.
If anything, I’d be curious how the detective got authorization to apply so much time and so many resources to running this claim to ground.
This is madness. Instead, you have a fairly rigorous process for some form of state-issued ID, and allow using that to reduce friction in every other identification process.
In this case, the identity thief fraudulently obtained a state ID, and later a birth certificate, which really does "start from birth". The institutions that issued him with those probably could have done better, but they can't stop everyone, and they need to make some tradeoffs when demanding documentation from decades ago just to let their citizens participate in society.
How does that work for immigrants?
How does that work for kids of parents who do not care enough to keep track of their kids identity documents?
How dies that work for orphans or children of incarcerated parents of children of homeless addicts who are raised by grandparents or an aunt?
As a teacher, I know the world is not so simple.
Should not matter.
This is the simplest case, there should be plenty of information with child protective services. Just verify some of those facts.
However, it sounds like significant resources went to institutionalizing the person. Maybe that's good for the police who get to take the cost off their books. The government overall is still paying.
No, something more than that went wrong. From the article:
>> The real Woods was arrested and charged with identity theft and false impersonation, under a misspelling of Keirans’ name: Matthew Kierans.
I would bet that Woods did not supply that name to the authorities. (How would he have known it?) It had to have come from Keirans. But that changes the story from "some nut job homeless guy making crazy claims" to "a dispute between two people who know each other".
A US Citizen will be deported to Mexico because they didn't happen to have an ID and the agent just thought he was in the 99.9% of people claiming they are citizens? Then they get stuck in the system and it takes a lot to get back into the country and prove who they are.
Also, and perhaps even more importantly, if you aren't actually checking every time, then you don't actually know what the statistics for delusional vs not are, you're just guessing.
If we put more resources into the system, throwing caution to the wind is much more likely.
Some people go looking for problems, and they find them. Some people don’t, and they don’t. Some people are so uninterested in finding problems that they’ll attack or ‘fix’ people that find them.
The tricky part is making another outcome happen when real life is involved. You’re welcome to try to change it if you like. A lot of people are doing so every day, and it would be even worse without that effort every day.
If the father didn't want to see the son, probably not.
As much as I dreamed to have an afro haircut as a kid, the baby was obviously not mine with darker skin, dark frizzy hairs typical of black people while I and my ex are both whites and blonds.
really embarrassing for the California system, I want to know if there is any path for correcting this given the Iowa judgement and the Federal judgement
AIUI America has an "adversarial" legal system, where the court is not involved in investigating the facts of the case. Instead, the defence and prosecution each make the strongest possible case and the judge and jury have to make their decision based on the evidence presented to them. For example the judge and jury don't get to question witnesses directly.
In contrast, Germany has an "inquisitorial" justice system, where the judges are actively involved in investigating the facts of the case and get to question witnesses and suchlike.
There was a story on HN recently about a scumbag attorney who would think his client was lying then would prevent the evidence from being tested
There can be no due process until every piece of evidence is documented publicly, tested, and the test results are posted publicly.
I have had cops claim they needed a DNA sample from me, then they went to their car and said maybe 3 words to another cop there before coming back and reporting DNA test results that were obviously made up.
Until it is a felony for anyone associated with The System to lie or to fail to perform all forensic tests, we will have corruption without end.
Like in the IT - how many bugs fixed vs how many bugs closed ;-)
Such an obvious thing to do.
Why it had to reach to University police for this to be initiated, why LA police did not do this at the start? Why the judge who sent the real Woods to mental hospital asked this to be done before giving that 'judgement'?