Detective does a spectacularly poor job and arrests wrong woman

The wife and mom with no criminal record got hauled off to jail for five days for attacking and robbing a man she never met.

Denver since has cleared Four Horn in a case of mistaken identity resulting from stunningly sloppy police work.

In March 2006, a Denver man told police he was attacked and robbed by his girlfriend, Christin (with no "a" at the end) Fourhorn (with a lowercase "h"), with whom he had been living for three weeks. She was described as 26 years old, weighing 160 pounds, having lived in Oklahoma and with a tattoo of her daughter on her left arm.

Detective Mark Dalvit searched Colorado's motor vehicle database and came across Christina Four Horn.

He then reported that the victim identified her — using her name and date of birth — as the "girlfriend/suspect" who attacked him. That false information was used to secure an arrest warrant.

Never mind that Four Horn spells her name differently.

Never mind that she is seven years older and weighs 90 pounds more.

And never mind she never lived in Oklahoma and has no tattoo on her arm.

Had Dalvit checked out those discrepancies — or showed FourHorn's photo to the victim, or even contacted FourHorn herself — it would have been clear he had the wrong woman.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_8631394

I feel extremely sorry for this lady, the detective here was severely negligent. I think I would be fired for messing up so royally at my work. I don’t expect anything to happen to this “detective” and no possible punishment was mentioned in the article. You may think this problem is a fluke, but it is a structural problem in the government and the police specifically, as there is almost no accountability for mistakes. If this lady were to sue, the officers and the judge responsible for her false arrest and imprisonment would not suffer, if she wins a verdict it will come from the taxpayer’s purse and not the responsible parties. There isn't any negative financial feedback. If this were a private company, the companies stock might drop, they may be liable for damages, they would most definitely fire the employees responsible for the mistake and there would be a higher level of accountability all the way around. In this the police are likely to claim that they need more money in order to correct these problems, and will basically be rewarded for failing.