Orleans Parish deputy facing discipline in teen ankle monitor case ...

An Orleans Parish sheriff's deputy is facing disciplinary action after a teen he was assigned to track was arrested in connection with a pair of violent crimes while his ankle monitor was inoperable for more than 24 hours, Sheriff Marlin Gusman said Friday. The deputy received two email alerts and a pair of phone calls about the malfunction a day before an armed robbery and carjacking in which the teen is a suspect, but he either overlooked or ignored an obvious indication that the system didn't work, Gusman said.

Gusman told reporters Friday he would determine punishments "if our internal investigation shows deputies didn't take all steps they should have in a timely fashion." He acknowledged that, after the alerts from the company that runs the tracking system, a simple mouse click would have clearly shown that the data tracking the boy's location was outdated.

A judge had assigned a monitor to the 14-year-old boy on Sept. 26 after he was arrested on a charge of marijuana possession.

Gusman released a 10-page report from OmniLink, the Georgia-based company that runs the tracking system, and wheeled out a company executive to detail the activity of the device that tracked the boy with GPS and cell phone signals beginning Sept. 26.

That device appeared to malfunction, and sheriff's deputies replaced it with a second monitor the next day, according to the report.

The new monitor had similar problems, which Daniel Graff-Radford, vice president and general manager of OmniLink, attributed to a cell phone dead zone that prevented the monitor from communicating to the company.

The new monitor was not communicating with servers for at least 24 hours, during which time, police say, the teenager committed an armed robbery and a carjacking in an Uptown neighborhood on Oct. 2. The area of at least one of the crimes fell outside of the teenager's allowed geographical area.

There was no evidence the boy had tampered with the monitor, Gusman said.

The company issued the alerts to the team of three deputies and one supervisor who monitor the system. But when a deputy looked on the screen, it showed the monitor was operating with full power, a sign it was functioning. Gusman, however, said the deputy failed to heed a time stamp that showed the status was old.

Exactly what deputies should do in such cases is determined on a case-by-case basis, Gusman said. However, some follow-up steps deputies can take include calling the juvenile's parent, calling the case judge or finding and detaining the juvenile.

Though technological issues do arise, Graff-Radford said, the length and severity of the teen's device's dysfunction was "very rare." The device was out for at least 36 hours.

The device first indicated the boy left his "inclusion zone" on Oct. 1 at 8:48 p.m. A deputy called the boy's mother, and she reported that she had fetched him.

Then, the tracking system lost communication with the ankle monitor because of poor cellular service that day at 11:03 p.m., according to OmniLink's report. The company e-mailed and called Gusman's office then, and again at 11:13 p.m. when the GPS tracking disappeared. That can happen when the monitor is indoors or obstructed, Graff-Radford said.

There was no signal from the device after that, and nothing further happened in the case until the boy's arrest on Oct. 3.

Police say the teen, together with at least one accomplice, on Oct. 2 around 10 p.m., robbed a woman at gunpoint in the 1600 block of First Street and then carjacked another woman at gunpoint in the 2200 block of Marengo Street. Both teens were arrested after jumping out of the carjacking victim's stolen car when police were tailing them on Oct. 3, police have said.

The victim of the armed robbery identified the 14-year-old. The victim of the carjacking? positively identified both juveniles, according to NOPD.

In spite of this mishap, Gusman said, the electronic monitoring program has been a "very effective alternative to incarceration" since its implementation in Oct. 2010. Of the 838 people tracked by the Sheriff's Office, about 73 percent neither violated the terms of their monitoring nor were arrested again while wearing a monitor.

"The electronic monitors are not designed to prevent someone from committing a crime," Gusman said. "There's nothing magical that happens."

Protocols regarding equipment failure are being revised between the company and the Sheriff's Office, Gusman said.

Criminal District Court Judge Camille Buras vouched for the program's success, saying she receives 24-hour alerts that she can then use to determine whether she should order a deputy to track down a person. "It's an additional layer of monitoring for people out on bond or on probation," she said.

But each judge sets his or her own conditions for people ordered to wear the monitors, as well as policies for when deputies should arrest someone if those policies are violated.

Even if the monitor worked, it is unclear whether deputies would have arrested the juvenile for veering away from his "inclusion zone" had he not been nabbed in connection with the armed robbery and carjacking.

Source: http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/10/opso_deputy_facing_discipline.html

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