3 APD officers face discipline in woman's
wrongful jailing
Three Atlanta police officers face
disciplinary action in the case of a woman wrongly jailed for nearly two
months, Channel 2 Action News
reported.
Teresa Culpepper spent
53 days wrongfully incarcerated in Fulton County Jail because she had the same
name, Teresa, as a woman wanted by authorities in an aggravated assault case.
Culpepper was taken into
custody Aug. 21. She was released Oct. 12 after her public defender got the
crime victim to come to court and say the woman in custody was not the
attacker.
Atlanta police
investigated the incident and acknowledge in documents obtained by Channel 2
that Culpepper was wrongly arrested. The department also issued “notices of
final adverse action” against three officers.
Officer Nicole
Aguinaga faces 30 days’ suspension. Records list her as being the arresting
officer, but she did not personally interview Culpepper, request a lineup or
have fingerprints taken "to dispel any questions regarding her
identity," APD documents state.
Though Aguinaga expressed her concerns about
discrepancies in Culpepper’s identity to someone in the Fulton County District
Attorney’s Office, “you did not contact a supervisor to seek guidance,”
documents addressed to her say.
Officer Jaidon
Codrington faces 14 days’ suspension for having “transported Ms. Culpepper to
Fulton County Jail without attempting to dispel questions regarding her
identity,” documents say.
Another document says
Officer Justin Strom could be suspended for 10 days because “by directing
Officer Codrington to transport Ms. Culpepper to Fulton County Jail
immediately, the process of Officer/Prisoner verification was eliminated.”
Kliff Grimes, with the
International Brotherhood of Police Officers, told Channel 2, “All three are
appealing to the civil service, so we really can’t speak on the specifics.”
Ken Allen, president
of the union’s APD local, said the incident sheds light on problems with the
existing system for handling suspects in custody.
“What we’re trying to do is get
round-the-clock, 24-hours system in which the officers can take the suspect, go
before a judge,” Allen told Channel 2. Such a system, he said, could help
prevent incidents of mistaken identity.