LOS ANGELES (CN) - The Los Angeles Police Department has known for decades that its fingerprinting and forensic crime exams are defective, but it continued convicting innocent people based on the faulty evidence, says a Federal Court suit.
Lead plaintiff Latonya McIntyre says she was jailed for a week and prosecuted for a burglary that happened while she was in Alabama. She estimates that of the 130,000 people the LAPD arrests every year, "a minimum of 1% were arrested, incarcerated and/or prosecuted based on faulty fingerprinting and/or forensic analysis."
And she claims LAPD's history of this deliberate indifference, and other documented practices of evidence tampering, "unlawful arrests, false and misleading police reports and false and perjurious testimony" has been directed particularly against minorities.
The putative class is represented by Hermez Moreno.
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