Tuesday night, officers with the Brooklyn Police Department approached a white Ford Fusion with guns drawn. They believed that the vehicle had been stolen.
It had not been.
Brooklyn police chief Scott Mielke said it appeared Cleveland PD entered the wrong vehicle as stolen. In truth, the plates belonged to a Ford Econoline van.
Nonetheless, the lone occupant of the Ford Fusion — Michael Houser, who works as a special assistant to Sharon Sobol, County Executive Armond Budish’s Chief of Staff — was handcuffed and kept inside his vehicle for ten minutes.
In a Facebook status posted later Tuesday night, Houser wondered what exactly had gone wrong:
“My question is how do you make a mistake that big? Even if the car was stolen why come to the car with guns drawn? God is good but this situation could have easily been bad. We need to improve the system.”
Chief Mielke told Scene that the alleged stolen vehicle was entered as being used in an aggravated robbery with a gun, “so approaching the vehicle with our weapons drawn [was] appropriate.”
Mielke also said that there were five officers at the scene, not nine, as Houser indicated in his post.
Houser, upon release, was advised to contact CPD about his vehicle.
In a follow-up post this morning, Houser said that he’d spoken with CPD and they confirmed that his car “was not and had never been” stolen.
“I’m not even going to lie, I was hoping it was just to justify the actions of Brooklyn Police Department,” he wrote.
This article appears in Nov 4-10, 2015.
Wow.
Need to double check what you enter into your MDT, this is lack of attention to detail. In most jobs that doesn’t end up with an innocent person being scared for their life. As officer you have great responsibility to do the job well, if you’re to excited, afraid, or lazy…please find a different line of work. Can’t tell the difference between abc-1234 or adc-1234 or a Ford Fusion or a Ford Econoline Van…pay attention and know that your mistakes are magnified. No way a competent police officer makes this many errors.
There are times where your job isn’t that important, and mistakes don’t impact other people in a huge way. Then there are jobs where if you make a mistake, it’s huge for a ton of people. Checks and balances need to be in place to prevent stuff like this from happening, otherwise things like this will happen again and again.