When we arrived at the home of the suspected deserter two of the three Military Police Officers positioned themselves on opposing corners of the house so all sides of the house could be observed. The other MP, a sergeant supervisor, and I knocked on the front door. A male person matching the description of the deserter answered the door and I requested permission to enter his home and to speak with him. Once inside we obtained identification from this suspect, his driver license and Social Security card, and it matched the military record exactly, with one exception. He had the same name, same date of birth, same Social Security number, same height and weight, but the eye color was different. This person’s eyes were brown and the deserter’s eyes were listed as green on the military records. I asked this person if he wore contact lenses and he stated he had never worn glasses or contacts.
The MP Sergeant with me called the other two MPs into the house and they handcuffed the suspect. I then asked him if he had served in the Army and then deserted. He told us with enough shock and sincerity that he had never been in the Army that I became concerned we may not have the right person. The MPs were ready to haul him off to a brig (military jail) about one hundred miles away and lock him up as a deserter. I requested a little more time to question him but they assured me he was lying and that they had the right guy.
I asked the suspect if he had ever had his identification stolen or lost. He said no adding that about a year ago he couldn’t find his wallet for a few days but then it showed up on the floor of his bedroom with nothing missing. This did not seem like enough information to not arrest him so I offered to take him to our jail booking facility for identification processing.
At the booking facility they would fingerprint him then send his fingerprints to the Presidio Military Base in San Francisco to verify his status as a deserter. The MPs assured me they had the right person and that all deserters lie to avoid arrest. They then searched his residence for the M-16 without finding it. So it was off to the brig where this suspect would stay without further processing for the next several weeks.
About two months later I received a subpoena to give a deposition regarding this arrest. The suspect was now suing the city that I worked for and the Federal Government for false arrest and malicious incarceration. I learned that this suspect had been in the military brig for about 30 days before he finally got a Military Chaplin to help correctly identify him, by using his fingerprints, and sure enough, they had the wrong guy. By now he had lost his job, was behind on consumer debt payments and was physically sick from the stress of this arrest and incarceration.
After I provided my deposition, providing evidence of doubt about the identity of this suspect, the suit against my employer was dropped. The Federal Government now felt they were liable for falsely arresting this person, false imprisonment and liable for other economic damages, so they settled the lawsuit out of court.
A couple of years later I saw this victim working in his yard and stopped to visit with him. He told me he received sufficient compensation from the Federal Government to offset his loses but the mental trauma from the incident would haunt him for the rest of his life. He explained a former roommate had taken his wallet and used his identification to enlist in the Army. Then when they were out of college for summer break his roommate entered boot camp and was only in boot camp for a few weeks before he walked away during rifle range training taking his M-16 rifle with him.
Sometimes in life we become over confident in ourselves and our decisions and fail to be humble enough to listen to reason. This arrest could have been significantly minimized if the MPs would have allowed me to have the suspected deserter fingerprinted before taking him to a military post and locking him up in the brig.
Sometimes in life we all become rigid, fixed in our position, feeling we are right, and fail to heed the advice or counsel that may prevent us from making a mistake. The Lord states; “Be thou humble; and the Lord thy God shall lead thee by the hand, and give thee answer to thy prayers.” Doctrine and Covenants 112: 10
In the scriptures we often read of the need to humble ourselves. One such instance involves Moses as he brought Israel up out of the Land of Egypt by the power of God. The people spoke against God and Moses. As a result “. . . the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.”
Because of this punishment the people realized they had sinned and they came unto Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD, and against thee; pray unto the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us.”
So Moses prayed unto the Lord in behalf of the people. “And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.”
So, the only thing the people had to do if they were bitten by the fiery serpents was to look. But it seemed too easy and many would not humble themselves to follow this simple act, that of looking upon the brass serpent. We learn of their fate in the scriptures, “. . . and because of the simpleness of the way, or the easiness of it, there were many who perished.” Because the people would not humble themselves, they perished.
In this episode the MPs wouldn’t humble themselves and perform the simple act of fingerprinting a suspect. As a result a life was damaged and the Army lost a significant amount of money. To learn more about the importance of being humble visit mormon.org or lds.org
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