Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com

Published - Friday, March 28, 2008

Police sorry after Crime Stoppers mixup

By DAN SPRINGER | La Crosse Tribune

There are only so many ways to apologize, and the La Crosse Police Department is using them all to help smooth things over with a woman who was mistakenly identified as a suspect in a Crime Stoppers announcement.

The public service announcement aired for three days before the mixup was detected and the message was pulled, said La Crosse police Lt. Bob Berndt, who coordinates the Crime Stoppers program.

The message seeking the public’s help in finding a woman suspected of using a stolen credit card at a local Kwik Trip included the woman’s image taken from store surveillance cameras.

“We feel horrible about the mistake, and want to do all we can to minimize any inconvenience or embarrassment this woman may have experienced,” said Officer Drew Gavrilos, saying it was very unfortunate mistake.

The mixup happened when police reviewed Kwik Trip’s store surveillance video while investigating the initial report, Gavrilos said.

They were able to match the cash register receipt information with the time on the video but did not realize there were two eerily similar transactions about the same time, Gavrilos said.

“We had two very similar looking people come to the register about 10 to 20 seconds apart, and each were buying very similar things,” he said. “It was a one in a million type of thing.”

Police were contacted late Monday after one of the woman’s co-workers brought the incident to the woman’s attention.

“The woman said her co-worker was kind of joking around and said, ‘I thought I saw you on Crime Stoppers,’” Gavrilos said. “The woman hopped online and watched the video and found it was her.”

Police have since sent the woman a personal note of apology and produced a new Crime Stoppers message with corrected information and a public apology, Gavrilos said.

Police did not release the name of the woman in the initial announcement.

Dan Springer can be reached at dspringer@lacrossetribune.com or (608) 791-8269.