We All Pay For Police Mistakes

This is a serious problem, how much damage can be done to someone and their family in an eight day period. Mr. Jama had to drop two classes. What if he would have had children at home?

Yes, there needs to be compensation, but more than that there needs to be accountability. Is there any punishment for the officers, the booking officer or the jailers who allowed this? If your ID isn't good enough, then why have it? They obviously didn't have Mr. Jama's fingerprints on file either.

Denver police have done it again, locking up another innocent person this time, for eight days — after messing up an arrest warrant.

The latest victim is Metro State student Muse Jama, 27.

Jama's family fled their native Somalia in 1994 partly due to that country's own problem with people disappearing mysteriously without cause.

In September, he was studying for a biology exam at his Denver apartment when two officers came knocking. They were after a suspect named Ahmed Alia in connection with an auto theft months earlier.

Jama's name — fairly common in Somalia — is one of at least 10 aliases used by Alia.

You've got the wrong guy, explained Jama, who offered his student ID, Social Security card and driver's license to prove it.

No such luck.

He was handcuffed, then hauled off for seven nights in jail where he was strip-searched, booked as Ahmed Alia and forced to answer to that name.

" 'This is your name now,' they were telling me. I lived eight days with somebody else's identity. They were the longest eight days of my life," says Jama, who had to drop two classes after his week behind bars.

A judge finally lifted the charges when a prosecutor looked at a mug shot of Alia and concluded that Jama "is obviously not this individual."

The Denver Post