Antofagasta Court Orders Compensation for Young Man Detained Due to Identity Mistake, Criticizes Police Oversight

Original article: Juzgado de Antofagasta ordena indemnizar a joven detenido por error en identificación y cuestiona «grosero descuido» de Carabineros

The First Civil Court of Antofagasta has ordered the government to pay 30 million pesos in compensation for moral damages to a young student who was arrested by police after they mistakenly identified him—due to similar names and surnames—as a person wanted for assault and domestic violence.

In the ruling, Judge Arturo Iribarren Pérez established that there was a «lack of service» on the part of the state agents who made the arrest without verifying the individual’s correct identity.

«It must be noted that the negligence exhibited by public officials resulted in the incorrect verification of the identity of the person indicated by the victim as the perpetrator of the assault committed in a domestic violence context, which occurred due to the gross oversight by these officers, who failed to utilize the identification systems at their disposal as specialized police officers,» the resolution states.

The judge criticized that the use of these tools could have clearly established «who the real aggressor was and not someone else,» adding that given the uncertainty of such crucial information, «and with the same details provided by the victim, such as sharing a common child, the police could have obtained a birth certificate to correctly determine the identification number of the alleged aggressor.»

At this juncture, the ruling states that «as an illustrative example, in a simple search conducted by this judge on a publically accessible search engine, it was found that the name was associated with 18 individuals having the same first name and surnames, making it hard to believe that police personnel could haphazardly identify someone without taking additional steps to objectively ascertain the identity of the person.»