How Can We Identify Threats If We Can’t Identify Our Citizens?

Sylvie Menard spent a fantastic vacation in Mexico, and was passing through customs in her home city of Montreal. Unfortunately for Sylvie, her name and birth date matched someone who was wanted by police.

Now, we live in a time of information…where authorities have access, for better or for worse, to more information on us than we may be aware. Or maybe we only think they do? Sylvie’s experience suggests that the amount of information available to authorities at the border is slim, or even scarier that its more a lack of common sense and experience.

After being subjected to initial and secondary screening she was handcuffed, read her rights, and brought to a cell. While the police were called to come and verify her identity, a female border officer asked her to disrobe so she could verify whether a pink tattoo was present on her butt…a physical trait mentioned in the wanted woman’s description. There was no tattoo of course and the officer returned again to further investigate to ensure it hadn’t been surgically removed.

So let me get this straight: our border officers jumped to the conclusion that this woman *must* be the one that is wanted because her name and birthdate matched, and then went all CSI to look at whether this tattoo was present. Interesting. What I would have expected instead is for them to find a physical description (which they eventually did) or a picture and compare that to her. Also, Sylvie was carrying her passport, driver’s license, and health card; she had identification that they could have looked up and verified before performing any sort of physical inspection.

I’m not even going to comment on the idiot police officer’s recommendation to just “change her name” to avoid this in the future. How about this: how about our law enforcement agencies get their acts together and implement information systems that allow them to determine a person’s identity quickly and efficiently? How about we have trained staff that can grasp common sense  solutions instead of defaulting to outrageous extremes?

When false matches occur authorities do have to investigate them. But this isn’t professional police investigation; this is weekend security guard at the local mall antics that have no place at a Canadian port of entry.