February 4, 2012

SandBox Comments: Grand Junction Daily Sentinel "Ankle monitor didn’t stop Mesa killer"

Paul Shockley:

".....The head of Mesa County Criminal Justice Services said Friday he didn’t yet know why a county-issued ankle monitor failed to warn anybody prior to the murder of a Mesa woman.

Dennis Berry, director of the county’s Criminal Justice Services, said his staff received no ankle-monitor alert when 47-year-old Robert Allen Matile apparently went on a property he was restrained from at 10389 48 Road. There, he took aim with a shotgun at his estranged girlfriend, 52-year-old LaVon Hoffman.

“Certainly, this is a very tragic situation, and we’re going to do whatever it takes to find out what happened in this case,” Berry said....

.....The pace of court-ordered GPS monitoring is increasing in Mesa County. According to Criminal Justice Services data, some 26 people were wearing monitors as of Friday, under the supervision of Mesa County Pretrial Services. In 2011, 55 people were supervised. The totals do not include those serving sentences, including sex offenders, on ankle monitors supervised by Mesa County and other entities.

Matile’s case is the second high-profile failure in recent months for GPS tracking by Mesa County Pretrial Services.

Free on bond, Dartanin Mitchell, 33, managed to remove his monitor undetected before embarking on an alleged crime spree that included a burglary and auto theft and fleeing the state...."

"Unapologetically tracking patterns within news others make since 2010"

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Read a story awhile back on the use of law enforcement drone technology to track gps on these monitors. They are up anyway and it's just another function of performance.