Couldn’t Place Face, but Computer Never Forgot His Name

A Michigan man vowed Tuesday that he will never visit Los Angeles, although he has always wanted to see the Southland.

“I don’t even want to go near the place,” Terry Dean Rogan, 27, said in a telephone interview from his home in Saginaw.

Rogan believes he has a good reason for his anti-Los Angeles stand.

Through American Civil Liberties Union attorney Paul Hoffman, Rogan filed suit in Los Angeles federal court on Monday, contending that he was mistakenly held by authorities in Michigan and in Texas on five separate occasions between late 1982 and early 1984 because two Los Angeles police detectives refused to remove his name from the FBI’s nationwide crime computer system.

The computer, containing data about wanted criminal suspects, said Rogan was being sought on murder and robbery charges in Los Angeles, even though it was established each time that the unemployed Michigan man was not the suspect.

He was not wanted for any crime, William T. Street, Rogan’s Michigan attorney, said.

“It’s not a case of computer error,” Street, of the ACLU in Saginaw, said. “It’s a case of human abuse of a computer.”

Rogan’s problems began in late October, 1982, after Saginaw police officers were called to his home to investigate a loud argument between Rogan and a girlfriend. A routine computer check showed that Los Angeles police had issued warrants for Rogan’s arrest in two murders and robberies that occurred in March and April of 1982, Street said.

But at the time of the crimes, Rogan--who has never been to Los Angeles--was attending school in Saginaw, the attorney said.

Rogan was held by Saginaw authorities for five days before it was determined by fingerprints and checks with the two Los Angeles police detectives, Richard Crotsley and Lester Slack, that Rogan’s name was in the computer by mistake, Street said.

Rogan’s wallet was lost in Detroit in January, 1981, and the person who apparently found it was passing himself off as Rogan while committing these crimes in Los Angeles, Street said.

On four subsequent occasions in Michigan and Texas, Rogan, stopped on routine traffic violations, was arrested at gunpoint by officers and jailed after the FBI computer showed that he was wanted in Los Angeles.

Each time, calls were made to Los Angeles to clear up the matter. But efforts to clear Rogan’s name from the computer were to no avail.

The record was finally erased in late January, 1984, after a Saginaw newspaper carried accounts of Rogan’s plight and the arrest in Alabama of Bernard McKandis, the man allegedly responsible for the Los Angeles crimes. McKandis was brought to Los Angeles and is awaiting trial.

In addition to claiming that Los Angeles police falsely accused him of crimes he did not commit, the lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of money in damages from the City of Los Angeles.

“For a period of a couple of years, this man was living in terror of being picked up on robbery-murder warrants,” Hoffman said. “We’re alleging that his right to travel has been impaired. He couldn’t travel without being afraid of being arrested, and that he was imprisoned falsely on several occasions.”

Hoffman said he does not know how the two detectives came up with Rogan’s name in the first place, or any details about the crimes.

“What’s important here is they found out early on it wasn’t him.” Hoffman said.

Both the Los Angeles Police Department and the FBI have declined to comment on the suit.