THE FIGHT AGAINST CRIME: NOTES FROM THE FRONT : It’s Harder to Be Someone You’re Not

It’s an old trick, as Los Angeles Police Capt. Michael Melton points out, for a criminal to provide false identification to hide past dirty deeds or avoid starting a criminal file under their real name.

But Melton, who heads the Police Department’s jail division, said high technology is rapidly closing the loop on real-time identifications, with systems such as AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System and a new LAPD computer network.

But even with such sophisticated systems in place, some people still benefit from misidentification--but not always the ones who expected to.

A Panorama City woman walked into the Van Nuys Jail about 10 p.m. Friday and asked a desk officer about the bail amount on her son, a 17-year-old who had been arrested by Van Nuys Division patrol officers on suspicion of selling drugs, authorities said.

She was told that her son, who she identified as Manuel Alvarez, was being held at the Devonshire jail, Officer Clark Baker said.

The following morning, the woman walked into the station and forked over $250 to secure her son’s release. She was surprised by what happened next.

Out strolled Manuel Alvarez, but he wasn’t her son. Only later did authorities discover that the woman believed that her son had given police that name instead of his real one--and, by coincidence, there really was a Manuel Alvarez locked up when she appeared.

“Mom and a friend who was with her said, ‘Hey, that’s not my son,’ ” Baker said. “The lady wanted her money back, but there was nothing we could do for her. She came to bail out Manuel Alvarez and that’s what she did.”

The real Alvarez, apparently figuring out what happened, wasted no time hanging around either.

“He casually opened the front door and then it was exit stage right,” Baker said of Alvarez, who had been jailed on suspicion of misdemeanor assault. “The last time we saw him was in the convex mirrors.”

After the woman confessed that her son told her that Manuel Alvarez was the alias he gave to authorities, she said, “Why don’t you try this one?” and gave authorities yet another alias that she said her son might also be using.

Using that name, police located her son on the computer: He was being held at the Juvenile Hall in Sylmar, Baker said.

It is not uncommon for aliases or AKAs (“also known as,” in police jargon) to backfire, Melton said.

“Probably the most common instance is someone calling and asking for so and so and they say, ‘I know you have them in jail, because I saw them arrested.’ ”

But some suspects cover their tracks a little better than others, he said.

Because inmates in city jails have unlimited access to telephones, they can contact loved ones and tell them about the “AKA for the day,” which allows them to temporarily continue the charade, Melton said.

“Not everyone lies every time, but some of them lie a lot of the time,” Melton said. “There are people out there who have been arrested 15 times and used 15 different names.”

The department’s newest tool, Live-Scan, won’t eliminate the use of aliases to conceal a suspect’s true identity, but it will tremendously speed up the time it takes to match the fingerprints of a newly arrested person with the vast fingerprint records on file with the department, Melton said.

In the past, fingerprint information was taken by messenger from San Fernando Valley stations to Parker Center to be matched against other records.

Training classes are now being held to familiarize jail officers with the computers. All Valley stations have jails.

Coupled with the existing AFIS system, which is used by state, county and city law enforcement agencies, Live-Scan is going to make it a lot tougher in the future to use an alias and get away with it.

“It’s already pretty difficult,” Melton said. “But it is soon going to be even more difficult because we won’t have to wait for fingerprints to be physically transported from place to place.”

In the meantime, Baker said he hopes that the distraught mother learned her lesson.

But the last time he saw her, Baker said, the woman was on her way to the house of the real Alvarez “to try to get the money back.”