Oregon’s DMV Database Is Broken And That Means Innocent People Are Spending Months Behind Bars
from the hey-it's-only-the-little-people dept
The Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles is pretty much just renting a car from Hertz. Participating in either system greatly increases your chances of spending time jailed for crimes you didn’t commit.
Hertz’s inability to perform basic inventory control functions means renters in good standing are being treated to guns out traffic stops and felony accusations on their permanent records. In Oregon, the state’s inability to run an accurate drivers license database means people are being locked up even though their vehicles are properly registered. (h/t BentFranklin via Insider Chat)
Nicholas Chappelle spent nearly a year at Snake River Correctional Institution after he was arrested and convicted for driving with a suspended license.
But he never should have spent a day behind bars.
Chappelle is one of untold numbers of Oregonians stopped by police, arrested, put in jail and even wrongfully convicted based on faulty DMV information– a breakdown in record-keeping that has existed for years but the state never fixed.
By the time a Columbia County prosecutor realized Chappelle was innocent, he had lost his job as a union ironworker and missed the birth of his son while held at the medium-security prison in eastern Oregon, far from his family in Scappoose.
Oh, well. It’s just little people. They can weather everything the justice system throws at them and expect little in the way of recourse if they decide to make a federal case of it.
Chappelle pled guilty to a felony he didn’t commit in hopes of speeding this process up. It didn’t work. Days are critical when you have a job and a place to live. Months are untenable. Nearly a year behind bars is catastrophic.
But will the state feel the pain? It seems like it should. Its improperly configured database does not recognize suspended licenses that have been reinstated due to math errors.
The DMV has improperly recorded approximately 3,000 driver’s licenses in the last two decades as suspended indefinitely through either 12/31/9999 or 00/00/0000, according to data obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive through a public records request.
I don’t want to assume the state is using Excel to track suspended licenses, but come on! This is classic Excel butchery. Compounding the math error is the alternate tracking system, which relies solely on convicted drivers to inform the state of their current status — a system that inverts the justice system to place the burden on former convicts to make the state aware of their current, lawful status.
Some of you may think this is how it should be. But allow me to inform you that you are wrong. The state inhales tax dollars to oversee an accurate database. Those being taxed should not be expected to correct the state’s errors. The state is being paid to do this job. People accused of license violations aren’t being paid anything to ensure the state doesn’t fuck their shit up. That’s completely backward.
But fear not, Oregon residents! The state has no idea how long things have been fucked up, nor does it have a plan to make things less fucked up in the immediate future.
The DMV has no idea how many people have been charged and prosecuted because of the erroneous records…
It appears DMV officials learned of the lapse at some point in the past, Joyce said. But it’s not clear exactly when and it “wasn’t at a high enough level to understand the urgency” to figure out a remedy, she told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
So, that’s the “solution.” Who knows and who cares, as long as it only affects the most powerless state residents? Shrugs are followed by shrugs from state officials who acknowledge there’s a problem, but have yet to take the problem seriously because it only affects people who, every few years or so, decide to talk to journalists.
Chapelle spent 11 months in jail before prosecutors recognized there was something wrong with the state’s database. He cannot possibly be the only victim of the state’s inability to do its job properly. Case in point: the Multnomah County prosecutor’s office has already identified at least 30 cases where the database might be wrong and falsely accused drivers might be right.
That’s the tip of the iceberg. No one in the state paid attention to this failure until journalists and a man falsely jailed for nearly a year brought it to the government’s attention.
The government gets paid well to do what it does. Given the funding that flows to law enforcement, the government should be on the leading edge, finding and addressing problems before they result in rights violations and the destruction of innocent people’s lives. But that’s never the case. It’s always outside parties discovering things the government should have been aware of for months, if not years. And when the government finally comes riding to the rescue, all it’s really doing is performing the bare minimum of un-fuckery. That’s not acceptable.
Comments on “Oregon’s DMV Database Is Broken And That Means Innocent People Are Spending Months Behind Bars”
Extremely Shocking
This is extremely shocking: Oregon is doing something wrong? I’m shocked, shocked! And I’m not even being sarcastic or ironic, I’m legitimately shocked! I have had such high expectations for Oregon for all the good stuff that’s been happening there and from one of its senators Ron Wyden, so hearing a fuckup like this is as shocking as hearing Mike Masnick advocate for permanent copyright or Donald Trump acting selflessly.
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… obviously this is a significant Government-Failure — so obviously we need government Regulators to supervise the Oregon state goverbnment.
more regulation is always the best solution — government experts know best
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Long love The Empire !!
Re: I'm not shocked at all
As an Oregonian I am sadly accustomed to government bungling. Failed projects, corruption and the absolute shit show of CPS and a string of dead children.
The only way thos changes is if the DMV suffers. If every screw up resulted in jail time or lost salary, the DMV would become a model of efficiency. Unfortunately our politicians are more interested in virtue signaling on the backs of their subjects.
What about the OTHER problem? Speedy Trial?
What the actual fuck were the prosecutors thinking?
If the state took the absolute worst case, Nicholas Chappelle would have spent a very large percentage of the possible sentence before having come to trial. If you look at the Class A Misdemeanor, it’s even worse: Were he judged guilty, it would likely be for “time served”.
The database problem is unacceptable. The failure to provide a speedy trial is worse. This ain’t justice.
Re: My bad...
Reading the article would have helped a little bit. Chapelle relied on the state and his defense attorney, and pled guilty a month after being arrested. His sentence was 18 months.
So instead of waiting 11 months for a trial, he spent most of his sentence before the mistake was found. Still not great.
Sorry, folks.
“I don’t want to assume the state is using Excel to track suspended licenses, but come on!”
That seems… kind. Lots of contractors are going to use off the shelf tools to do their work, and nobody’s going to be questioned if they use Excel rather than a bespoke system that meets their needs better. It also suggests a lack of overall error handling, which a bespoke system would presumably have whereas it would be assumed (badly) that Excel would handle things or operators would raise concerns about such obviously wrong data. I mean, I can imagine a contractor knowing there’s case where the date would be incorrect, but not assume that the court itself wouldn’t see the obvious problem when convicting someone.
I can relate
This same shit happened to me! Jackson County sheriff pulled me over for pulling out into the outer lane rather than the inner. I previously had my license suspended for DUI, unpaid tickets, and other crimes. So, when I had finally waited for my suspensions to expire did the blow and go thing and paid off my fines I finally got my license back.
What an accomplishment! It had been almost 5 years of me making poor choices and losing my license. Anyways cop asks me for my insurance registration and license. For the first time I’m not even worried because all my stuff was legit.
Wrong! License is suspended (this is 18 months after I reinstated) and apparently I’m supposed to have a blow and go for the rest of my life.
I called the DMV the next day and asked what the fuck happened? I haven’t received any tickets or been in any trouble at all. The lady on the phone said oh, when you paid for your re-instatment your license didn’t get reinstated. I know this to be impossible because I got the picture and they issued me a license. There is no way their computer system would allow them to issue a license that was suspended. Secondly, I knew that it wasn’t true because I had used the DMV2U website to get a copy of my driving history and my license said valid on the website.
Luckily I beat the ticket… however getting your towed, being late to work, and all that bullshit because of human error. I didn’t get the tow reimbursed or paid for time lost. Bullshit!!
Huh people with government paychecks not doing the job they are paid to do but still collecting pay…
that seems criminal.
Do you really think the data brokers, that we mostly know nothing about, care about the accuracy of their information?
Pretty sure they are in it for the money and could give a damn about the accuracy.
Re: Is this an attack vector against the data brokers?
Could someone sign up for their own data from a broker and point out it is incorrect in a defamation suit.
Cue discussion on the ‘actual malice’ standard 🙂
The larger a bureaucracy gets, the less accountable it is to the public.
Libertarians have extolled for decades the virtues of tiny government, but the Uniparty refuses to do anything about it.
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Libertarians … lol
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Fewer people available to do nothing will do little to fix the problem.
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Except right wing libertarians advocate for less government because they want less accountability and more freedom to abuse and exploit others. Right wing libertarianism is an ideology founded and funded by wealthy think tanks for the benefit of the wealthy, utilizing predominantly immature white men and sociopaths to advocate for it in their hopes of being crypto millionaires and feudal estate owners where they can smoke pot and shoot guns and not have to worry about age of consent laws.
Oh, well. It’s just little people
“Oh, well. It’s just little people.”
“Who knows and who cares, as long as it only affects the most powerless state residents?”
While getting extremely POed at the Oregon DMV and its court system is entirely justified, what this really is, as the above quotes expose, is an indictment of all of us, WE let this kind of horror show happen. Sure, the media generally does a piss poor job covering this stuff, but a lot of that is due to the apathy of its audience. There’s never enough wide spread outrage even when it involves
“…the destruction of innocent people’s lives”. Until enough of us make it known “That’s not acceptable.”, it ain’t gonna stop.
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I get what your saying but the counter point is that at scale mistakes will happen, and we have so many things in the world demanding our time to fix that there is not enough time in the year to get mad at all the things that need small but critical fixes.
General outrage only happens when a crazy amount of people get impacted. You need oversight to deal with smaller stuff like this.
"A warning, not an instruction manual"
That moniker is usually applied to Orwell’s “1984” but it seems like Oregon wants to have Kafka’s “Der Process” added to the list.
My state had a similar issue in 2019
Think was resolved though
Who approved those date fields?
As a software developer, I have to ask: how is a system like this live?
Who were the developers that used those kinds of dates to mark a drivers license as suspended?
What lead developer approved it?
What testers approved it?
What product owner approved it?
Was using dates like this really the cheapest solution? Was it really that hard to add a true/ false flag for “is license active”? (If false, then the license is suspended.)
*Jail Time* for a suspended license?
The DMV fuckups getting people in trouble with law enforcement is a travesty.
But then we look at the law itself, and what in the hell is Oregon doing?
Why in the name of all that is good and holy is the repercussion for a driving with a suspended license jail time? This is not a crime that indicates this person is a danger to others and must be locked away from the rest of society for society’s safety.
Falsehood in logic
Uh, absolutely he should have. He pled guilty!
If you plead guilty, you are at the decision of the judge for penalty. It’s that simple.
The lesson here is don’t admit to things you didn’t do!
The Oregon DMV, as with all other state DMV’s are nothing but more Unauthorized, Illegal, Unconstitutional, and absolutely Corrupted, Government Entities, formed for nothing more than to Abuse, and Steal both monies, and Property, by Registration, from the American Traveler, and Tax payers who actually in Truth Owns the Roads, Highways, and Freeways of the US. And do not need some Disgusting Corrupted Government Entities permission to Travel on their Own Property which belongs to them. Not the Filthy Government. The only ones stated in the Constitution that are needing the Permission of the People, Not the Filthy Government to Operate on the Peoples Roads, Highways, and Freeways are those that are being paid as Drivers, and Conducting their Business using the Transportation System Owned by the People. Time to Abolish these Filthy Corrupted Disgusting Entities.