Computer may give wrong rap sheet
By Brandon Masuoka
Advertiser Staff Writer
Rudy Mendez felt he was a shoo-in for a hotel security job in Kona with his credentials and spotless record.
The 47-year-old Ka'u spinach farmer said he had worked in hotel security before, supervised military police officers in the Army and had never been arrested in his life.
So when a prospective employer recently asked for his criminal history abstract, Mendez was sure his rap sheet would be clean.
He was wrong.
"I'm looking at this sheet and I'm going, 'Shoot — this has four Class C felonies on it,'" Mendez said. "It's a screw-up."
What the computer produced was the criminal record of another Rudy Mendez, a.k.a. Rudolph Mendoza of Maui. That Rudy Mendez was convicted in 1995 of three counts of fraudulent use of a credit card and one count of second-degree theft.
Rudy Mendez of Ka'u, meanwhile, said he was not on Maui in 1995.
The rap sheet said the Rudy Mendez who was convicted is 5 feet 7 and 220 pounds.
Rudy Mendez of Ka'u said he is 6 feet tall.
The state agency that oversees criminal history abstracts, the Hawai'i Criminal Justice Data Center, explained that the computer system that handles hundreds of thousands of criminal history abstracts annually has a degree of imprecision built in that on occasion may spit out an erroneous rap sheet for people with the same name.
"We're always looking to improve our system," said Liane Moriyama, administrator of the Hawai'i Criminal Justice Data Center. "We get a lot of feedback, and from the first time we had public access, we've made lot of changes based on input. This is one area that we could possibility look at."
Criminal history abstracts are public information and are used by many employers who want to learn about prospective employees.
Mendez was applying for a security job at King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel and needed to submit a criminal history abstract. Last Tuesday he went to the Kona police station, gave his name, social security number, gender and date of birth, paid $15 and got "his" abstract.
The abstract did note that the social security number given by Mendez did not match that of the person who was convicted of the crimes.
However, Moriyama explained, the computer is programmed to sometimes issue an abstract even when all of the information submitted by the seeker — such as the social security number — does not match.
This is to recognize that people may input incorrect or imprecise data. For example, the computer will issue an abstract if the birthdate given is within two years of a convicted person's.
Moriyama said the center is looking at safeguards such as putting photos of offenders on abstracts; it already does so for sex offenders.
After learning about Mendez's case on Wednesday, the center faxed Mendez a letter on Friday saying he has no convictions.
However, the information was still accessible to the public on the center's computers on Friday and he was told he would have to submit his fingerprints before the information would be purged from the computer.
Mendez said he tried to explain the incorrect abstract to his prospective employer, but the employer wanted to see a "clean sheet of paper."
Mendez said the ordeal has cost him a lot of anguish and that all he wants is a job.
"I'm cutting grass right now," Mendez said. "I'm busting my butt. I'm struggling. I'm a farmer who is having a hard time. I'm an honest citizen who pays my taxes and I can't get a job that I was trained for by the government, which I'm good at."
Mendez said he has now given hotel officials his clean abstract and hopes to hear soon on whether he will get the job.
