Or think about spending the weekend in the County Jail on a loitering ticket given to an acquaintance, not you. Then imagine in all these cases having to go downtown to court to proclaim your innocence, and getting fingerprinted by the police to prove it. So to avoid arrest during subsequent contacts with police, more and more of them are giving officers the name and date of birth of a friend or relative. The alias problem is not new, but it has become a major problem in the last couple years, judges and court administrators say. Tickets can quickly turn into something nastier if not paid or otherwise worked out, resulting in automatic driver's license suspensions, issuance of arrest warrants, collection letters, vehicle insurance cancellation and other measures.
Police catch many of the liars on the street.
In 1999 alone, police issued almost 5,200 tickets for obstructing, a large chunk of which involved aliases. That was nearly double the number in 1995, before quality of life policing began. But officers can't catch everybody. Estimates now range from 600 to 800 cases a year in municipal court where people prove their innocence by reason of mistaken identity. Police Chief Arthur Jones this spring ordered that all such cases go to the district attorney's office for potential criminal charges against the obstructors.