NEW ORLEANS — Almost as soon as criminal justice officials verified that attempted murder suspect TaTa Say cut off his electronic ankle bracelet last month while free on bail, Elisabeth Hansard and her son Noah were notified that he was on the loose.
Noah, paralyzed after allegedly being shot by Say, said he was even more relieved the next morning when told that Say had been caught.
“It was good to see that they’re trying to make (the system) more effective,” said Noah, a maritime engineering student at UNO.
The Orleans Parish District Attorney's office alerted the Hansards thanks to new lines of communication between that office and the monitoring company, Assured Supervision Accountability Program, or ASAP.
“The tool was used in that instance to get immediate information to the folks who are the most vulnerable,” New Orleans District Attorney Jason Williams said.
That notification channel didn't exist when WWL Louisiana revealed some of the communication gaps in the system in its series called “Broken Tracks.”
The station showed examples in which judges received violation reports about defendants on ankle bracelets, but didn't take action or alert prosecutors.
“Oftentimes there's an alert and a violation and it's turned over to the courts and the courts don't do anything with it,” Williams said. “It's a useless piece of technology that's very expensive.”
After the series, Williams invited an ASAP representative to talk to his prosecutors about their system. Now, ASAP – the predominant monitoring company in the city – notifies the DA's office directly if any defendant tampers with a bracelet or violates court-ordered restrictions.
ASAP co-owner Jill Dennis personally went to the DA's office to brief the trial prosecutors.
“I'm super excited that we actually have a coordination,” Dennis said as she entered the meeting. “Part of our mission statement is to protect public safety. And the DA's office is very important in making sure we're able to do that.”
Williams welcomed Dennis with optimism and open arms.
“ASAP, their team, has come in, their team and walked through the different ways it can alert, the different ways the technology can be used, across platforms and for my team,” he said.
While that coordination helped in the TaTa Say case, there are still gaps in the system. Two weeks ago, domestic abuse suspect Lewis Stokes was released without a court-ordered bracelet due to an oversight by a sheriff's deputy.
Stokes was re-arrested 12 days later, but not before he allegedly beat another woman in Jefferson Parish. In addition to that complaint, Stokes was booked with second-degree battery, accused of beating a fellow inmate while in jail. He is now being held on a new bail amount of $100,000.
After the glitch, Sheriff Susan Hutson said the deputy has been disciplined and measures have been put into place to keep the same mistake from being repeated.
“As the Orleans Parish Sheriff, I own this incident. We are working to make sure it does not happen again,” Hutson said.
Williams said he hopes that the adoption of uniform standards for electronic monitoring can put everyone in the criminal justice system on the same page and reduce future slip-ups.
“What I'm hoping is that we can, with the help of the City Council, create new uniform protocols for every single electronic monitoring company that would operate in the city of New Orleans,” he said.
At least one New Orleans family is happy with the progress made so far.
“It worked beautifully,” Elisabeth Hansard said. “And I will say I think it sends a message to anybody in the city who's currently wearing an ankle monitoring bracelet that they'd better adhere to what the courts have told them.”
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