The Ohio Investigative Unit gave police the identification of Haley Dawson, 26, of Cincinnati. Police then gave it to confidential informant Michelle Szuhay, 24, a 2003 University of Dayton graduate from North Olmsted. Szuhay went undercover as Dawson and worked as a stripper at Total Xposure for three months in 2003, while local police and state liquor agents investigated allegations at the club.
Apparently, a poorly worded law made this possible, but it seems to me that the police still showed extremely poor judgement in doing this.
Just goes to show you how important it is that laws be very specific. Police will do things that are allowed by poor/ambiguous wording even if they know it’s not something they’re really supposed to be doing a lot more often than most people think.
It is unclear whether any other police investigations across Ohio have used this technique.
Police in Ohio have been sued a number of times over the years prior to the law for using the identities of convicted people while undercover. There was a guy here in Cleveland who had been convicted in his early twenties of lottery fraud who had his identity used several years later in other lottery fraud investigations and found out when contacted accidentally by criminals looking to hook up with what they thought was the guy going active again.
I’m rather surprised no one’s gotten killed in a mistaken identity revenge hit for taking down some larger criminals.
I’d suspect it’s not uncommon in many states, really.
If you’re going to go undercover, the thinking goes, why not ‘borrow’ the identity of someone who’s been in the scene before and who’s name may help give the agent credibility.
