IT SOUNDS like something out of a cop comedy; a national police force spends time and resources trying to track down a repeat offender who stays one step ahead of them by changing their identity – only to learn this person was actually a cultural misunderstanding.
This was a claim made about the Garda, or the national police of Ireland after their attempts to catch a serial traffic offender named “Prawo Jazdy” came to light.
Is it really true that the Irish police actually logged 50 cases trying to “catch” a non-existent person due to a linguistic misunderstanding?
VERDICT:
TRUE
Yes, Ireland’s Garda actually logged 50 illegal parking and speeding cases linked to a non-existent person that somehow kept changing their address every time they were “caught” by police personnel on the ground.
Indeed, as reported in a 2009 article by the BBC, this Polish offender named “Prawo Jazdy” kept evading the police by giving a different address every time they were stopped.
The Irish Times also reported in a 2009 article that there were 50 offences linked to this name by June 2007 in the Garda’s online database, Pulse.
However, was “Prawo Jazdy” a real person?
As the Garda found out, the answer is no – and this is because while “Prawo Jazdy” means something in Polish, it is in fact not a name.
As mentioned in the Irish Times article, the answer came to light when an officer finally flagged the error in the system in a June 17, 2007 letter.
“Prawo Jazdy is actually the Polish for driving licence and not the first and surname on the licence,” he wrote.
“Having noticed this, I decided to check on Pulse and see how many members have made this mistake. It is quiet [sic] embarrassing to see that the system has created Prawo Jazdy as a person with over 50 identities,” added the officer in the letter.
The system has been updated since then, so anyone now trying to claim that their name’s say, “Lesen Memandu” would have a more difficult time trying to get away.
SOURCES:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7899171.stm
