Blame unclear in wrongful arrest

A high-tech investigative technique that led to the Valentine’s Day arrest of an innocent Spokane man will continue to be used, authorities said Wednesday.

Mistakes were made in tracking a cyberstalker’s Internet address, but it remains unclear this week whether Spokane police officers or Qwest employees were responsible.

“If a person calls to request information about an IP (Internet protocol) address and the time is not correct of when the person was logged on, then the information could lead to the wrong person’s identity,” said Spokane police Detective Ty Snider. “Or if a person requests the right time, but the provider gives you the wrong information, then the identity of the person can be incorrect.”

Either way, Qwest incorrectly identified the Internet user thought to be a cyberstalker as Spokane resident Dean Dunn, who spent almost 24 hours in jail. But when the cyberstalking victim kept receiving threats on her MySpace.com account, detectives continued to investigate.

Dunn was cleared after five days when police arrested the actual suspect: a 13-year-old who lived in the victim’s home, said Spokane police Cpl. Tom Lee. The teen told police she sent the death threats because she hadn’t been getting enough attention, according to court documents.

The wrongly accused man and the 13-year-old girl both used Qwest to access the Web, so the same Internet provider number had been assigned to each of them, but at different times.

When police called Qwest last week to ask about the name associated with the number the cyberstalker had used, someone apparently got the time wrong.

“With IP addresses, when you sign on the computer, you are given an IP address,” said Spokane police Detective Curt Kendall. “You log off, and the next time you get another IP address. These are called dynamic addresses.”

After investigators went to the victim’s home a second time, they called Qwest again to check the Internet provider address, and were told by an operator in the Qwest Law Enforcement Compliance section – a hotline for authorities – that the number could be traced back to the victim’s and 13-year-old’s home on multiple occasions. Several families live in the home where the girl lives with her mother.

Qwest and police investigators won’t comment regarding specifics, saying the case remains under investigation.

Dunn was not known as a troublemaker to police, according to a search of court records in Washington.

But the Spokane man was known to an investigating officer in a different way, according to a search warrant affidavit. Dunn had expressed interest in becoming a Spokane police reserve officer when Detective Bryan Tafoya was a reserve coordinator.

In the cyberstalker’s MySpace.com profile, “there is a prayer called the Policeman’s Prayer and the person references law enforcement and 9/11,” the search warrant stated.

Dunn refused to comment about his arrest. His attorney, Bryan Whitaker, said it was too early to say whether his client plans to sue.

The teen faces two counts of felony cyberstalking because the victim’s life was threatened in the messages, including threats to pour gasoline around the house and set it on fire: “I see you and I’m going to kill you and your kids and everyone in that house …” and “I’m going to blow your heads off next time.”

Police investigators wrote that the victim was particularly frightened because the cyberstalker could see and hear events in the home and appeared to be following the woman.

Even when the police were at the home investigating the threats, on both occasions, the messages continued, possibly via text messages to MySpace.com from a cell phone.

According to records, after Dunn was arrested and the MySpace.com account from which police thought he was sending the threats was frozen, a new account was created with a similar profile. The teen allegedly admitted creating that account.

MySpace.com and Internet provider addresses have become a common tool in law enforcement investigations.

Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor Kelly Fitzgerald said: “IP addresses are used often, as common as using a car a suspect may drive to track them. When you don’t know who the person is, the IP address is where you start.

However, “we are dependent on the service providers’ information.”