Lawrence Lee Jones Jr. lives in North Albany and has worked in Linn County’s Information Technology Department since 1996.

Jones is going through what he calls a difficult divorce. A year ago, on Oct. 17, 2009, a Saturday, he called the Albany police for help with a problem between his son and his wife. The police asked him to come to the station and when he did, they arrested him on a warrant issued in Spokane, Wash., in 1998.

The warrant named one Lawrence Evan Jones, who was wanted for stealing checks from a Spokane rooming house, forging the owner’s signature and cashing nine of them for a total of $1,300.

Albany’s Larry Jones protested that the police had the wrong man, in vain. He was taken to the Linn County Jail in handcuffs, searched, fingerprinted and placed in a cell.

He wanted to call his teenage daughter, who was alone at home, to tell her what was happening. But the jail would not allow him to use his cell phone. Nor could he reach his daughter’s cell from the land line phone available to inmates in the jail (see sidebar on A6).

Jones says the county employees at the jail tried to tell the Albany officers that they had the wrong man, to no avail. He spent the night in a cell.