LAKE STATION, Ind.
(AP) - Prosecutors in northwest Indiana are investigating whether a former
Lake Station city clerk intentionally didn’t send convictions in drunken
driving cases to the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
Prosecutor Bernard
Carter said he suspects that former clerk Miranda Brakley refused to send
about 500 to 600 driving suspensions to the state from 2008 to 2012, The
(Munster) Times reported. Brakley’s stepfather is former Lake Station Mayor
Keith Soderquist, who is awaiting sentencing on a federal theft charge.
"I am just
appalled,” Carter said.
Brakley pleaded
guilty in January to embezzling about $16,000 from Lake Station City Court.
Her attorney, Thomas Vance, says she is being made into a convenient
scapegoat in the drunken driving cases.
“How do they know
she did this?” Vance said. “There were multiple clerks in the (city) court
system.”
Lake Station Mayor
Christopher Anderson, a former judge who was Brakley’s supervisor and fired
her in 2012, blames Brakely as well. He said the problem was uncovered
during an investigation into why the city court didn’t submit a 2011
reckless driving conviction for Northwestern Indiana Building and
Construction Trades Council business manager Randolph L. Palmateer.
“Now we are going
to start going through all these old files and figuring out what the extent
of it is,” Anderson said.
Josh Gillespie,
deputy commissioner of communications for the Indiana BMV, said the
situation could mean headaches for motorists whose driving privileges were
supposed to be suspended years ago but the paperwork was never sent to the
state. If old suspensions weren’t carried out, they will be enforced now,
Gillespie said.
A city official
alerted the state agency about the missing data and told them they may have
to process as many as 800 previously missing records, Gillespie said.