Connecticut Criminal Lawyer Blog
We Have Many People Calling Us About Internet Arrest Articles
Lately we have been receiving a large number of inquiries from people who have had their Stamford, Darien, Greenwich, Norwalk, Westport, Fairfield and New Canaan criminal cases dismissed but still are finding the old arrest articles are on the internet and causing them problems with job searches and ruining their reputation. Yes we can help you to get these nasty articles removed and manage the situation.
Technology is constantly changing and the world of media is rapidly moving. Just a few years ago most arrest reports were published in print in the so called “Police Blotter” section which only a few local people would read who are hungry for gossip and then they would throw away the newspaper and forget about it. The problem is that with shifts in trends towards the internet and digital media the old fashioned newspaper is quickly becoming unprofitable.
The new trend is very profitable for the newspapers and other sources such as the “Patch.” What they do is post up the local police blotter arrest information in separate article which tag your name and the details of your arrest. Then they associate these articles which cost them next to nothing to produce along with pay per click ads which continue to collect revenue forever.
After Your Case is Dismissed – the Article Remains on the Internet Forever
A lot of my clients are first time offenders who wind up getting some type of diversionary program and ultimately their cases wind up getting dismissed. Also, many other clients also have their cases nolled which means that the State elects not to prosecute you and after 13 months the case is then automatically dismissed. Which ever way your case gets resolved if you don’t plead guilty and your case is dismissed in Connecticut you are deemed by operation of the erasure statute to have never been arrested before. In addition, the erasure statute also protects you as once the case is dismissed all records of the case are destroyed and there is no further record of your arrest available to the public at the Court or Judicial branch web site. The Connecticut erasure statute has been on the books since the 1940’s and obviously it needs some legislative touching up to bring it into the internet era.
Even though your case may be dismissed and under the law you are deemed to have never been arrested these pesky newspapers and gossip mongers will leave your arrest article on their web for years and years collecting pay per click ads. After all once it is posted it costs them nothing to keep the article live on their web site. The more arrest articles they have the more traffic it draws to their web page and the more money they make.
Having your Arrest Article Online Can Have a Huge Impact on Your Life
I have had so many people contact my office over the last few years who literally could not get a job because their arrest articles were coming up on google searches under their name. Not to mention the embarrassment you will face every time a friend, family member or neigbor does a google search on your name and discovers the arrest record of your dismissed case. It goes without saying that in this day and age this kind of cyber scarlet letter causes a huge abount of colaterial damage in your life.
The big problem is that due to the massive amounts of articles that newspapers and organizations like the patch post on a very frequent and ongoing basis they are usually the most authoritative reference on most subjects according to google. This includes you. This means that when someone does a google search on your name one of these artciles is very likely to come up as one of the top choices if not the top of the list. It is really hard to hide this kind of information.
What ever you do DO NOT hire a so called reputation management company who works to try and push down the ranking of the newspaper articles by creating new web pages and information about you and other creative methods. The problem with this approach is that you have to keep paying the reputation management companies to keep up their work and when they stop the newspaper articles will quickly come back. The other problem with this approach is that it never totally eliminates the negative articles from the newspapers – it just tries to cover them up by pushing them down the list further so perhaps someone won’t notice them as much.
Hiring a Lawyer to Have Your Internet Articles Removed
Our approach is to work directly with the newspapers and gossip mongers to get them to either totally remove the articles completely from the internet or in the alternative remove the search tags from the article in question so that the article will no longer show up on internet searches under your name. Once this part of the process is accomplished then we can work with the various search engines to have the links removed totally. It is an involved process and it all requires some finesse.
This is were an experienced internet scrubbing lawyer can really help. Through a lot of experience dealing with the various local publications an attorney can find the best method to convince the news publications to either totally remove the articles, having them revised or getting the tagging removed so that they no longer appear in searches under your name.
If you are dealing with internet articles which are still popping up and causing you aggravation please contact us for a free telephonic consultation to review your options and see how we can help you to get the articles removed forever. Please call us today at 203.357.5555 for a no obligation free consultation about your case.
