For Arizona resident Penny McCarthy, what began as an ordinary day turned into a nightmare. Mistakenly identified as a fugitive, she was arrested by U.S. Marshals in a harrowing incident caught on body camera. The footage, recently released after more than six months, paints a troubling picture of federal agents acting on unconfirmed information, leading to McCarthy’s wrongful detention.
“Ever since this happened… I am so disappointed in my government. It’s not funny,” McCarthy told ABC15, visibly emotional as she recounted the event. The video, obtained by ABC15 through a Freedom of Information Act request, captures the tense moments when agents, without verifying McCarthy’s identity, served her with an arrest warrant. “We have an arrest warrant,” one agent stated in the footage. McCarthy, shocked, replied, “For me?” before agents aggressively ordered her to “turn away” and warned, “You’re gonna get hit.”
Case of mistaken identity
Federal authorities believed McCarthy was Carole Anne Rozak, a 70-year-old fugitive with a parole violation warrant from 1999 in Oklahoma. Rozak, convicted of non-violent offenses, reportedly failed to check in with a probation officer after her release.
The confusion was finally resolved after a federal judge dismissed the case and canceled McCarthy’s pending identity hearing, admitting McCarthy had been mistakenly apprehended.
Despite McCarthy’s repeated pleas for agents to verify her identity during the arrest, she stated, “They did nothing but treat me like crap and lie to me.”
Former prosecutor highlights arrest tactics
Criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Josh Kolsrud reviewed the footage and expressed concern over the federal agents’ conduct. “This case is concerning because of the manner in which Miss McCarthy was arrested,” he said, calling it a “textbook example” of improper procedure. Kolsrud, noting the video showed an “aggressive arrest and apprehension,” deemed the approach “unreasonable on so many levels.”
Kolsrud criticized the agents for acting without confirming McCarthy’s identity: “We expect law enforcement to have the capability, determination, and ethics to establish who somebody is when they arrest them. In this case, they didn’t do that.”
A request by BreezyScroll for comment from the U.S. Marshals has gone unanswered. In a prior statement, the agency acknowledged it was “conducting a thorough review” of the arrest but has not provided an update on the status of the investigation. A court audio recording from McCarthy’s detention captures a federal judge expressing concern over the decision to arrest her. According to the recording, the arrest was based on outdated information, including “Facebook postings,” a 1999 pre-sentence report, and “some aliases.”
Fingerprint confusion adds to missteps
Initial claims from U.S. Marshals in Oklahoma suggested a “glitch” in fingerprint matching systems that indicated McCarthy’s prints matched Rozak’s. However, a full fingerprint analysis later confirmed what McCarthy knew all along: her prints did not match Rozak’s, proving she had been wrongly detained. Reflecting on the ordeal, McCarthy said, “The U.S. Marshals are above the law. That’s what it says to me. And the United States government allows that to happen.”