Serious questions were being raised this week about whether a man convicted of a violent crime should have been allowed to serve his time on home detention.
For one thing, critics of the sentence say he's already escaped from home detention once – and tried to commit a robbery within hours of his escape.
Jerrod Rivers, 23, was being held without bond Tuesday night.
Twice in two years he's cut off his home detention monitor within minutes of getting it strapped to his ankle.
Track Group, a private vendor charged with monitoring home detainees, fitted Rivers with an ankle monitor at 6:25 p.m. on January 11 and sent him home. In just 25 minutes, Track Group received a tamper alert that Rivers had cut off his bracelet and escaped.
Thirty four hours later, Rivers was caught on video surveillance passing a robbery note to an employee of a far-east side gas station. While Group Track served a notice of violation and requested a warrant for Rivers' arrest, the warrant didn't clear the court until after the attempted robbery.
"He should have been returned to prison," Rivers' victim said. "I think the judge made the wrong decision and he should have been put in jail."
According to court documents, Rivers has demonstrated a pattern of increasingly violent conduct. His latest arrest and conviction was for the July 2015 robbery of a Walgreens pharmacy in Cumberland.
"We continue to see the same people we arrest day in and day out coming back to the street to perpetuate violence, and we need to do something about it," said IMPD Chief Troy Riggs.
In 2014, Rivers escaped home detention within minutes of his sentence, and then got arrested a short time later for theft.
"I can't speak for what the judge does but … let's put it this way: He'd be back in jail if I was the judge," Riggs said.
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