KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Jackson County jail officials are taking sole responsibility for a mistake that let a murder suspect walk free six weeks ago.

Joe Piccinini, the director of the Jackson County Detention Center, told FOX 4 an internal investigation is now complete, and he’s taking steps to make sure this never happens again.

“We made a mistake,” Piccinini said. “I offer my apologies to the victim’s family for this mistake and I offer my apologies to the citizens of Jackson County for this mistake.”

Murder suspect Malcolm Johnson is charged with shooting and killing 22-year-old Monteario “Monty” Hogan behind a Raytown Family Dollar back in Oct. 2014.

Johnson sat in the Jackson County jail for nearly a year-and-a-half before being accidentally released on Feb. 17. He’s now been on the run for six weeks.

“The Department of Corrections prides itself on doing the right thing,” Piccinini said, “and even though we made this mistake, we still do the right thing and own up to our mistakes.”

They are mistakes he said three jail employees made, when prosecutors dropped and then refiled criminal charges against Johnson in February.

“The records clerk failed to note that the paperwork was in the file that showed charges had been re-instated,” Piccinini explained. “Then the check system, that person failed to note that paperwork was in the file regarding charges being re-instated.”

On average, the jail releases about 30 people a day. Piccinini said it was these employees’ main priority to bring inmates into the jail and release them from jail.

“We just failed to do our due diligence and failed to note that the charges had been re-instated,” he said.

Two of those people were disciplined, and one is no longer an employee at the jail.

“The bigger part of the equation is making sure nothing like this ever happens again,” Piccinini said.

He’s now proactively making those changes, which include:
1) Requiring a records manager to now sign off on all violent crime suspects before they can leave the jail
2) Reorganizing the department
3) Reviewing current practices, procedures and policies
4) Pledging better communication among all levels of the criminal justice system

FOX 4 viewers heard Monty Hogan’s father explain his frustrations with this situation during last Friday night’s newscast; but FOX 4 talked with him again Wednesday to see what he thought about the jail’s new initiatives.

He said he views Piccinini’s goals with hopefulness but also skepticism.

“I will only be satisfied if this never happens again,” he said. “So it’s a wait-and-see. At this point, you’ve got to take them at their word and hope that it doesn’t happen again. My guess is that if it does, we’ll be back at square one.”

Hogan’s father, who asked not to be identified by name for safety reasons, also continued to share his concerns about never being contacted by jail officials during this process.

“At the end of the day, you could’ve picked up the phone and said, ‘Hey, here’s what happened,’” he said. “‘We understand that there was an error on our part. Here’s what we’re doing to investigate it. We’ll follow back up with you when the investigation is completed to make sure you understand that we’ve held the people and systems accountable and here’s what we’re doing to correct it and prevent it from happening in the future.’”

He continued, “You could’ve made that call, if you really cared about the person who was impacted by the guy that you let go, that’s what you would’ve done. That would’ve been the right thing to do. It wouldn’t have put you in any legal jeopardy to do that, but no one cared about Monty. They cared about covering their tracks and possibly investigating it and then ultimately preventing it from happening again, but they didn’t care about the person.”

But Piccinini insisted the decision wasn’t personal – it was just policy.

“We wanted to hold off until that investigation was finished, we had all the facts, and we had taken the action against our associates,” he said of waiting to contact the victim’s family. “Unfortunately, that might have taken a little bit longer than we wanted it to, but we also wanted to make sure we got it right.”

Now that the internal investigation is complete, a county representative plans to reach out to Hogan’s parents.