I've been aware of these bugs in the career for a long time. However, I was able to compromise a way around the bugs happening so far ( yes, the wrong suspect bug happens to me as well). First of all I have reached the top of the career 2 days ago and started just last week.
These are several tips I've used to play this career despite the bugs with it
1. Whenever APBs are issued and when it loads already to the place where you arrest the suspect PAUSE the game immediately and look around the area. I noticed that there are always 3 sims randomly on the lot when it first loads, and almost ALWAYS one of the 3 sims is the one you should arrest (even though they match 0% of the clues you've collected ).
2. So now that 3 of them are identified, they won't leave the area so now to figure out which of the 3 is the suspect. the "Ask About Suspect" is actually still accurate whenever I ask and they point to one of the other 3 (unless of course the one you ask is the suspect, then they won't help at all. :D
3. The last way to identify the suspect is to watch the 3 of the original spawned sims closely. I noticed that the suspect will have an idle animation sort of *looking over his/her shoulder*. Almost as if they were hiding from someone, this has always made me arrest the correct sim. However this will not work if they are socializing with other sims (but it's sort of like the Doctor career when you have to watch out for their symptoms in a way.)
So this is how I've been going through this career with relatively no problems. Ans yes, the suspect you arrest most of the time will match 0% of the clues given, hey but at least you get the job done and close all of the cases.
P.S. for a time I tried using the "Show Sim Info..." mod to see if it can identify the suspect from when issuing APBs, and apparently the suspect has a trait_isDectectiveCareer_Criminal on them who should be the one to arrest. BUT, even sims with this info when I arrest them will still lead to UNLAWFUL arrest for some reason, so the tips I gave in step 1-3 should still be the most optimal way to find the suspect to arrest.
