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OneDOJ to Offer National Criminal Database to Law Enforcement
Degrees writes "The Washington Post is reporting that the Justice Department is building a massive database, known as 'OneDOJ'. The system allows state and local police officers around the country to search millions of case files from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal law enforcement agencies. The system already holds approximately 1 million case records and is projected to triple in size over the next three years. The files include investigative reports, criminal-history information, details of offenses, and the names, addresses and other information of criminal suspects or targets. From the article: 'Civil-liberties and privacy advocates say the scale and contents of such a database raise immediate privacy and civil rights concerns, in part because tens of thousands of local police officers could gain access to personal details about people who have not been arrested or charged with crimes. The little-noticed program has been coming together over the past year and a half. It already is in use in pilot projects with local police in Seattle, San Diego and a handful of other areas, officials said.'"
As a part-time law enforcement officer in Ohio, I have to agree that the Ohio system is done pretty well. Absolutely everything is logged and routinely monitored. Try talking to any of your good cop buddies to see if they'll run a plate for you. Most of them will say "oh hell no!" and run as fast as they can. We had an officer get fired two years ago for abusing the LEADS system. He was running plates "on the side" for some friends of his. All went well until one day he ran the plate of someone wanted for assault. Naturally the log analyzer program went nuts when it found that one of our officers ran the plate of a wanted individual, but we had no corresponding arrest record. So it went onto the exception report and was reviewed by the Captain a few days later. Turns out he'd only run five or six plates as favors, but the Chief asked for his badge and gun then and there in exchange for not shipping the case to the prosecutor. After the guy was walked out the door, the Chief sent the case to the prosecutor anyway.
Of course, the problem with accountability being at this level is that without further review up above, local corruption could skate right by. I do, however, remember of the town of New Rome (when it still existed) losing access to the state LEADS system for something like 90 days when someone claimed that he was being harassed by the local police and it was discovered that the mayor was having the police chief look up the records of people he didn't like and do things like put BOLOs (Be on the lookout) on them so they'd get stopped for no reason any time another officer ran their plates.