Thirty two years ago, I was trying to track down a California drug dealer who was the source of PCP coming into Arizona. All I had was a physical description and a nickname — “Perry” — to go on.
Looking for leads, I called a California narcotics detective hoping he might have something on the dealer I was trying to identify.
The detective entered the limited information I gave him into a regional law enforcement information database and came back with two possible suspects, one who turned out to be the California connection for the flood of PCP on Arizona streets. With the identification of the major California supplier, a two-state drug distribution syndicate was shut down in very large part because police in California were able to check millions of records in their multi-agency police and sheriff’s records information sharing system.
Decades later, that simple database check I initiated in 1978 still can’t be done in Arizona.
Tempe police are looking for a suspect after ASU student Kyleigh Sousa was tragically killed a month ago during an attempted robbery. Although police have suspect and vehicle descriptions, they have yet to solve the case. There is no statewide, or even a countywide, information sharing system at their disposal to help their search, no ability to cross-reference individuals who might also be on the radar or in the databases of other police agencies in Arizona.
Finally, however, someone is trying to do something about this huge failing when it comes to public safety.
Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley has called a meeting of local law enforcement leaders next month to create a county-wide crime information collection, analysis and sharing system to address the problem of serious felony crime and to make our law enforcement agencies more effective by improving communication and cooperation. This comes after Valley police chiefs and local law enforcement leaders were briefed last week on the need to establish such a program.
Romley’s plan could become a model for a statewide crime information sharing system that has escaped Arizona for decades.
Until now, no one with county-wide law enforcement authority has stepped forward to take a proven felony crime-fighting tool to every city in Maricopa County.
Arizona has spent millions on the Department of Public Safety’s Arizona Counter Terrorism Intelligence Center. It costs almost $2 million a year just to open the doors and turn on the lights at the secret anti-terrorism center. According to chiefs, sheriffs and cops I’ve spoken with, the ACTIC has long failed to deliver what is needed to fight crime.
Out of necessity, the East Valley Gang and Criminal Intelligence Fusion Center was established by East Valley police in order to share information about local crime. With just $250,000 in RICO funds, the fusion center became a reality. The center has assisted police greatly with targeting criminal behavior and reducing crime well beyond the national average.
Unfortunately, the fusion center is limited by the fact that Arizona and Maricopa County do not have an all-inclusive information sharing system or critical links to national crime information sharing programs.
Scottsdale Police Chief Alan Rodbell, the director of the Fusion Center, will host Romley’s meeting of the chiefs to develop a new and better way of doing police work in the state’s most populated county.
And hopefully bring law enforcement into the 21st century and give police the tools they need to better solve crimes, like the still unsolved murder of Kyleigh Sousa.
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Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the East Valley and can be reached at bill.richardson@cox.net
billrichardson posted at 8:15 am on Sat, Jun 26, 2010.
Bong-
NCIC is a national database that stores information about stolen property, outstanding felony warrants and criminal history. It is in no way what I described as being needed to link crimes, MO's and detailed information about a criminal or a crime.
According to the FBI-NCIC website, "NCIC is a computerized index of criminal justice information (i.e.- criminal record history information, fugitives, stolen properties, missing persons). It is available to Federal, state, and local law enforcement and other criminal justice agencies and is operational 24 hours a day, 365 days a year."
bong_jamesbong2001 posted at 5:10 am on Sat, Jun 26, 2010.
This article is so much rubbish! I just included it so that our readers know how such things work. This guy wants money to duplicate something that is already in existence, and available nationwide. Prohibitionist law enforcement corruption in plain view. Viz:
http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cjisd/ncic.htm
FBI Seal Federal Bureau of Investigation Links to FBI home page, site map and Frequently asked questions
Federal Bureau of Investigation
NCIC: The National Crime Information Center
It’s been called the lifeline of law enforcement—an electronic clearinghouse of crime data that can be tapped into by virtually every criminal justice agency nationwide, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The National Crime Information Center, or NCIC, was launched on January 27, 1967 with five files and 356,784 records. By the end of 2009, NCIC contained more than 15 million active records in 19 files. NCIC averages 7.5 million transactions per day.
NCIC helps criminal justice professionals apprehend fugitives, locate missing persons, recover stolen property, and identify terrorists. It also assists law enforcement officers in performing their official duties more safely and provides them with information necessary to aid in protecting the general public.
About the records: The NCIC database currently consists of 19 files. There are seven property files containing records of stolen articles, boats, guns, license plates, parts, securities, and vehicles. There are 12 persons files containing the Supervised Release; National Sex Offender Registry; Foreign Fugitive; Immigration Violator; Missing Person; Protection Order; Unidentified Person; U.S. Secret Service Protective; Gang; Known or Appropriately Suspected Terrorist; Wanted Person; and Identity Theft Files. The system also contains images that can be associated with NCIC records to help agencies identify people and property items. The Interstate Identification Index, which contains automated criminal history record information, is accessible through the same network as NCIC. See details on each of the files.
Criminal justice agencies enter records into NCIC that are accessible to law enforcement agencies nationwide. For example, a law enforcement officer can search NCIC during a traffic stop to determine if the vehicle in question is stolen or if the driver is a wanted by law enforcement.
How NCIC is used: Criminal justice agencies enter records into NCIC that are accessible to law enforcement agencies nationwide. For example, a law enforcement officer can search NCIC during a traffic stop to determine if the vehicle in question is stolen or if the driver is a wanted by law enforcement. The system responds instantly. However, a positive response from NCIC is not probable cause for an officer to take action. NCIC policy requires the inquiring agency to make contact with the entering agency to verify the information is accurate and up-to-date. Once the record is confirmed, the inquiring agency may take action to arrest a fugitive, return a missing person, charge a subject with violation of a protection order, or recover stolen property.