The Integrated Law and Justice Agency for Orange County (ILJAOC) in California has signed an agreement with the Boston Police Department (BPD) to begin sharing criminal justice information using the Coplink system, a platform that organizes data.
“For the most part criminals do stay local,” said William Casey, commanding officer of the BPD’s Information Technology Division. But he said, “It always amazes me that every now and then you’ll see a booking sheet and you’ll see how many different jurisdictions a person has been fingerprinted at.”
The agreement allows the 25 law enforcement agencies that participate in the ILJAOC joint powers authority to share criminal justice information, including arrest reports, mug shots, booking sheets and protective orders with the Boston Police Department via a secure Web connection. It does not cover intelligence sharing because of the more stringent regulations governing that information.
This agreement between the ILJAOC and BPD establishes the first cross-country connection of Coplink systems, according to a press release from i2, the platform’s developer.
With other information sharing agreements the ILJAOC has in place, member agencies now have the ability to search more than 215 million records, according to the agency’s executive director, Bob McDonell.
“Before we implemented the system in Orange County, if somebody wanted to do a records check to see if anybody else had contacted Johnny Smith, he’d have to make 23 phone calls,” McDonell said. “Now all they do is put his name in there and they can see which agencies had contact with him and for what.”
When asked why Orange County would be interested in Boston’s records, McDonell said he asked i2 to run a search of common records between the two systems. “Based on name, date of birth and sex, there were more than 2,400 matches in the two databases,” McDonell said. “We’re not saying all 2,400 are absolute matches, but it’s pretty good. Name and date of birth, that’s more than a coincidence.”
A major benefit in Casey’s view is the access to shared incident reports. “Seeing the incident reports is great,” he said, “because you might suspect the person of dealing drugs in Boston, make an inquiry through Coplink and see that the State Police and the Brockton police have previously stopped them for drug dealing.”
In the case of a stabbing in a La Palma, Calif., bar fight, a nickname led to a suspect who previously had not been contacted by the city’s police department. The suspect had previous contact with several other Southern California police departments, and a search of the nickname in Coplink led to the suspect whose identity was confirmed by witnesses and he was arrested.
Christopher Ott, communications director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts, did not have a comment about the agreement between the ILJAOC and BPD, but he provided a general statement on information sharing agreements. “The ACLU is concerned whenever law enforcement agencies engage in information sharing absent independent oversight to guarantee data quality and to protect privacy,” he wrote in an e-mail.
McDonell said the system is completely auditable. “You can go in and look at who queried what when and what they got, etc.,” he said. “The other safeguard is by agreement you have to verify the accuracy of the information before you take any enforcement action.”
A mutual indemnification clause in the intergovernmental agreement between the BPD and ILJAOC also provides an incentive for investigators to ensure that they follow the appropriate procedures, according to McDonell. “It basically communicates to the agency that uses our information that if they use it inappropriately or illegally, they are the ones that are going to have to mount the defense on our behalf.”
Though this is the first cross-country connection of Coplink systems, the ILJAOC has previously established information sharing agreements with other agencies in California, Oregon, Arizona and Washington. Several other agreements are under review, including an agreement with the Massachusetts State Police to share information with the Commonwealth Fusion Center. The BPD has information sharing agreements with Massachusetts’ law enforcement agencies through the Boston Regional Intelligence Center and Commonwealth Fusion Center.
