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[bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

This press release is done in such a way that the FBI only wants people to 
think of it as great way to catch drunk drivers.  What it is actaully doing, 
is creating a national database, including "incident reports" where you 
committed no crimes; from every federal, state, and 'local' intereaction you 
have with law enforcement and other 'agencies'.

  So, now, if you are arrested for protesting at a peace rally when you are 
18, in Boston, and when you are thirty living in small town , Missouri, the 
local cops can know your politics, with a keystroke.  If you run from an 
abusive spouse in one locality; and move across country.  That info from the 
incident report follows you to anywhere anyone has a password.  Centalization 
is almost always a bad idea, because of all of the un-intended (& maybe 
intended , but not told) consequences ....bobford\


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 Drunken drivers roll down state information gaps
 
 Jacquelyne Taurianen, Associated Press Writer – Mon Nov 10, 5:08 am ET 

AP – This arrest photo from July 7, 2008, provided by the Deadwood, S.D. 
police dept., shows Robert Earl Hood … OMAHA, Neb. – A Texas man arrested on 
suspicion of first-offense drunken driving posted a $200 bond and walked out 
of a Nebraska jail without facing a judge.

Only this wasn't his first DUI arrest, or second, or even his third. It was 
44-year-old Robert Hood's fourth DUI arrest in three states in less than two 
weeks.

Hood, of Caldwell, Texas, is also known as Earl Hood. He was charged as a 
first-time offender under Nebraska law and allowed to pay 10 percent of the 
$2,000 bond because officials had no inkling of the other pending DUIs.

That's because the FBI-run national computer system used by states shows only 
those people who have been fingerprinted when arrested. And the arrests of 
some suspects, such as Hood, can go undetected if they are not fingerprinted 
or if the information is delayed getting into the system.

In Hood's case, the system did not show his recent DUI arrests — one in 
Wyoming, two in South Dakota.

That lack of information is allowing repeat DUI offenders across the country 
to easily post low bonds and go on their way.

And it alarms court officials.

"If judges are made aware of other pending charges, it could justify a higher 
bond to (ensure) the person appears in court," said Sarpy County Judge Todd 
Hutton, who sits on the bench in suburban Omaha. "The judges make their 
decisions based on the information they are provided. They can't act on 
information that is not brought to their attention."

Hutton said that if prosecutors know a defendant has other pending charges, 
it could justify a higher bond.

John Fitzgerald, a state's attorney in Deadwood, S.D., one of the places Hood 
was arrested, said the same problem exists in his state.

"The more (DUIs) you get the higher the bond," Fitzgerald said. "When you see 
someone who repeats something so dangerous, the bond can get pretty high even 
if it's a misdemeanor."

To make matters worse, officials in most states don't often know about other 
pending charges against a defendant within their own borders.

In Nebraska, people charged with a first-offense DUI do not have to have a 
formal hearing, but can instead pay bond according to a schedule, said Deputy 
Otoe County Attorney Tim Noerrlinger.

But the FBI is hoping a new national system, still in the pilot stage, will 
alert authorities when a defendant has multiple DUI offenses pending in other 
states.

The National Data Exchange or N-DEx for short, is designed to link local, 
state and federal records, said Tom Bush, assistant director of the FBI's 
criminal justice information services.

Records say Hood was arrested on July 4 in Mitchell, S.D., when an officer 
found him passed out in his car. A test showed Hood tested 0.260 percent — 
more than three times the legal limit.

He was released on 10 percent of a $5,000 bail, a Davison County Circuit 
Court clerk said.

Hood's second DUI arrest occurred three days later in Deadwood, S.D., a town 
in northwest South Dakota. 

Chief Kelly Fuller of the Deadwood Police Department said Hood's 
blood-alcohol content was 0.184 percent. 

At the time, Hood's arrest in Mitchell did not show up in state records, so 
he was charged with a first-offense DUI and released on another $500 bond. 

The next day, Hood was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving in Platte 
County, Wyo., and charged with first-offense DUI. A test showed his 
blood-alcohol content was 0.160 percent, a Platte County circuit court 
official said. 

On July 10, Hood was found guilty of a first offense DUI in Wyoming and 
sentenced to six months unsupervised probation, credited for two days he 
spent in jail and paid a $580 fine. 

Hood was then arrested on suspicion of drunken driving at 8:30 a.m. on July 
13 in Otoe County, Neb., about 50 miles south of Omaha. His blood-alcohol 
content was 0.081, just over the legal limit of 0.08, according to court 
records. 

He was released after posting $200 bond, Otoe County Jail officials said. 

Simara Reynolds, executive director of the Nebraska chapter of Mothers 
Against Drunk Driving, said Hood's case was chilling. 

"It is frightening to see someone charged so frequently in such a short 
period of time," she said. 

Authorities are now looking for Hood after he failed to appear to multiple 
court dates. Warrants have been issued for his arrest. 

Offenders with multiple DUI arrests are more common than most people think, 
said Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of MADD. 

Dean-Mooney calls the current system a "catch and release" program, and she 
says changes are needed. 

More than 2.8 million people on the road today have three or more DUI 
convictions, she said. 

"Hard-core drunk drivers are clearly more dangerous," said Kevin Quinlan, 
chief of safety advocacy division at the National Transportation Safety Board 
in Washington D.C. 

Hard-core drunken drivers as defined by National Transportation Safety Board 
are those with a prior drunken-driving arrest or conviction within the past 
10 years or offenders with a blood-alcohol content of 0.150 percent or 
greater. 

N-DEx was designed to search, link, analyze, and share criminal justice 
information including arrest and incident reports, incarceration data, and 
probation data nationwide. 

"Anything (agencies) put in it will be available nationally," he said, but 
the data gold mine will depend on how each jurisdiction or state collects the 
data and what they want to report. 

N-DEx takes 360 data elements seen in incident reports today and puts them 
into a master form. Agencies can then search individual or multiple elements, 
said Kevin Reid, N-DEx program manager. 

Participation by all states will be gradual, with the goal of having the 
nationwide system in place by 2010, Bush said. 

Submitting and receiving information from N-DEx is voluntary, Bush said, but 
the FBI is convinced that such voluntary programs will work, citing NCIC and 
a fingerprint database. 

Bush said he can't imagine agencies not using N-DEx once they start to see 
the benefits. 

Oregon was one of the first states to test N-DEx, said Oregon State Police 
Maj. Chris Brown. 

"It works very well and is very robust," Brown said. 

___ 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081110/ap_on_re_us/phantom_duis