The Washington District of Colombia Police Department launched its interactive crime mapping Web site, which pinpoints major crimes by geographical region. No exact addresses are shown.

An opinion from the California Attorney General limiting information that can be released by prosecutors on arrestees will affect reporting on crime but just confirms the California Public Records Act provisions regarding release of records.

In response to a public records request, a prosecutor may not produce records from a computerized data base that disclose: (1) whether a recently charged or soon-to-be charged defendant is currently on probation or parole, and details of his or her prior offenses; (2) an individual’s criminal history in the county, including all arrests and case dispositions; (3) the disposition of matters referred to the district attorney for filing of criminal charges; (4) criminal histories associated with a requested list of cases in which a specified witness has testified; or (5) numerous criminal histories associated with a request for the names and identities of all defendants charged with a specific kind of crime over a period of years. With respect to category (3) and in rare circumstances category (1), however, a prosecutor is required to make public certain limited current information derived from records in the prosecutor’s investigatory files.

Due to changes in the Freedom of Information Law in New Jersey, it is now possible to submit a request for government agency records by email.

A debt collector who threatens to sue but doesn’t follow through may be in violation of the Fair Debt Collections and Practices Act, according to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. The assertion, if not acted on through a court action, could be construed as “false and misleading statements”, which is prohibited in the act.

AP reports on the site additions to Missouri’s sex offender database.

An updated state Internet site promoted Monday by Gov. Matt Blunt can create maps detailing every registered sex offender living, working or attending school within 1,000 feet to 15 miles of any particular address.

The new Web site also includes physical descriptions of registered sex offenders - height, weight, race, eye and hair color, scars and tattoos - and, when available, a description of the vehicles they drive. Also online are the ages and genders of the offenders’ victims.

Access the California San Joaquin County Recorder index for filings since 1968 at the official Web site. Details are provided but document images are not.

Searching a nationwide database of court judgments and tax liens may not return all the filed records, even recent ones. You must search the county Recorder official records to do a comprehensive search.

Many County Recorders’ indices are available at their official Web site. Real property documents are found here, but there are also financial records, including court judgments and, state and federal tax liens, which can often be accessed remotely, that may not be found anywhere else. [More on this in a moment.]

Earlier I wrote about a company that has free access to a database of current real property ownership.This site also has a fee service providing instantaneous remote access to images of recorded documents, a service not usually available at a county Internet site.

Netronline has a few free features –one is a county lookup by zipcode or city–and a fee service for aerial maps by address.

Regional proprietary databases may have an online index, which may not available at the county site. TitleX has searchable indices for Texas, but this is a fee only site.

Okay, here’s the gaping hole in the widely available nationwide bankruptcy, judgments and lien searches.

Read the rest of this entry »

A committee of the Maryland Judiciary has reconfirmed that juror personal information is a public record, although access varies from nil to extensive, depending on the court.

Once again, it takes the determination of a media outlet to enforce or clarify a public records act. Wisconsin Circuit Judge William Foust ruled that contracts between a government agency and a union didn’t create an exception to the state’s open-records laws. The opinion also covers agency contracts with government employees, although some exceptions may apply.

The Florida Miami-Dade Chief Judge disclosed that a that a number of cases and party names have been kept secret, off the public docket, while also giving judges the authority to continue the practice. The Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice R. Fred Lewis is conducting an investigation into the practice of closing court files, which was revealed to have occurred in thousands of cases in Broward County. Earlier, I wrote about a study showing that other state courts and the federal court also have hidden dockets, secret courts or files that have been sealed with no reason given.

The 2006 report, Future Trends in State Courts, issued by the National Center for State Courts, is a compilation of several dozen articles. One that may be of most interest to investigators and information researchers is, Court Record Access Policies: Under Pressure from State Security Breach Laws?

Courts are affected by national trends in privacy legislation. Over the past ten years, many courts have reevaluated and modified public access record policies to increase protections on personal information in court records, especially as court records are made available via the Internet. As private-sector data is more heavily regulated, and as state legislatures enact state security breach laws to protect consumer privacy and ward off identity theft, court record access policies may be under continued pressure to conform.

A Focus on Identity Theft, Social Security Numbers, and the
Courts, “examines the interest by federal policymakers to tackle the problem of identity theft by restricting the display of Social Security numbers in public documents.”

Many police departments are incorporating online crime and traffic maps into their public safety efforts. Some enterprising folks (New York, Chicago, Boston, and more) gather the data from public agencies and post their own mapping program. Here are a few new additions:

The Tulsa, Oklahoma, Police Department displays current accidents on a map, and lists live calls for service, including address.

The Manteca Police Department, in California, has just put a crime
mapping program online, which provides a visual display of crime activity by general neighborhood. No specific address or name searching is available.

I previously wrote about a site that attempts to collect links to all the agencies with online crime mapping.

Verify voter registration at the Ohio Secretary of State with a last name, county and zipcode. The Ohio SOS Web site also has an unusual database:
lookup a licensed minister.

Search voter registration records at the Arkansas Secretary of State by first and last name, and date of birth.

Vinelink now has a statewide jail search for inmates in Washington state.

WorldCat is a single Web site that searches library collections worldwide. More accessible than your local library’s online catalogue, WorldCat also enables you to search through multiple libraries to find resources by name, author or keywords.

The DeweyBrowser, a project of the Online Computer Library Center, also indexes books, videos and serial publications in WorldCat. This site provides a visual display of categories in which the search terms appear enabling you to further narrow your search.

The search phrase “insurance investigations” returned 56 entries in 6 topical categories. I narrowed my selection to The investigative reporter’s handbook : a guide to documents, databases, and techniques.

Enter a zip code or state to identify the libraries that have this book. Also read book reviews and follow links to related subject areas. The topic “public records” pulled up 91 books, ranging from the 2005 book, Local and regional government information : how to find it, how to use it to a 1999 serial publication Get the facts on anyone. Refine your search by selecting a particular author, format, or year.