Private Investigator Public Records Internet Search Privacy Reporting – PI Buzz

Government agencies won’t put public records on the Internet but the former Santa Bernardino County Assessor found a technological runaround to making his emails a public record.

A private investigator and the former supervisor of the Worthless Check Division in the St.Tammany (Louisiana) District Attorney’s Office were sentenced to three years’ probation for buying and selling criminal information from the National Crime Information Center database. The DA employee got the heavier sentence — she also lost her job.

Nebraska Supreme Court ruling: Burial records from a state run cemetery are a public record. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) claimed that the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) applied because the cemetery was for residents at a former psychiatric hospital. But the court noted that HIPAA allows for the disclosure of protected health information when required by state law, and that Nebraska’s public records laws trumped HIPAA because these are death records, which are open records. Reported by RCFP.

Texas media, private investigators and genealogists are opposing the efforts of the Texas legislature to exempt the dates of birth of government employees from disclosure as a public record. The media has uncovered misdeeds by employees of the Texas Youth Commission — matching dates of birth with employee names — involving abuse of people and the public trust. Shielding dates of birth in public records does not protect the public from identity theft, as legislatures claim when attempting to carve out more public record exemptions.

Next week the U. S. District Court of California will issue the sentence for Lori Drew, the MySpace “cyberbully” who was convicted of violating the MySpace terms of service when she created a false profile. [See my article, Think Twice Before Going Undercover.] In that piece I talk about some of the considerations for the investigator who is tempted to fabricate an identity on a social networking site in order to gain access to a user’s otherwise private profile.

Here’s a legal issue to mull over. Perhaps this applies in other states, but in California, in criminal cases, the criminal defense investigator or prosecution investigator can’t interview a potential witness without first “clearly identifying himself or herself.” This is found in California Penal Code 1054.8:

1054.8. (a) No prosecuting attorney, attorney for the defendant, or investigator for either the prosecution or the defendant shall interview, question, or speak to a victim or witness whose name has been disclosed by the opposing party pursuant to Section 1054.1 or 1054.3 without first clearly identifying himself or herself, identifying the full name of the agency by whom he or she is employed, and identifying whether he or she represents, or has been retained by, the prosecution or the defendant. If the interview takes place in person, the party shall also show the victim or witness a business card, official badge, or other form of official identification before commencing the interview or questioning.
(b) Upon a showing that a person has failed to comply with this section, a court may issue any order authorized by Section 1054.5.

A violation could lead to the exclusion of the evidence obtained from that interview. Isn’t the investigator attempting to “interview, question, or speak” to a witness when the investigator accesses the witness’s non-public social network profile? The private profile requires the participants be accepted as “friends” and is a mouthpiece for the account holder to speak to her selected audience. The investigator who disguises his identity to pry open that witness’s cyber door could risk the exclusion of any evidence gathered through that pretext, as well as picking up a misdemeanor.

Wouldn’t it be convenient and a boon to cross-border investigations to be able to search an online index of Mexico court records? An Internet search for a source for these directs you to Westlaw, a collection of legal research and fact-finding databases, costly and beyond the financial reach of most investigators. Searchsystems.net now includes Mexico civil and criminal index filings from Mexican federal and state courts in its collection of premium (fee-based) databases. Anyone can access the service, but Searchsystems subscribers get a discount. A free name search will return the number of records found in the index, but no other details. Once you enter the subject’s name and pay the fee you’ll be able to view all matching records. The detailed results provide party names, jurisdiction, date, court, docket number and, in criminal filings, the charges. A limitation of the Mexico criminal record indexes, unlike most US ones, is that they don’t contain a defendant’s date of birth. Here’s a image from a search result, or view a sample report at Searchsystems.

Do you know of any other Mexico civil or criminal index databases online?

Surprisingly, I wrote about crime mapping only once in 2008. That was about the efforts to track and map crime incidents at universities and included some tips for finding online crime map sites. CrimeReports, which I wrote about in 2007, is still chugging along, now with about 150 participating police departments just in California, where they have the most extensive representation.

Fewer agencies have data at CrimeMapping. Some of these agencies also display crime incidents on a map at their law enforcement site, which may be in a different format. An older program called CrimeViewCommunity has a site with a URL that points to CrimeMapping.com. But you may find a few additional law enforcement agencies using CrimeViewCommunity at their site whose crime incidents aren’t included in other crime mapping programs. For example, the Detroit Police Department uses CrimeViewCommunity but the map is hosted only at their site. Use the inurl modifier to find agencies with crime maps. You’ll notice that there is only a 30-90 day retention of incidents.

A new feature has been introduced at the most popular social networking site, Facebook — which it’s calling Truescoop –, a name search that identifies people by their state of residence and date of birth and, for some, criminal record history. Get more tailored results by qualifying your name search with the person’s year of birth or full date of birth. Nothing at the site spells out the source of the data, but Facebook warns that this is an application merely for fun.

TrueScoop is for entertainment only. TrueScoop is not a substitute for a background check that you would pay money for.

TrueScoop should not be used to make any employment decisions. TrueScoop is not to be used for any reason covered by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) or any state or Federal laws related to the FCRA.

TrueScoop is a criminal history check similar to that at Criminal Searches. Both aggregate criminal records index information that is available for free online from state and county government court sites. Each display their data differently so you might find one format more usable. The data varies between individual records on each site; sometimes only one site will list AKAs, but then the other site will do so for other records. Sometimes Facebook identifies the local court in which the charge was filed but not the court docket number, and Criminal Searches gives the court number but not the local jurisdiction, but it’s not consistent within or between the sites. Comprende? Mix and match, if you can! The best advise might be to head to the court Web site once you find a lead from either of these other applications. Locate courts and lots of other public records through a fee-based service, this free-trial site or at the free sites offered by BRB Publications or Online Searches.

TrueScoop also shows names that have been searched by others and the number of times. Select the name link to populate the search field and get record results. A name search may also return records of unclaimed money and sex offenders (with photos), in addition to the state locator showing date of birth.

A Facebook account is required to use TrueScoop, but this application is separate from Facebook and there’s no link between it and Facebook profiles.

Mashable writes, TrueScoop Offers Free Public Record Search on Facebook.

A California appellate court has settled a public records case — the right of access to a Santa Clara County GIS parcel mapping database — in favor of the plaintiffs, the California First Amendment Coalition. The county alternately demanded an exorbitant fee to access the database, then claimed that it was protected for national security reasons, even though they had already sold it to some private parties. Huh? Unbelievably, Santa Clara County argued that release of the digital maps might make the water supply a target for terrorists? Pleeease…

Support the CFAC’s efforts to keep government records open and express your appreciation for their free legal hotline.

In another, but unfortunate court decision, the Third Appellate District court exempted from disclosure crime-related autopsy records, claiming they are encompassed under the California Public Records Act exception for police “investigatory files”.

The Iowa legislature is chewing over the notion that open government records may be responsible for identity theft and should be restricted. The Identity Theft Prevention Study Committee met last month and developed a collection of recommendations, including redacting certain “personal information” — that fuzzy term has yet to be defined — in public records. One of the panelists, Dan Combs of The Coalition for Sensible Public Records Access , a consortium of commercial public records aggregators, argued that redaction of public records is ineffectual and misses the supposed objective of curtailing “identity theft”, another fuzzy term. The Coalition site has position papers and summaries on public records access, such as this one on the important uses of the Social Security number by businesses and government.

What other constructive uses of the SSN identifier would you add?

Now, head down to Arizona where the Phoenix City Attorney has advised the police department to restrict disclosure of police records on the handy claim that thieves are scouring public records for personal information. The police department will start redacting victim names, birth dates of suspects AND those who are convicted and sitting in jail, and the addresses where crimes are committed. The dictum is being unevenly enforced, different types of data being excised, or not at all. Phoenix may expand this scattered policy to include code enforcement records. Which state law is this suppose to comport with?

Who would have thought that creating a fake profile on MySpace (a violation of their user agreement) could lead to a criminal conviction? The recent verdict in the case of Lori Drew concluded that she was guilty of computer fraud for doing just that. Of course the verdict was influenced by the belief that the email messages sent under the false identity contributed to a girl’s suicide, and certainly gave the impetus for the criminal charge.

Let this be a warning to information researchers and investigators who are collecting data on subjects through their social networking sites.

As part of my investigations I do passive information gathering on the Internet, like monitoring MySpace sites. Other investigators have asked me if they should create a profile to become a “friend” of someone who has a private MySpace page in order to get access to the full site. Before you do it you better be tech savvy so you can cover your footsteps.

Like with any other investigative action keep in mind: Is this legal and ethical? How would it be perceived by a jury? Will this be detrimental to the overall case? Are there unintended consequences that may reflect badly on my client?

A database of convicted drunk drivers is slated to go online by the end of 2008, hosted by the Ohio Department of Public Safety. Ohio’s SB 17 mandates the creation of an Internet registry listing personal information on repeat offenders. Read the press release that details the characteristics of the Habitual OVI/OMWI Offender Registry.

All offenders having 5 or more OVI/OMWI convictions (or equivalent offenses) in the past 20 years must be listed on the Registry, to include:
• Offender’s name
• Date of birth
• Residential address including street address, municipal corporation or township, county and zip code
• Number of times within the preceding 20 years the offender has been convicted of an OVI/OMWI violation
• Dates of OVI/OMWI violation

The Registry must be made available to the public online, to be searchable by the offender’s name, county or zip code.

Add this to the growing collection of boutique criminal registries.

Northwestern University hosts this searchable database of homicides in Chicago that occurred between 1870 and 1930. The mandatory search field is street name, but many other criteria can be added.

Read the description of this massive project, transferring handwritten records to a digital format.

The Chicago Historical Homicide Project began with the discovery of the availability of a rich log of more than 11,000 homicides maintained consistently and without interruption by the Chicago Police Department over the course of 60 years, from 1870 to 1930.

A search by street name returns a list of records with a short case summary. This image is about half of the data from one of those records.

Public records researchers will appreciate the pop up window of sources for related original documents.

The one change to the database I would wish for is to be able to search by name, but the option to download the data in an Excel file should remedy that limitation.

If you subscribe to PI buzz Alert you may have seen the link I included to UCrime, a crime information mapping site of recent crime incidents at universities. Search by address or date (2008 only) to see reported crimes plotted on a map, with icons distinguishing the type of incident. No names are listed and it’s not clear what the source is for the data, but this may still be useful if you need a snapshot of the criminal activity on any one of about 100 schools.

A site that may be an sister site, SpotCrime provides the same type of interactive mapping for cities and counties.

There are also crime logs and mapping of crimes at the Web sites of universities, university public safety departments and newspapers. The Morehead State University Police Web site has logs of incidents to 2004. This Texas college newspaper has put together a map of campus crimes, while this major daily paper only shows crimes perpetrated in the surrounding community in which students of the University at Albany were involved. A site calling itself UMichCrime gets data from the University of Michigan Department of Public Safety then plots it on a map. Most of the data on these sites are not retained for more than a few years; the Case Western Reserve crime mapping is an exception, extending to 2000. The Boulder Police Department at the University of Colorado plots recent crime incidents on an interactive map.

Find more campus crime maps searching for the words or phrases in the URL: crimemap, map or crime. If you don’t have a specific school in mind try variations on a search query: inurl:crimemap site:edu or campus inurl:map intitle:crime.

Is it a tool, or will you be fooled? That all depends on how familiar you are with searching criminal records. Read my review of this criminal records search guide if you’d like to learn more about how criminal records are maintained. The free people finder sites offer more details for a fee, but this is much more pricey than professional databases, usually returning less current records and ones that are more geographically restricted.

The free criminal records lookup site, CriminalSearches.com, is operated by the California company, Confi-chek, a commercial provider of consumer public records. You’ve probably made use of the free portion of their PeopleFinders.com site to verify alternative names, identify associates or obtain an approximate age.

The criminal records at CriminalSearches are likely a portion of the state, and California county records that Peoplefinders.com has on its site’s fee-based criminal records search. These records come from each states’ Department of Corrections, Administrative Office of the Courts and Department of Public Safety (Minnesota, Oklahoma and Texas). The most number of records come from the states’ Department of Corrections because this is a statewide agency in every state. These are felony convictions only of offenders who have been in the custody of the DOC. Some state records include county court criminal filings, helpful for finding criminal records that didn’t result in a conviction, a prison sentence or were in a state that doesn’t have a statewide criminal index. California, for one.

The site is still in test mode so the same search could produce different results, but then you knew this wasn’t a comprehensive criminal records database, right?

Use the “Advanced Search” to add city, data of birth and nature of offense parameters. I did a name search, selected “sexual offenses”, assuming results would come only from the sex offender database, but found this record of a dismissed sexual offense – which would not be reportable to a registered sexual offender database. If you want to find records with the first name “Jeff” or “Jeffrey” put an asterisk after “Jeff” (Jeff*) and the search will return both. This doesn’t work with the last name field.

Also, receive a monthly email of criminal records changes on as many as 5 names.

Do you have any cautionary tales for using this site, or do you recommend it?

Juror names and jury questionnaires are public records and subject to disclosure even if a trial judge has made promises to the contrary. At least in North Dakota. A ruling by that state’s Supreme Court, cited by the Associated Press, rebuffed a trial court’s claim that the records in one case were sealed out of fear that the jurors could be harassed.

“We conclude those reasons, by themselves, are insufficient to rebut the presumption of openness and to warrant a blanket closure in this case…”

Court rulings may seem like a bouncing ball when it comes to privacy, public records and electronic messaging. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has asserted that companies do not have an automatic right to access employees’ text messages if the data is stored on outside servers. Read more about this decision and the significance for privacy and data management. Some other news stories on email access and public records can be found at WikiFOIA.

Maybe it’s a trend in the refinement of the sex offender databases and regulation of where registered sex offenders can live.Tennessee has joined Indiana (see this court ruling on the Indiana law), Missouri, Kentucky and Alaska requiring registered sex offenders submit their email addresses, which are being added to those state online databases. States can’t keep track of the physical location of registrants so the email address disclosure may not be of much value to public safety.

I don’t regularly check the currency of the links in prior postings, but you may have realized that many links on the Internet are good one day and dead the next. One way to find the new page is to backspace to the URL, deleting the subdirectories. Click on this link to see what I mean by an error message. If you backspace to just http://www.indystar.com, you’ll get to the site’s home page. Once you get to the home page search for a tab or drop-down menu related to the content. At the IndyStar site I was looking for the database of live police calls, which in the tabs at the top of the page is “Data Central”, under the “News” tab, and in the body of the Home page is linked to from “More databases.” Confusing, eh?

Visually scan the home page for an icon related to the topic of the former page. Newspaper public records and Sheriff departments “Most Wanted” and “Current Inmates” databases are often only displayed with a button link. The link to the sitemap, a visual representation or topical list of the pages at that Web site is usually found at the top or very bottom of the page, if it’s there at all. As a last resort, use the site’s search engine engine. Usually you’ll do better with a decently formulated search query at Google or Yahoo!. The link to the IndyStar Data Central calls for service to police and fire was the second result in this fairly lame search construction. Often this is good enough to quickly get you to your destination.

How do you find the corrected link after getting an error message page?

Impersonating someone to a government agency or hiring another to carry out this ruse could result in a criminal prosecution.

The operators of BNT Investigations, which was not licensed in Washington state, where they were based, plead guilty to crimes that carry a minimum 2-year sentence. They “assumed the individuals’ identities and persuaded government agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration and state labor departments to hand over tax, wage and other confidential records.” Private investigators from various states who submitted personally identifying information to the firm were also indicted and are still awaiting trial.

Private investigators, insurance companies and attorneys who hire others obtain personal information should confirm that they do not get unauthorized personal information from a government agency. Other laws invoke penalties for using subterfuge (not necessarily impersonating the subject) to secure telephone records from the provider or financial information from banks and account holders. Our clients don’t necessarily know this. It’s our job to educate them.

Pacific Information Resources, Inc., familiarly known as Search Systems, has released a guide to researching criminal records. The document is viewable online and can also be downloaded as a PDF. Search Systems provides links to commercial and government-operated databases of public record information on the Internet. Most of these are free, but access to the huge collection has a small fee.

The site categorizes links to all imaginable public records that are available on the Internet. Some popular types of public records included are: Births, Marriages and Deaths, Corporations, Court Records, Fictitious Business Names, Professional Licenses, Real Property, Recorded Documents, and Voter Registrations.

The Criminal Records Search Guide addresses the myth of a nationwide criminal records database and lists the different types of criminal records and their agency source. It also identifies non court records of sanctions and enforcement databases. This is a basic tutorial, designed for the casual or non professional researcher.

But the primary emphasis is on the Search Systems collection of criminal records — both the free links, called DirectPass, and the fee-based criminal records database, part of the Premium searches. Premium searches are discounted for DirectPass subscribers, but incur an additional fee.

The Premium criminal records content is from a commercial database but is reformatted by Search Systems, usable as a cut-and-paste text document. The text formatting enhances this product over the html one of the data provider. Search by full or partial first and last name, with an option to limit by date of birth or year of birth. The cost is $7 per state search or $19 for a search of all available jurisdictions, if you are a subscriber to DirectPass.

The most comprehensive search of criminal records will utilize the free government-sponsored sites — those listed in the DirectPass collection and Internet sources that haven’t yet found their way into the Search Systems public records. Also, a comprehensive search for criminal records must include a commercial database — probably 2 to 3 databases, depending on the jurisdiction one is searching. There is no substitute for hand searching court records, whether or not the particular jurisdiction is encompassed in the online records.

Alameda County, California has not been as advanced as other counties making public records available on the Internet. The Alameda County Sheriff joins other Sheriff departments which have created a database of current inmates. Lest public records become too easy to access, identification of inmates requires full first and last name, or PFN. Also unlike Vinelink- which will return all first names starting with the first two letters entered- the Alameda County Inmate Locator only provides names of in-custody inmates. But the record detail provides extensive information on the place of arrest, the arresting agency and report number, criminal charges, upcoming court hearings, personal data (including alias’) and physical description.

The site advises that inmates “in certain circumstances, may not appear on this site based on exemptions provided under Government Code section 6254(f).”

The Albuquerque Police Department has established a registry of gang members who have been convicted of a violation of the Albuquerque Anti-Gang Ordinance. As of yet, there are no convictions, but records will be in an alphabetical directory and include a photo, the full name, the offense committed, the date of conviction and a physical description.

I guess the sex offender registries have been a sufficiently popular idea that states are continuing to create boutique criminal records databases. Baltimore, Maryland recently approved legislation that would create a public Gun Offenders Registry, requiring those convicted of gun related offenses register their name, address, and photograph with the police department. As yet, a Web database is not available.

California could become the first state to have a Domestic Violence Offenders Registry.

Minnesota, Tennessee and Illinois have Methamphetamine Offenders Registries. Montana includes convicted meth manufacturers in its Sexual and Violent Offender Registry. Oklahoma lists the offenses that require registration in its Sex and Violent Crime Offender Registry. Georgia, Kansas Kentucky and Connecticut briefly considered adding a violent offender registry to their roster of convicted criminal databases. Similar legislation is still alive in Hawaii.

The Illinois State Police maintains the Child Murderer and Violent Offender Against Youth Registry.

The flush of interest in drug dealer registration faded in Maine, New Mexico and Illinois last year, but is still alive in New York. New Mexico has a DWI Offender Database.

Find out if a Michigan drivers license is valid or has been suspended or revoked by searching the Repeat Offender Inquiry.

And, on the meth makers theme, the DEA National Clandestine Laboratory Register, “contains addresses of some locations where law enforcement agencies reported they found chemicals or other items that indicated the presence of either clandestine drug laboratories or dumpsites.”

The free real property databases are extending their geographical coverage and the types of features that delight investigators. Zillow has a fly-on-the-cyber-wall feature that will be appreciated by lawyers and investigators: number of total and recent month page views for a particular property. Find it at the bottom of the “Home Facts” detail page. The last sales date and sales price is available on both Zillow and Cyberhomes, but I found the data more often on Zillow. This site will also show a list of all houses on a specified street, with a link to the home details.

Cyberhomes has a more modern look, but if you’re not especially interested in comparables, Zillow probably offers more for an investigator. Cyberhomes does have an easy to find neighborhood snapshot of census-derived demographic data. The comps and photos, available at both sites, give a quick sense of the neighborhood economic profile.

Free registration at PropertyShark will get you 6 free lookups a day that return property owner name and last sales price. Unfortunately, the county Assessors’ Web sites often don’t provide the owner name, even though it’s a public record. PropertyShark may not have this for all addresses, so you might want to use the free owner lookup at CourthouseDirect.

View your selected slice of real estate on a map at Live, Google, Yahoo, MapQuest or TerraServer at PropertyShark. There’s also a link to the Department of Justice, National Sex Offender Public Web Site.

A few reminders: Not all regions or addresses are included in any of the free sites, which is true for fee-based databases, as well. Some Web sites are missing large geographical areas or addresses on a street. Also, if you’re searching property records as part of an investigation, utilize multiple sources – free and fee-based – and dig into the Assessor and Recorder supplied records. Check their online and onsite records. There are differences.

I wrote about PropertyShark and did another posting, also in 2006, which generated a number of valuable additions in the comments.

How have you used real property sites in investigations?

It will be easier to find Florida public records through a Google search without having to mine each government database, now that the Florida state government has a cooperative arrangement with Google to index their sites.

Search the name “Villalobos” within Florida government records by formulating this query:

villalobos site:state.fl.us

All of the initial results are for Senator Villalobos at the legislature’s Web site. If he’s not your target, search again, removing that site:

villalobos site:state.fl.us -site:leg.state.fl.us

One set of public records is various state license holders.

Examine the search results to uncover new types of public records. Scroll down to the link to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement document listing a “Villalobos” among those receiving an Intoxilyzer test. If you go to the public records section at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Alcohol Testing Program you’ll see a jumble of files that aren’t searchable here, but content within them can be plumbed at a search engine.

| View | Upload your own

This document image tells you that Villalobos’ arrest took place in Broward County, which is helpful because names in the Florida court case indices won’t come up in a search engine.

I previously wrote about the other state governments – Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia - whose sites Google is also indexing.

Search court trial records statewide for Minnesota, including criminal civil, probate and family law. A search for judgments is also here.

The Ohio Supreme Court has proposed rule changes that will redefine the term “public records” and affect access to court case records [See"Proposed amendments to the Rules of Superintendence for the Courts of Ohio Rules 44-47] Suggested changes include:

(a) Redacting the case information rather than limiting public access to the entire record;

(b) Limiting remote access to either the case record or case information while
maintaining its public access;

(c) Limiting public access to either the case record or case information for a specific period of time;

(d) Using a generic title or description for the case record or case information in a case management system or register of actions;

(e) Using initials or other identifier for the parties’ proper names.

Read the court summary.

The open records advocacy group, the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, has released a study of the consequences of restrictive and open adoption laws. The Institute concludes that new adoption laws that have given adoptees and birth parents access to the original birth certificates has advanced the policy debate “from speculation about the appropriateness, wisdom and impact of such legal changes to a more-informed consideration of their personal, practical and social effects on real people’s real lives.”

The Kentucky Courts have implemented a case tracking system in 17 counties in concert with VINELink. Search a case by name in the Kentucky Courts index and select the VINELink icon to view the next court date, listed at the VINELink site. You can then register to receive telephone or email notification when the defendant’s court event status changes.

The VINE Court feature expands the detention status tracking, the primary site feature, to include those offenders who are not incarcerated but whose cases are still active. Also, you can perform a partial, last name only search at the Kentucky Court site, whereas the same search at VINELink requires a full last name and partial first name. Anyway, you can search for a non-custody defendant’s court status only from the Kentucky Court site. If you try to do the search from the VINELink site you’ll get, “No offenders matching your criteria were found!”.

Government agencies seem to have someone dedicated to moving their Web links to new addresses without a redirect link. You can find the Nevada Department of Corrections Offender Search at a new URL. The database includes current inmates but also those on release or no longer supervised.

The San Jose Police Department has begun adding crime incidents within the past month to the crime mapping site CrimeReports. The data is maintained for about 30 days so it’s research value is limited. There appear to be 3 other police departments that are uploading data and their archiving may differ. Washington D.C. police have retained crime activity reports for 2006 and 2007. Search by date or address, with an optional selection of crime type, to see a map with icons of the various reported crimes and their general location. A popup provides a description of the incident.

On the crime theme, VineLink has a new look but the basic features are the same. It still doesn’t list the participating jails and prisons, so you just have to figure that out when you search within a state or county. The opening page has a color coded map of the U.S., designating states that have “statewide VINE” (blue) and those in which some counties participate (kinda red). As in all criminal records matters “statewide” doesn’t mean the whole state. Gee, who would’ve thought! In the case of California, it means about 15 counties and, as all of us here know, it does not include the Department of Corrections.

Go to MapBuilder if you want an easy utility to create your own map themes and plot places, incidents and things. See the variety of maps that users have built and search by map places and other characteristics.