Archive for the ‘Missouri’ Category

The Missouri Department of Corrections unveiled its offender search database last month.The site is down due to technical difficulties but will hopefully be accessible soon.

The offender search link includes the offender’s name, DOC ID number, race, sex, date of birth, assigned location, sentence summary, active offenses, completed offenses and any aliases.

The Missouri Supreme Court has once again concluded that people whose criminal convictions did not require them to register as sex offenders cannot later be included in the sex offender registry. An unknown number of names will be trimmed from the current database.

John Hotz, a spokesman for the Missouri Highway Patrol, which maintains the sex offender registry, said officials will now have to comb through the more than 7,000 names on the registry to determine who is affected.

After last year’s ruling, the state determined that more than 3,800 names were on the list for crimes committed before 1995, Hotz said. The state continues to allow information about those prior offenders to be published.

Many states and local municipalities have rosters of city, county and state public officials available in a single PDF document that can be saved to your computer for later reference. Don’t confuse these rosters with the state telephone directories, which list key individuals in state government and their departments. Rosters provide names of elected and appointed officials and associated agency, with street addresses, email addresses and Web sites. Save this to your computer or print it out so you’ll know to whom to direct your public records requests.

The California Secretary of State describes the California Roster, which is online, for each of the past 5 years.

The California Roster, also known as the Roster of Public Officials, is a listing of California’s public officeholders, including our United States government officials, the Constitutional officers, members of the State Senate and Assembly, the Judicial branch, county officials, and Incorporated city and town officials.

It also includes a history of California’s office holders, descriptions of the state emblems, a listing of all state agencies, departments, boards and commissions, a listing of the unincorporated areas, and information on the state officials for each state in the nation.

The current Missouri Roster details every executive, legislative and judicial office holder, as well as each county commissioner and department director.

Some counties also publish a Roster, which, like this one produced by the San Diego County Registrar of Voters, contain the same information down to the city level.

The Iowa Roster is located at the legislative site.

The Rhode Island Department of Administration Web site has the Directory of City and Town Officials, along with many other government publications. So you may have to search various government Web sites to find where a Roster is housed.

There are also 50 state directories of single agency types. Montana has a Roster of State Livestock Health Officials.

Suddenly, government directories have become more intriguing.

A few months ago I wrote about the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control maintains License Query System. An added feature to the ABC site is daily, weekly and annual reports of new licenses, license status changes and actions taken against licenses including, revocations, suspensions, fines, and issuance or denial of licenses. The database of reports cannot be searched at the site. Search the archived reports from September 16, 2006 to the present by using this advanced search at Google. Replace “Safeway” with your company name, address or other key words.

safeway site:www.abc.ca.gov/reports/

Reporters and anyone compiling statistical data will be able to make use of the reports menu at the ABC site. Query the reports by location and license type to get a detail of all that meet that criteria. For example, find all the caterer licensees in Azusa.

Washington State law now bans employer access to the credit reports of employees or potential employees unless such information is substantially related to the individual’s current or potential job responsibilities. An exception is made if the employer has a “reasonable cause to believe” that the employee “has engaged in specific activity that constitutes a violation of law.”

Missouri private investigators are poised to receive the stamp of legitimacy with the establishment of the Board of Private Investigator Examiners, which will license and regulate private investigators. The bill is awaiting the governor’s signature, which is expected this summer. The Missouri Association of Private Investigators has worked diligently to secure state level licensing and soon they’ll be able to join the majority of states that license PIs.

New regulations for Indiana private investigators will go into effect July 1, including the replacement of the term “private detective” with “private investigator”.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will decide whether property assessment databases created on behalf of municipalities by private companies are a public records.

Legislation introduced in Pennsylvania would make it a crime to obtain, sell or receive phone records of state residents without their authorization.

An initiative on the California ballot that would require police officers “create an audio-visual recording of all contacts with or searches of citizens” is now gathering signatures. If approved by the voters, the measure would mandate that “a copy of the recording be provided to affected citizens who are arrested and charged with a crime.”

The recent closure of police disciplinary records throughout California has prompted the introduction of AB 1648, Peace officer records, which would make information in certain disciplinary records pertaining to peace officers available to the public.

The swinging legislative pendulum in Missouri would restrict the release of police internal affairs records. Michigan already has limited access to police discipline files.

Should private investigators have access to police disciplinary reports or officer activity videotapes?

The Missouri News is reporting the latest news on a bill introduced by Sen. Harry Kennedy, (D) of St. Louis. Missouri is only one of 6 remaining states that does not regulate private investigators. This bill would also include continuing educational requirements for all licensees.

The proposed bill includes a grandfather clause that would allow current private investigators to become certified if they have been in good standing as a business for two years. They would also have to provide proof of liability and workers’ compensation insurance.

The Senate Financial Committee on Monday heard Kennedy’s bill, which would also create a statewide board to license and regulate private investigators throughout the state.

Even though a representative of the Missouri Association of Private Investigators testified in favor of the bill, there was at least one PI who testified against it.

Do you feel private investigators should be licensed? What are the pros and cons of licensing as you see it? This is a very important topic as many of the remaining unlicensed states are fighting for licensing.

What do you think?

You may have noticed that there’s a trend toward eliminating personal identifiers – social security numbers, dates of birth and addresses – from all public records. Any publicly filed documents containing social security numbers are subject to being altered, removing the SSN identifier, or rejected until the personal information is redacted. Currently, financial records, tax liens, deeds and mortgage loan documents are being changed to the extent that it will become impossible to verify whether a federal, state or municipal tax lien belongs to a particular individual.

Fraud investigators, people finders, heir locators, financial lenders and journalists checking on the fitness of our politicians all rely on the unique identifier to develop background and verify identity.

The complete social security number is being removed from filed documents, not just from the Internet indexes and images. And guess what? The commercial databases aren’t going to be able to provide search results that cross reference SSNs on tax liens or judgments filed with county recorder’s offices with a name or address. The indexes of the data resellers are only as good as the original records.

The Missouri Secretary of State just announced that she’s removed the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) document images from the Web site.

The Secretary of State’s Office is taking every step possible to protect personal identification information (Social Security Numbers and Federal Identification Numbers) while continuing to provide service to our customers. As part of that effort, our office has temporarily removed Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) images from the web site as they may inadvertently contain personal identification information.

Although the Virginia legislature has yet to enact a pending bill that would remove SSNs from land records and court filings, Nevada county recorders are rejecting filings that contain social security numbers. This new requirement has created a mess in the courts because the County Clerk is required to submit affirmations that the “5,000 documents filed every day in District Court” have the social security numbers removed. Even in the relatively lower volume state of Vermont the county clerks are overwhelmed by the mandate to extract SSNs from previously submitted documents. The Kansas legislature apparently didn’t consider the costly (both personal and financial, to government and business) consequences of redacting data, declaring that

Unless required by federal law, no document available for public inspection or copying shall contain an individual’s social security number if such document contains such individual’s personal information.

Personal information is name, address, phone number or e-mail address. This applies to

documents recorded in the official records of any recorder of deeds of the county or to any documents filed in the official records of the court and shall be included, but not limited to, such documents of any records that when filed constitutes:
(1) A consensual or nonconsensual lien;

(2) an eviction record;
(3) a judgment;
(4) a conviction or arrest;
(5) a bankruptcy;
(6) a secretary of state filing; or
(7) a professional license.

Humm, no name on a professional license…

All of the 50 state governments will eventually succumb to this “identity theft” protection measure on court records, UCC filings and mortgage loan documents.

Why don’t these state legislatures follow the federal model, masking only part of the SSN, which achieves the aims of fraud prevention while keeping the unique association of the number with a name?