Auditors say TBI’s criminal database not accurate
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee’s criminal database is not up to date and improperly delayed nearly 1,700 people from buying guns, state auditors said Wednesday.
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation officials say they have been focusing on the problem and working with local authorities to make sure the database is current.
Nearly 2,000,000 arrests have been entered into the database since 1995 — but authorities don’t know the outcome in 77 percent of the cases, auditors with the Comptroller of the Treasury found in a report released Wednesday. That means some people who have been acquitted or had the charges against them dropped or lessened remain in the database.
“Without accurate and up-to-date historical information, bureau activities such as background checks for law enforcement agencies and routine civil applicant and gun purchase background checks can be unnecessarily delayed or can come to an erroneous conclusion,” the auditors wrote.
The state has an instant check system that probes the database when someone tries to buy a gun. When an arrest is found, even if the outcome is not known, the applicant is turned down, the agency said.
What results is a number of people applying to the bureau to have the information on their case updated. Auditors said 1,679 people initially turned down for a gun purchase in 2003 had the decision reversed after appeal.
The bureau says the vast majority of its denials for gun purchases are made because they simply don’t know a case’s final disposition.
By the end of the year, though, the problem should be nearly fixed, said Brad Truitt, assistant director for the TBI’s Information Systems.
“Everybody in the law enforcement community has worked on this,” he said. “It’s been a long process.
“Our responsibility is to maintain the records we are sent. It is someone else’s responsibility to send it to us.”
Part of the problem, officials say, is that many courts and police agencies submit paper copies of case dispositions. Some, such as Nashville, have recently come online with computer filings. Before that, Nashville authorities didn’t send any updates at all.
The agency said a number of upgrades around the state will make it easier to keep the criminal database current.
Many other states have the same problem, auditors found. In 2001, a check of 24 states found that roughly 40 percent of arrests don’t have an outcome listed in databases.
The state has received roughly $6 million in recent years from the federal government as part of a national effort to improve the databases.
“It is very important to have the dispositions,” Truitt said. “We are working very hard to make it work.”
The auditors also noted problems with the TBI’s sex-offender registry program, well publicized in recent years as authorities try to upgrade the program and change state laws.
One result, auditors said, was that toward the end of last year the agency didn’t know the location of 1,179 sex offenders.
———
On the Net:
Read the TBI audit at http://www.comptroller.state.tn.us/sa/reports/pa04023.pdf