When a cop chases a suspect, it is in everybody's best interest that he know as much as possible about the person he is trying to collar.

        When the suspect runs down a dark alley in a bad neighborhood, should the officer: A) draw his gun and run after him? B) hold up and wait for the arrival of backup? C) give it up and decide this particular suspect isn't worth the risk?

        We all know that Officer Stephen Roach chose “A.” We can speculate forever on what the past year might have been like had he opted for “B” or “C.” Stephen Roach knew that Timothy Thomas had 14 open warrants, but he didn't have access to the young man's court history. That's because the court's computers don't talk to the police computers.

        Had Officer Roach known that all of Timothy Thomas' citations were for minor offenses and that every single one of them contained a home address where Mr. Thomas could be picked up, he might not have run down that alley in Over-the-Rhine last year.

        Had he known that the most serious thing Timothy Thomas was wanted for was driving without a license rather than a drug offense, an assault, or any other violent crime, he might have kept his gun holstered. Maybe his adrenaline wouldn't have been pumping so hard or his heart beating so fast. Maybe when suddenly confronted by the young man, Officer Roach's finger might not have jerked on the trigger, firing the shot that killed Timothy Thomas.

        The computer system that alerted Officer Roach to Timothy Thomas's open warrants is operated by the Hamilton County Criminal Law Enforcement Applied Regionally (CLEAR) system. It's the same system that serves every police officer in the county. It's funded by a county levy and controlled by a board of police and other officials representing the various jurisdictions in the county.

        The computer that keeps track of the court system is operated by Clerk of Courts James Cissell.

        Mr. Cissell says that four years ago he came up with $350,000 to pay for the integration of the two systems, but the CLEAR board turned him down. He said the police were afraid that marrying the systems might jeopardize confidential law enforcement records kept on the police system.

        Cissell, a former federal prosecutor, understands the necessity of protecting investigative records, but he says the benefits outweigh the risks. “Without a combined system, a cop can end up chasing a guy without knowing what he is getting into. That's kind of a handicap.”

        The only information that needs to be shared between the systems is public information — arrests, charges filed, addresses. Computer fire walls can be erected to keep would-be hackers from using the public computer system of the clerk to hack into the police files and on up in the regional and national crime computers. The clerk already has every civil and criminal court filing in the county on the system and has had no problem with hackers.

        The failure of these computers to communicate causes problems in both directions. Cincinnati CAN, the mayor's special commission looking for ways to ease racial tension in the city, recently asked the clerk if it would be possible to use computer-tracking to investigate the possibility of racial profiling in arrests. It would be possible, but isn't practical unless the arrest files from the police system can be integrated with dispositions from the courts.

        Using only the court computer, Tom Gould, who runs the computers for Mr. Cissell, tried to track one offense — theft — for a single year, looking at race, gender, judge and final disposition, to see if patterns of arrests and sentencing could be discerned. The result was a 300-page printout that the CIA would have trouble deciphering. Cross-match the findings with data from the police computer about officers making stops and you would have a management-friendly tool for analyzing arrest trends.

        Without CLEAR approval, however, that can't happen. With the approval, any shift commander in any district would be able to detect profiling patterns of any officer, said Mr. Gould.

        Withholding any information from the cops in the street is like sending them out with unloaded guns. Restricting our ability to track the actions of the officers is blindfolding us to possible misconduct. These computer systems need to talk to each other and CLEAR should open the conversation.

       Contact David Wells at 768-8310; fax: 768-8610; e-mail: dwells@enquirer.com. Cincinnati.Com keyword: Wells.
       

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