Antiquated Police Slows Investigation

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Today’s Gazette frontpage story titled, “State Web site slows investigation” is a slick attempt by the Janesville Police department to shift the blame on the state for not being able to retrieve sex offender data fast enough from the state’s online registry. That the Janesville police department would publicize this to the Gazette is a testament of their own departmental shortfalls and intelligence gathering failures. That the Gazette would politicize this is not a surprise.

After an assault on a bike path Thursday afternoon in Janesville, the article stated it took nearly five hours for the police to obtain a list of addresses of sex offenders in the area.

JG Editorial Excerpt:
“If we had a better system, we could have done it in 15 minutes,” Moore said.”

Pardon me, but I would think that in yesterday’s era of cheap megabyte storage, every police department in the state of Wisconsin would have all registered sex offenders within their zip-code jurisdiction on a 25 cent disc or a 20 dollar portable drive. And with four zip-codes in Janesville, it can’t be too much trouble to ask. Reloading for updates once a week during a slow period is only a right-click and left-click away.

The information is out there, its what the police department does with it that’s important, and not having the list compiled on a simple Word program or spreadsheet until the state comes up with a better way is inexcusable.

It’s even more scary hearing that our police department relies solely on the state’s registry for this kind of sensitive information only when something happens and are not paying any extra attention to sex offenders on their beat. Oh, I almost forgot – that’s the public’s job.

I can already hear the reply a month from now if someone asks the department if they compiled an off-line list of sex offenders, it’ll be “We’re working on it.”