The Post has requested records multiple times for all bookings since Monday morning, but has received no response about when or whether the sheriff’s office will turn them over. The only way to retrieve that information is to know all of the names and ask for it, workers at the jail and in the records department told The Post. For example, there is no quick wayfor the sheriff’s office to search for everyone arrested in the past 24 hours. However, experts say, the sheriff must have an alternative way for the public to obtain the same information in a timely way. The booking blotter is a public service and the sheriff’s office is not required to have one. “Removing access increases costs and time spent to obtain this public record information.”Ī custodian of a public record, such as jail bookings, is required to make them available to the public in a reasonable amount of time if they are requested, according to the Florida open records law. “I understand that your stated concern is to protect the addresses of arrested law enforcement officers, however, it seems this is a minor programming situation, hardly one that justifies removing this vital source of public information,” said Mark Murnan, president of Complete Legal Investigations Inc. Multiple sources in the agency said they were told the booking blotter was shut down because of The Palm Beach Post and were given no timeline as to when they could expect it up again.Ī legal investigator wrote to Bradshaw Wednesday, saying he uses the blotter several times a week and didn’t understand why the entire database had to be taken down.
They said their jobs have become more difficult since the blotter was removed. Lawyers, bail bondsmen and even employees within the sheriff’s office said they were caught off guard. On Monday, Sheriff Ric Bradshaw ordered the booking blotter be taken down “until further notice,” without giving an explanation. Boynton Beach did hold a news conference about Maiorino, but only tips from sources led the press to uncover some of the other arrests. In 2014, at least five officers who were arrested never appeared in the public blotter, including Boynton Beach officer Stephen Maiorino, who is accused of raping a woman at gunpoint while on duty. The department offered no reason why it could no longer do that. The Post noted in the Sunday story that as recent as last year, officers’ names were indeed posted with the exempt information taken out.
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When questioned about why arrested officers were not included in the blotter, the sheriff’s office said Friday that their software couldn’t extract that kind of information without leaving the rest, such as the officers’ names and charges against them.
“The effect of this action is that public records requests for information that was, until now, readily available on the PBSO website, are now being frustrated and unreasonably delayed, which is tantamount to a denial of those requests,” The Post’s attorney Martin Reeder said in an email to the sheriff’s office.Ĭertain information, such as addresses and date of births, of law enforcement officers are exempt from the public under the state public records law.
On Sunday, The Post reported that the agency had been deleting arrested officers’ names from the public jail log, meaning the public was relying on the police to disclose when one of their own was charged. This statement, via two tweets on the office’s official Twitter account, came two hours after The Palm Beach Post’s lawyer threatened to take legal action to enforce the public’s right to see, in a timely manner, the records of people booked into the jail. “PBSO will fix the issues and have the site up and operational in a short time frame.
“PBSO has determined that The Booking Blotter was not operating in a manner consistent with what was expected of the site,” the sheriff’s office wrote Thursday afternoon. The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office promised Thursday to re-post its online booking blotter “in a short time frame” and offered the first explanation for why it was suddenly taken off the Internet Monday morning.
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