By Hannah Winston
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s
booking blotter website was back up and running Friday after almost a week of
hiatus, but police officers arrested this year remained out of the online
database.
On Monday, Sheriff Ric Bradshaw
took down the entire online booking blotter “until further notice” after The
Palm Beach Post reported Sunday that the agency had deleted arrested officers’
names from the public jail log.
But, open records experts
argued, the sheriff needed another way for the public to readily obtain arrest
records in the same way the blotter offered.
Lawyers and bail bondsmen
complained that they used the blotter in their daily work and didn’t understand
why it was taken down without warning. The sheriff’s office has yet to explain
why fixing a glitch required the entire database to be taken offline.
When the blotter was restored
Friday, the sheriff’s office released a statement:
“After a recent news article
the Sheriff’s Office reviewed the operation of the Booking Blotter website and
determined that it was not operating in a manner consistent with what was
expected of the site.
“Sheriff’s personnel met today
and have corrected the issues regarding the booking blotter website. The
website is now in acceptable operating condition.”
Spokeswoman Teri Barbera said
officer’s names and charges will now be in the blotter but did not offer any
reason why officers previously arrested, like Boynton Beach police officer
Stephen Maiorino accused of raping a woman at gunpoint and PBSO deputy Roger
Kirby who allegedly beat a 5-year-old boy, remained out of the blotter.
When The Post initially asked
why officers were not showing up in the blotter, the sheriff’s office said
there was an issue with software so they couldn’t redact certain protected
information like addresses and dates of birth. The Post pointed out that as
recently as last year, arrested officers appeared in the booking blotter with
the information redacted.
The sheriff’s office did not
explain why.
On Thursday, the agency
released a statement on its Twitter account explaining there was a technical
problem with the blotter and that it would be fixed shortly.
That statement was tweeted 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.
“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.
The Post requested records
multiple times for all bookings since Monday morning with no timeline of when
the records would be released. Friday afternoon, after another email from The
Post’s lawyer, the records were released on paper. Hours later, the same
records were online
