Booking blotter back online, still missing arrested officers


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