Information might have saved lives

Out-of-date technology hampers probation officers and magistrates. Demario Atwater remained free despite violating probation and is now charged in Eve Carson's death

Long before Demario Atwater was arrested in March in the killing of Eve Carson, Lee Lloyd had flagged him as dangerous.

In January 2007, Lloyd's company ran a free experimental program for the state's probation system, sending e-mail alerts to probation officers when their clients were charged with new crimes. This was a huge help for the officers. They were hamstrung by an antiquated computer system but needed to know whether the criminals they supervised were getting into more serious trouble.

So when Lloyd read in March about Atwater's arrest in the death of the UNC student body president, he wondered whether the probationer's record had triggered an alert.

It had. Lloyd's program would have twice warned probation officers that Atwater had been arrested: a trespass charge in February 2007, and firearms and drug charges that November. Had probation officers known of these arrests, they could have watched Atwater more closely, tightened his curfew, put him under house arrest, or asked a judge to lock him up for violating the terms of his probation.

But no one received those e-mail alerts. Despite rave reviews from probation officers, the program was spiked in February 2007 by Robert Guy, the head of the probation system, and Bob Brinson, the top computer official at the Department of Correction.

Lloyd's system was yet another chance state officials have had to fix a computer system that is rooted in the technology of the 1980s. North Carolina may boast of Research Triangle Park and state-of-the-art technology companies such as SAS, Red Hat, IBM and Lenovo, but probation officers have spent hours each month looking up their clients on a computer system that predates Windows. It's so old that the computers don't have a mouse.

Until last month, there was no simple way for a probation officer to check whether new criminal charges have been filed against any of the 114,000 probationers under their watch or to see whether somebody they've been trying to find is actually in the county jail down the street. A News & Observer investigation turned up hundreds of cases where probation officers lost track of criminals who were violating probation -- and then were charged with murder, rape and other serious crimes.

For 14 years, state officials have vowed to fix the patchwork of computer systems that are supposed to help law enforcement officers keep track of criminals. But the Criminal Justice Information Network, set up during a special legislative session in 1994, has fixed just one of five problems it identified.

Guy, the probation chief, says he axed the e-mail program because he had no money for it and because the project violated purchasing rules.

"I'm about good business," Guy said. "But I'm not going to get out there on the limb about someone out there doing their own project, a renegade project."

James Fullwood, the regional director in charge of the project, said one of Guy's superiors asked him to run it. Fullwood was seeking a federal grant so the project wouldn't cost the department anything, at least until the federal money ran out.

The canceled proposal was the biggest regret of his career, Fullwood said, for it might have prevented Carson's slaying.

"If it had been approved, much of what we have before us today would not be an issue," Fullwood said.

Secretary of Correction Theodis Beck agreed: "It makes me think that if we had pursued this further, maybe we would have had a different outcome. ... I regret that."

Brinson, the head of the Criminal Justice Information System, is the top computer official at the Department of Correction. Before Guy shut down the program, Brinson weighed in on Jan. 25 with an e-mail opposing Lloyd's system as expensive and prone to error.