COLUMBUS, Ohio – A joint investigation by a Columbus newspaper and TV station has found that Ohio’s computerized background-check system has been flawed and unreliable for years.
READ MORE: In the Columbus Dispatch and at 10TV.com
The 15-year-old computerized background-check system operated by the Bureau of Criminal Investigation in the office of Attorney General Mike DeWine has been troubled for years, sometimes indicating that thousands of criminals have clean records.
A review of thousands of pages of records by The Columbus Dispatch and WBNS-TV reveal ongoing problems that have led supervisors to label the 15-year-old system — used for more than 1.3 million checks a year — as “cobbled together” and “running on borrowed time.”
Thousands of intertwined criminal-conviction and fingerprint records with processing errors have hung in limbo in a twitchy computer system for months at a time while records of convictions don’t arrive promptly — or at all.
State officials are cracking down on the system contractor, 3M Cogent, and planning to buy a multi-million-dollar replacement.
Thousands of police officers and employers rely daily on the criminal background-check system that DeWine describes as “critical for the safety of Ohio families.”
The system is used to vet school teachers, foster parents, medical professionals, police officers, firefighters, day-care and nursing home workers and gun owners seeking concealed-carry permits, among many others.
If the system doesn’t work, felons can be hired for jobs they should not have landed, police officers might not know they just stopped a person with a history of violence, and ex-convicts could be OK’d to carry handguns.
BCI employees acknowledge the system is unreliable. DeWine says it has required constant upgrades.