Fingerprint database obscures histories
HPD, sheriff must go through DPS for inmates' past offenses, immigration status
By SUSAN CARROLL
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Sept. 27, 2009, 12:19AM


He is an illegal immigrant with at least eight aliases and an arrest record in California that includes attempted murder, robbery, theft, drugs and exhibiting a firearm.

Yet if Andres Maldonado Nava was booked into a local jail on a minor charge — any Class C misdemeanor — before he became infamous for his alleged role in the death of Houston Police officer Henry Canales in June, the fingerprint check system would not have shown any of his criminal or immigration history.

In Houston's city and county jails, offenders booked on Class C offenses are fingerprinted but are checked only against HPD and Harris County databases — not state or national databases that contain millions of criminal history records and warrants.

And because Nava had no rap sheet locally, jailers here would have no way of quickly and accurately determining who they had in custody.

State and local officials are working to close that gap in the state's biometric identification system and run checks on all offenders booked into Texas jails, even for the most minor offenses.

On Sept. 8, the Texas Department of Public Safety for the first time started accepting the fingerprints for suspects charged with Class C misdemeanors, which can range from traffic offenses to disorderly conduct to domestic violence.

To send or not to send
The decision about whether or not to send prints to the state is left up to local law enforcement agencies. So far, only the Fort Worth, Denton and Orange police departments have submitted fingerprints from Class C arrests, said Tela Mange, a DPS spokeswoman.

Because HPD cannot send prints directly to DPS, it transmits those of suspects charged with more serious crimes to the Harris County Sheriff's Office, which forwards them to DPS, said HPD Lt. Mike Barrow.

DPS sends the prints on to the FBI, which conducts a national criminal history and warrant search and sends the results back to local agencies.

The sheriff's office also has technical impediments — involving data formatting and tracking — to sending Class C prints to the state, said Pete Schroedter, with the sheriff's fingerprint ID division.

Manual checks inaccurate
Neither agency has a set timeline for when it will start sending Class C prints to the state.

The city's technical difficulties with its fingerprint system may also complicate its proposed partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. So far, said city officials, HPD's computer system cannot interface with the Homeland Security Department's massive immigration database, which would give jailers access to suspects' immigration history.

Until the city and county resolve their technical issues,jailers are forced to run only the local criminal history checks on people charged with Class C offenses.

They also can perform a manual check for outstanding warrants using a suspect's name, date of birth and race, but that method often is imprecise and foiled by the use of aliases, Barrow said.

He said getting an accurate hit on a warrant using that method is infrequent.

HPD exploring options
“The biometrics is what is going to nail them,â€