A man is arrested for driving with a suspended license. He's taken to jail, booked on $500 bail and let go.

By the time police figure out he was wanted for murder in another state, the man is long gone.

This is the scenario the Broward Sheriff's Office was hoping to avoid when it installed a high-tech computerized fingerprinting system at its main jail last week.

And despite glitches that have caused nightmarish delays in the booking of detainees, jail officials still believe the new system will work and be a boon to Broward County.

However, bugs in the system, called Livescan, have forced hundreds of people to wait more than a day to be processed -- spending hours packed into tiny cells, sleeping packed on the floor, sharing a single toilet. Booking usually takes around eight hours, BSO said.

BSO said Monday the backlog was cleared and booking time was essentially back to normal. But some outside the jail insisted otherwise.

``My daughter needs a lot of support right now,'' said a distraught-looking woman who said her 22-year-old daughter had been arrested early Saturday morning for drunk driving and was still waiting to be booked Monday afternoon.

``The longer she's in there, I'm worried she's going to be even more depressed and withdrawn.''

The new technology eliminates ink pads and fingerprint cards. Instead, Livescan allows corrections officers to fingerprint detainees onto a glass plate connected to a computer scanner, which then transmits the fingerprints directly to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in Tallahassee.

There, FDLE experts run the prints through their database of about two million samples. Nearly 50 county sheriff's offices -- including Miami-Dade and Palm Beach -- already use the system.

Its benefits are numerous.

With Livescan, police can immediately confirm a detainee's identity -- cutting down the chances an offender will get booked under a phony name. Criminals arrested on petty charges occasionally use this ploy when wanted for more serious crimes.

Livescan also immediately checks to see if a person has outstanding warrants in other jurisdictions. This helps avoid the chance of allowing a mass murderer to stroll out of jail when he posts bail on a minor traffic charge.

But there is a problem: Under the old system, detainees were fingerprinted, photographed and then hustled along in the booking process. With Livescan, they wait for FDLE to run its fingerprint check and electronically send back the results.

This usually takes minutes. But if fingerprints are improperly taken, FDLE sends them back again.

This appears to be one of the causes of BSO's backlog, according to recent detainees. The result is that hundreds of people at a time have been stuck in lockup limbo since Livescan was connected eight days ago.

``There are some problems we're going to have to work out,'' BSO spokeswoman Veda Coleman-Wright said, ``with the computer, making sure the staff is trained properly. The system is up and running, but there are still things that need to be worked on.''

Sheriff Ken Jenne would not discuss the booking snarl. Nor did BSO say how much it paid for the new system.

But it was not the first time computer problems have plagued the jail. In July, its then-new computer system -- CJIS, or Criminal Justice Information System -- malfunctioned after it was installed to replace 20-year-old hardware.

The comprehensive system, which later would include Livescan, was designed to take information on detainees and match it state and federal warrant lists, fingerprint databases and previous mug shots. Hundreds were stranded midway through booking.

The problems will eventually abate, BSO said.

``We have 68 different sites [using Livescan],'' said Gerald Brooks, who helps oversee the FDLE's fingerprint database. ``They typically don't experience major problems with bottlenecks.''

The Herald

-- Anonymous, December 16, 2000