Not Every Arrest Results in Conviction

This case study takes an in-depth examination of when Pointer File New York (PF NY) hits do not result in passable convictions. This happens more frequently than not, so what happens when an individual has a huge number of booking records and only one or two cases are reportable? The individual we are studying had several booking records that we researched fully. Since we were contracted for additional services, only two cases were reportable, and only one matched the PF NY results. See Figure 1 for the PF NY results.

Figure 1 – Pointer File New York Booking Records

As shown in Figure 1, this individual had seven booking records that spanned from 11/2002 to 10/2013. All records are from the same county. The Onondaga County Jail will provide court information for booking records, but never the charge information. When contracted for additional services, the process of obtaining said court information from the jail is a multi-step process that requires a FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) request. An additional validation of authorization from the candidate that we have the permission to request that information. When there are this many hits, sometimes it is more cost- effective to run the name through the NYS OCA as a starting place to locate these arrests. Frequently, courts require a money order for each offense date we are searching. While we did receive a passable conviction from the NYS OCA, we only received one.

Figure 2 shows the email indicating that there are results found provided by the NYS OCA. Figure 3¹ shows the actual detailed results that were provided by the NYS OCA.

Figure 2 - NYS OCA Results Found

Figure 3 - NYS OCA Actual Results

¹ Names have been changed to protect their identities.

Clearly, we were provided only two cases from the NYS OCA. One was from 1987 and showing in their system as “Not disposed” or incomplete. As the PL 155.25 00 AM – Petit larceny was reduced to the PL 110-155.25 00 BM Attempted petit larceny, we are not able to pass both charges. As shown in Figure 4, we reached out to our liaison at the NYS OCA to see if they had any additional information about the charges that were absent from the results provided.

Figure 4 - NYS OCA Results Passed to Client

Our liaison provided eleven incomplete cases from Camillus Town Court, not including the case provided on the NYS OCA Statewide that was not disposed yet. A case from Solvay Village Court was also provided. See Figure 5.

Figure 5 - Correspondence with NYS OCA

Armed with this new information, and realizing many of these cases are not listed in the PF NY results, we reached out to the court to obtain as much information as possible to provide the best results to our client. We also reached out to the Onondaga County Jail to obtain information on the PF NY records. While we were not provided the offenses, we were provided the courts. After conducting the procedural research on each record, all of the PF NY hits were either non-reportable offenses or sealed cases.

We reached out to the Solvay Village Justice, and the offense from 10/27/1993 was a sealed case. This was not a reportable offense, but the case was completed, which is information that the NYS OCA should have. We heard back from Camillus Town Court on all offenses, and only one of the eleven was passed on to our client.

Camillus had been sent every detail that we were provided, and physically researched the court records in the archives to provide that information to us. The rest had been pled down to violations, infractions, or were covered by other cases, which in turn were sealed or dismissed. Figure 6 is what we could pass on to our client. Note that this case was not provided to us in completion by the NYS OCA and was not a hit on PF NY.

Figure 6 - Developed Criminal Results

End Results

Pointer File New York (PF NY) furnishes booking records for individuals across New York State. Many of these records end without results that are passable to our clients.

That is what transpired with this case study.

Additional Information

New York State Office Of Court Administration Has Its Limitations

The New York State Office of Court Administration (NYS OCA) is a fantastic entity for obtaining various convictions for individuals with a criminal history.

However, it is a severely flawed system. There are quite a few restrictions to the cases that are provided by the NYS OCA, one being they do not report a misdemeanor conviction after ten years if it is the sole conviction.

This is part of the New York Misdemeanor Redemption Policy. In addition, they do not provide vehicular misdemeanors unless it is an Operating Motor Vehicle under the Influence conviction. The most alarming, is the extreme number of cases missing from the results.

The NYS OCA has yielded zero results, even for convicted criminals, some of which have multiple convictions. The NYS OCA will only provide fingerprinting convictions based on the exact name, and exact date of birth submitted. They do not search for additional spellings, aliases, or suffixes, of any name. Each submission to the NYS OCA is exactly what is searched. One practice that can be problematic is if the subject has a suffix reported on one conviction and does not have the suffix reported on another. In this case, you will not get both convictions back in your search results. The same follows for any alias or changes in spelling for any given name, as well as date of birth variations.

Pointer File New York™ (PF NY) pulls the booking records for individuals all over the State of New York. When contracted for additional services, Screening Logic uses this information to research each record and determine if it resulted in a passable conviction, which we then provide to our clients. There are times when courts are unwilling to assist in providing additional information and we have to utilize the New York State Office of Court Administration. More frequently than not, the NYS OCA provides only a fraction of what PF NY discovers.

At Screening Logic, we do our due diligence when it comes to all aspects of the background investigation. We are determined to do the right thing, always. This is particularly true in our criminal research. The Pointer File New York™ (PF NY) database is an essential diligence tool that allows us to view a history of booking records. When contracted for additional services, we then research these findings to determine whether the arrests resulted in passable convictions. The only passable offenses we provide are misdemeanor and felony convictions. We developed PF NY in conjunction with the NYS Sheriffs’ Association, as an alternative method to obtaining criminal information in New York State. By digging down to the level of booking data, Pointer File New York™ overcomes the fundamental and systemic flaws associated with the NYS OCA search.