Prisoners Freed After Cops Struggle With New Records Software 128
itwbennett writes Police in Dallas are scrambling after difficulties using a new records management system caused more than 20 jail inmates, including a number of people charged with violent crimes, to be set free. The prisoners were able to get out of jail because police officers struggling to learn the new system didn't file cases on them within three days, as required by law.
I'm sorry... (Score:5, Funny)
...I'm actually supposed to be getting *out* of prison.
You're in the wrong line, dumbass! Let this dumbass through!
Re: (Score:3)
Idiocracy was closer, but Monopoly predicted this first.
Re: (Score:3)
I always interpreted that card as 'use your vast wealth, skilled lawyers and political connections to weasel your way out of court.'
Re: (Score:2)
1 - Those three things are one and the same.
2 - Are you certain nobody bribed those police officers to "make a mistake"?
Re: (Score:2)
Or put another way, it looks a lot better for the arresting officer if he has arrests that lead to trials that lead to convictions than if he has arrests where the detainee is set free because he can't fill out forms. The former gets one promoted, the latter gets one reassigned to something dead-end, or gets one assigned to the worst shift.
Re: (Score:2)
Stay out of contact with reality in that case, it might make you forget how to breathe...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, please [youtube.com].
... and we ain't done yet! (Score:1)
From the ITWorld article:
Problems will likely crop up "for a few more weeks" as officers become fully familiarized with the software and fixes are applied, according to Brown.
So, if there are any banks that you've been thinking of robbin' or violence you've been wanting to commit, better make sure to get it done within the next few weeks.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Ah, no. Freedom.
Eh, freedom for me. They said I hadn't done anything, so I could go free and live on an island somewhere.
Naa, I'm only pulling your leg. It's crucifixion, really.
Re: (Score:2)
Monty Python's version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
And you know what they say, whenever you start using new software, you're gonna get some hop-ons.
Management botched it again (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a typical bollix-up: the system was a drastic change from the existing one and difficult to use, and has performance problems on top of that, but management still sent it live and turned the old system off without making sure everyone had thorough training. On top of that they didn't have any extra resources on hand to help with the extra workload as people learned the new program on the job and didn't have anybody familiar with the program on hand to help the users. End result: the entirely predictable train wreck occurred. But of course the management responsible for this will never be held accountable for it. Instead the blame will be put on "the software", instead of the management who signed off on the software being acceptable when it manifestly was not.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The new platform is made by Intergraph, an Alabama company, according to a report this week in the Dallas Morning News.
An Alabama company? I guess that's what happens when your Excel programmers aren't paid the market rate [correctionalnews.com].
Re: (Score:2)
That assumes they're paying their Excel programmers. More likely they don't have any programmers on staff to pay, they subcontract that tedious and non-core-business detail out to an outsourcing firm in India or China or somewhere.
Re:Management botched it again (Score:4, Interesting)
They did that to me at an aerospace company I used to work for. ViewLogic. On a 386SX running Doublespace. I sank. Miserably.
Up to that time, I was quite comfortable using my old DOS tools... Futurenet CAD and PADS PCB. I had spent several years with those and had been introduced to these tools by experienced people.
The new ViewLogic was introduced by removing my old machine and bringing the new machine, along with some books, and a 40-hour charge number to cover training. I rapidly fell way behind, which was good reason for my dismissal. I could never get the hang of operating that thing when it was so underpowered I never knew if I was successful in selecting an item before doing something with it, and I would commonly do something to a previously selected item. Drove me nuts.
However, this was an aerospace company... funded by the government, Its not like they were actually trying to retain anyone. It seemed every Thursday, someone got the ax. If one played his p's and q's right, he got promoted to management, where they were a bit more immune to the layoff and better paid too - and besides they did not have to deal with trying to build the thing they promised to the customer, however the management jobs were usually filled by someone coming in from another aerospace company - often another one that failed.
We were a big company at the time... and since we attracted so many resumes, an engineer wasn't worth much. It looked to me as if we were a dime-a-dozen commodity brought in to sign the line marked "responsible engineer". Something to be soiled like toilet paper, then neatly flushed.
I get the idea the same thing happened here. Whether its learning how to play a new musical instrument, learning a new language, getting the hang of a new neighborhood,,, well all these things take some time. My time constant for this is measured in years. Too long, I suppose.
I have been using EAGLE for about a year now, started at 4.16, now at 6.5.0 , and am finally getting the hang of it when I know something has gone wrong and what to do about it. Yes, I did make a few bad PCB when I do not know what I am doing; I did it with PADS too... - acceptable when one is designing Arduino test boards, but that kind of ignorance is ill-advised when its going into military use.
In the end, the big company failed too. We created a heckuva lot of good stuff, but did not do anything with it. Garmin and Magellan sold stuff based on our work and made money. We just committed big retirement plans to the executives and later sent them on their way on golden parachutes.
After my experiences there, I still have an extreme distrust for men wearing suits.
Re: (Score:1)
This happened at a concrete plant I was working for. They went live with the scheduler not working, the. Layout system not working. Both of those things were my responsibility. It was one of many factors that caused me to quit, because I refuse to take on a job where failure is predefined.
Since I left, they overscheduled something. No great surprise.
Part of the problem was the software company was a team of VB scripters who didn't get their software running before selling it.
Part of the problem was a change
Re: (Score:2)
They don't have to outsource to a foreign country [cio.com]. Although in this case, that might explain a few things.
Re: (Score:2)
Insightful? I was not trying to be insightful. I guess nobody clicked on my link.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Excel programmers
I know what each of those words mean, but I just can't comprehend how they fit together.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Management botched it again (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
And to further that spot-on comment, this is exactly the type of behavior you could expect from a unionized workforce. I saw this exact behavior from my father when I was a young kid and would go to work with him. He was a CWA member who ran a small central office for Southwestern Bell (when they still existed). He was almost exclusively the only one there, and he did ONLY what the teletype machine told him to do, and when it told him to do it.
Because of him, I am extreme anti-union. He retired in the e
It's not an invalid situation... (Score:2)
If you deploy new software where it does not improve the user experience, then it's valid for the userbase to punish that move to a reasonable extent.
Not to the end result in this article of course, but sharing the pain inflicted by 'change for change's sake' with those who inflict it makes a lot of sense. Sometimes there are requirements to be fulfilled that do matter that make life harder for the users which justify inflicting pain upon the userbase, but in my experience the vast majority of change is a
Re: (Score:3)
This is what happens when you do this to your users instead of for your users.
I have seen instances of IT saying "we're switching to this because it's cheaper/easier for us", and which left the business users completely screwed because IT didn't bother to find out how those systems were used, what depended on them, and what the business needs were.
This sounds
Re:change for change's sake (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
What do unions have to do with anything?
I'm not unionized but when my boss tells me to do something stupid and/or inefficient, I do it until I can "convince" him to come up with better methods.
Contrary to popular belief: Most companies DON'T want their employees to think independently. They want them to do X task, using Y method cause when you have tens/hundreds/thousands of people each trying to come up with the "best" method, things quickly break down.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Management botched it again (Score:5, Interesting)
...and turned the old system off without making sure...
It's not like the previous system of oversized crayolas and little yellow sticky notes was much better than the new system. Under the old system, the 20 inmates would have probably been marked released by the system, but kept in jail indefinitely.
Man Suing Dallas County Jail
May 30th, 2007 | By admin | Category: Dallas County, In The News
By Jack Fink, CBS 11
A North Texas man is suing Dallas County and the maker of its jail computer system for violating his civil rights. He claims he was lost in the system for six days.
Jim Muise credits a political leader from a foreign country for helping him get released and now he wants justice.
Muise is an automotive journalist. His stay in the Dallas County Jail kicked his emotions into overdrive.
“I felt like no one on the outside was able to hear me,” Muise said.
Muise said he was falsely arrested outside a Dallas restaurant for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.
“I had people, friends of mine, associates of mine sitting outside the jail the morning after I was arrested willing to post the bond, and they couldn’t find me to say how much the bond was,” Muise said.
His name was nowhere to be found in the computer system in February, 2005, a month after it had gone online.
Muise, who is a Canadian citizen, got so desperate at one point he made a collect call to relatives in Halifax, Nova, Scotia. Luckily for him, they’re close family friends with a Canadian senator who in turned called the jail to help find Muise.
Muise was released the next day. “If not for my family and other people working so hard for me, I might still be there,” he said.
He is now suing the county and InfoIntegration, the company that installed the software.
“They knew, or should have known, that if their system didn’t work properly, people’s civil rights would be violated,” Muise’s attorney said.
The company hasn’t responded in court yet, but in a similar case, it denies the system was faulty and inaccurate.
The county hasn’t filed a response in court either, but Commissioner John Wiley Price said the county has corrected the problems.
“We know where people are in the system,” Commission Price said. “We know when they come into the system.”
Muise wants someone held accountable. “Somebody’s got to stand-up for what goes on,” he said.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps this could be the origin of a new legal platitude [wikipedia.org]:
'Tis better that 20 guilty persons are freed by a computer error (or computer operator error) than that one innocent person is kept in jail indefinitely by a computer error.
(Doesn't quite have the same ring...)
Re: (Score:1)
Just a note, this article is about Dallas *County*, which apparently switched software in 2007 (see the date at the top of this article). The original article was about Dallas City Police, which have just switched over to a new system from Intergraph (the Alabama company), which had similar issues in San Antonio when they switched to Intergraph's system a couple of years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
That's your counter-point? ...that in 2005 a single guy's paperwork slipped through, and a drunk Canadian spent a couple extra days in county?
Re: (Score:2)
Drunk Canadian has paperwork misplaced nearly a decade ago, and you go to Guantanamo.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Twice rather than once, by picking an application which have a steep learning curve for such a task. I cannot imagine you can make this process so complicated you are ending with a steep learning curve for the end-users while the role of the user interface is to ease everything for the user. How could a old system interface being easier to use than the new one? And easier up to the point it is really complicated and you have to invest a significant amount of time and money on training?
How bad could be your
Re: (Score:2)
Most people would probably say that the current UI of (Insert Word Processor Here) is better than WordPerfect 5.1, b
Re: (Score:1)
Steep learning curve would have been good. To have a steep learning curve means that you learn quickly. What they had wasn't a steep learning curve. It was a nearly flat one: you learn and learn and don't make much progress at all.
Re: (Score:2)
How bad could be your user interface to lead to such a thing?
It could be the simplest of changes.
Some booking clerk did everything, and then just didn't hit the submit button, on a batch of 20 intakes.
Re: (Score:2)
It's very rare to find an idiot in this world.
Or maybe everyone just seems smart to you? I hear them all the time. While most people are not complete idiots, I come in figurative contact with at least one a day.
Have you ever had to talk to someone who was wondering why a new employee wasn't showing up in the system, only to find out that person was never entered? ok, that part could be understandable. But then the customer goes into an argument telling me that the new employee is physically there, so they should be in the system. Then she went on to
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You cannot make the application simple to use because then it won't do what it needs to do. Make the application powerful and then you pay on the user end side of thing.
One thing that I enjoy about both modern development and enterprise development is that - when done correctly - you can actually do both. With task oriented design rather than data oriented design, each workflow can be exactly as simple as it can be and as powerful as it needs to be for every situation. Its harder and more expensive to build this way, but the savings in training and support can more than make up for it. Convincing people of that fact is part of the reason that a good enterprise sales tea
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is what a right is (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a good thing that the prisoners rights were respected, regardless of the problem being an IT one at root.
It's a bad thing that an IT problem is causing cops to be unable to file paperwork that would result in proper processing of prisoners
Re: (Score:2)
It's even worse that the cops didn't escalate the issue after two days had passed and they were running out of time.
Re: (Score:3)
What's to escalate? When the schedule flat out doesn't work, and your calls to customer service get handed over to a customer svc agent's voice mail, unless they want to talk to you, and they don't... that was what happened with us, I have no idea what happened with them... escalate doesn't help.
Re: (Score:2)
What's to escalate? When the schedule flat out doesn't work, and your calls to customer service get handed over to a customer svc agent's voice mail, unless they want to talk to you, and they don't... that was what happened with us, I have no idea what happened with them... escalate doesn't help.
In that case, an intelligent man wouldn't just have called customer service. They would have called customer service and told them that if the software provider doesn't send help, twenty violent prisoners will get released, and the prison admin will give these prisoners the addresses of anyone they can find at software company to say "thank you" to them in person.
Re: (Score:1)
That would be a threat. But no problems, 3 days later you'd be released and have their address.
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you think violent criminals released from jail due to crappy software would be somehow mad at the software company?
Buy me a beer. (Score:2)
Why do you think violent criminals released from jail due to crappy software would be somehow mad at the software company?
Oh, the terror! "Emergency improve your implementation beyond what I probably paid for or else I'll send over fifteen guys to buy you beer!"
Re: (Score:2)
That assumes that "anyone they can find at software company" is anywhere near the jail.
Re: (Score:2)
What's to escalate? When the schedule flat out doesn't work, and your calls to customer service get handed over to a customer svc agent's voice mail, unless they want to talk to you, and they don't... that was what happened with us, I have no idea what happened with them... escalate doesn't help.
For starters, they could have filed their paperwork without using the new software. It stands to reason there was a system in place before this upgrade. I'm sure they had a plan B, right? If not, then I hope they learned a lesson.
Simple Process (Score:2)
What's to escalate? When the schedule flat out doesn't work, and your calls to customer service get handed over to a customer svc agent's voice mail, unless they want to talk to you, and they don't... that was what happened with us, I have no idea what happened with them... escalate doesn't help.
1) Escalate to the purchasing decision-maker on your end.
2) As purchasing decision-maker, call one or more decision-makers on the other end. Service, but if you don't get through right away, then whoever at the company you have a relationship with (sales rep? development engineer?), who will know who to call.
3) If that fails, call and email company CEO. 3a) if that fails, company board of directors.
4) Document, document, document, succinctly, what occurred in terms of the company's response. If they are
Re: (Score:1)
Doesn't mean it's not stupid.
Re:This is what a right is (Score:4, Insightful)
IT problems don't abridge that right. Police officers having a tough day don't abridge that right.
No, but they should have a backup system to meet the 3 day requirement, regardless of any IT issues.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
A word processor/printed file, or even legibly written handwritten file that is filed so as to be easily accessible, with instructions for its retrieval on the standard system until the file can be stored properly within the standard system?
Re:This is what a right is (Score:4, Funny)
It is what we in the business like to call requirements.
Re: (Score:2)
What's that mythycal backup thing you speak of.
A mechanical typewriter a photocopier, and a manual courier to bring copies for manual filing to all concerned parties, if necessary.
Re: (Score:2)
" "was outdated, antiquated, not easily worked on, but it was familiar," Brown said. "This is a new system and very unfamiliar." "
this being said, I can't really see filing the charges as being more cumbersome than doing the paperwork for letting them go.
on top of that, once they do get around to filing the charges they'll need to go arrest them again. but many of the coppers just skipped the training and perhaps maybe, just maybe, didn't give a fuck if the charges were put into the system or not.
Re: (Score:3)
> this being said, I can't really see filing the charges as being more cumbersome than doing the paperwork for letting them go.
I'm afraid it's not uncommon, especially at first. Handwritten documents have room for describing circumstances, many automated systems do not, or lack the necessary categories and wind up with the documents miscategorized or misdirected when first used. It's certainly common with trouble ticket and budget systems: I'm facing several such cases right now.
Re: (Score:3)
You are correct that nothing abridges that right. (I take the highly deviant and unpopular line that rights are inalienable, that that is why we don't just call them permissions.)
To say that it is an unmitigated good is, though, perhaps not a conclusion you can safely draw. It carries the implication that all contributing causes were also good, which is self-evidently false. The right is good. The requirement that things be properly documented is good. The staffing levels are bad (police officers should be
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Only labeling them terrorists does. Maybe they should have thought of that.
Re: (Score:2)
Guantanamo (Score:1)
"The law is real simple," Judge Rick Magnis from the 283rd Judicial District Court told the paper. "The Constitution in America says you can't hold people without charges."
Except in Guantanamo.
Re: (Score:3)
Really? Have you read the Constitution?
your interpretation is wrong, the Constitution lays the foundation for the US Government and outlines restrictions on the government. It does not grant rights and it does not say "The government can not do this to American Citizens"
For example, Amendment #1
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, an
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
No what I am saying is that the US government can not pick and choose which restrictions it wishes to be bound by.
What you are suggesting is that the US could pass a law that says "All non-citizens must be Christian" or that it would be OK to search, arrest, and detain anyone who is not a US citizen for no other reason than "S/He is not Christian"
If you think about it, allowing the government to do such things can, and more than likely will, lead to the government deciding who is and is not a true "Citizen"
Re: (Score:2)
What you are suggesting is that the US could pass a law that says "All non-citizens must be Christian" or that it would be OK to search, arrest, and detain anyone who is not a US citizen for no other reason than "S/He is not Christian"
I think that's a pretty extreme reading of GP's position.
I mostly agree with you, but you have to admit that there are quite a few instances where the U.S. government grants rights to citizens that are not granted to non-citizens in random places around the world (e.g., right to vote, right to collect various government benefits, etc.).
The main RELEVANT situation to the present discussion is prisoners of war. There are centuries of legal precedent saying that foreign people captured as prisoners of war
Re: (Score:2)
Although referred to as a right, voting is a privilege granted by citizen ship. It used to be granted by land ownership but that changed.
Everyone, every human, has inalienable rights. They are granted by our creator. Governments are created among men and gain there power from the consent of the governed.
Re: (Score:1)
What you are suggesting is that the US could pass a law that says "All non-citizens must be Christian"
What are you even talking about? U.S. law has no effect on non-US citizens. When people engage in war with the US under the Geneva Conventions a special set of rules applies. When people are engaging in war with the US outside the scope of the Geneva Conventions (as in the Guantanamo detainee case) the rules are what you see: humane treatment, but not full-on Geneva Convention status.
You mostly seem to be making up the argument as you go, and paying scant attention to US and international law as it stands
Re: (Score:3)
What are you even talking about? U.S. law has no effect on non-US citizens.
The visitors to our country would disagree with you. I'm pretty sure that if you were shot and maimed by a legal tourist from abroad you would hope the US law applied to them. Or if you were t-boned by a legal tourist from abroad running a red light.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The Constitution at least theoretically lists what the Federal government can do, not things the Federal government can't do (although it emphasizes some of those). Therefore, it is binding on all Federal government activities wherever they may happen, since the Feds have no authorization to do anything except the Constitution.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
What is it with everyone and their dog that they think U.S. laws apply to citizens only? The fuck? Are the people who think that way really that dumb? Protip: law applies to anyone present within the jurisdiction of said law, unless a given law specifically states otherwise. The only group of people that is treated specially within the U.S. Constitution are native people ("Indians").
Re: (Score:1)
Give cops a break! (Score:2, Insightful)
After all, they're not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
What..... (Score:2)
Colorado has about a 25% error rate (Score:4, Interesting)
Simple Solution (Score:2)
Software was missing an option: (Score:2)
Suspect fell down the stairs.
the up side... (Score:2)
15 years ago this story would have been about how some buffoon had released prisoners because they put a tick in the radio button that said "not a prisoner."
Re: (Score:1)