CJ Leads gives law enforcement an edge on crime

It's a new way to fight crime in our state. Today, law enforcement agencies around the state unveiled a new computer system that will help keep you safe.

For years, police on T.V. crime dramas used futuristic technology to catch criminals. Today at the law enforcement training center of pitt community college I saw some of that technology become a reality.

Meet CJ Leads. It's the newest technology that will allow law enforcement agencies across north carolina to access the criminal record of any offender in the state from the same database.

"CJ Leads is going to help make our citizens safe because it's going to help keep our law enforcement officers safer. what we've built is a data integration system that incorporates all 41 million files that the state of north carolina has on its criminal offenders." Says David McCoy, State Controller

CJ Leads has up to date information from the department of motor vehicles, giving law enforcement an up to date picture of any previous offender with a driver's license. It can pinpoint the locations of offenders who are electronically monitored with ankle bracelets. CJ Leads can also provide officers with an 'offender alert' that will alert them when an offender has a change in legal status. This program will give officers an entirely new way to fight crime, making it easier to keep all of us safe.

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GREENVILLE, N.C. -- A criminal tracking data-base system will be rolled out in several eastern Carolina counties on Tuesday.

Law enforcement officials in Beaufort, Greene, Hyde, Martin, Pitt, Tyrrell and Washington counties will get access to the CJ LEADS program. It stands for Criminal Justice Law Enforcement Automated Data Services.

Kick-off events will be held on Tuesday at Pitt Community College and on Wednesday at Beaufort County Community College.

The program integrates information from multiple law enforcement agencies into one place.

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NEW BERN, N.C - A new program aimed at helping law enforcement organize and access information is on-line across the state, including here in the east.

It's called CJLEADS and stands for Criminal Justice Law Enforcement Automated Data Services.

It cost the state $17 million to develop and an additional $8 million every year it's in use.  It’s all paid for by the state, local law enforcement doesn't have to pay a dime.

"The state has seven different systems that it has right now.  They involve seven different passwords and seven different sets of standards," said State Controller David McCoy.

Up to this point, "simplicity" was certainly not the best way to describe how local law enforcement gathered and then disseminated their information, but "simplicity" is exactly what McCoy says CJLEADS is all about.

"What we've done is consolidate all that information into one password.  Officers can go to this particular system and grab all the information," said McCoy.

The program was designed to bring four main law enforcement databases together, proving information like, outstanding warrants, arrest history, gang activity and even the sex offender registry in one place.

"Some folks, as we know, have a rather lengthy history and having to pull that from all those different data systems wasn't the best use of their time," said McCoy.

It puts all that information together and makes it web accessible, meaning law enforcement can access it quickly and from practically anywhere.

It also warns police if they're about to approach a dangerous person, telling them to take caution.

Michelle Amerson, senior crime analyst with the New Bern Police Department, say the program is long overdue.

"Normally, what we were having to do when we were kind of gathering this information is we're having to go to all the different sites, so this cuts it all down, it's going to be great," said Amerson.

We're just now getting a program like this because figuring out how to gather the information from each database has been a problem.

They started getting all the databases to play well together back in 2010 and though this is state-wide, each local agency including the New Bern Police Department, will, individually, decide whether they want to use CJLEADS.

Developers say it will be fully operational all across the state by August.