TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – The Chairman of the Leon County Commission called an emergency meeting for Monday, after a switch to a new database went haywire.<\/p>\n
The database includes records for criminal and civil court cases and is used by the Clerk, State Attorney, Public Defender and the Leon County Sheriff\u2019s office. <\/p>\n
Leon County Administrator Vincent Long said the county was upgrading components of its 30-year-old jail management system, when it experienced \u201csubstantial operational disruption during the migration to its new system.\u201d <\/p>\n
The botched transition has forced jail and court personnel to resort to paper copies and there are reports of improper documents, duplicate charges and even \u201cghost cases\u201d in the system. <\/p>\n
State Attorney Jack Campbell said the system swap has resulted in more than a thousand errors.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt re-opened cases. It closed cases. It filed new cases,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cSome people didn\u2019t know that they were even impacted, but others spent more days in jail than they should have. That\u2019s a big deal.\u201d <\/p>\n
Campbell said in one case, the defendant stayed in jail six days longer than they should have.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to put the fire out,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cIt\u2019s taking a lot of effort to go in and decide what is an error and what is real.\u201d <\/p>\n
A Leon County Sheriff\u2019s Office spokesperson said they are not aware of anyone who has been improperly released from jail because of the problem, but they also could not specify how many cases or people have been impacted by it. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are literally printing out documents to distribute to the judge, to the attorneys and everyone involved to ensure that due process happens as efficiently as we can considering the circumstances,\u201d LCSO\u2019s Shonda Knight said.<\/p>\n
An emergency meeting of the Leon County Commission is now scheduled for Monday at 6 p.m. Commission Chair Christian Caban says he\u2019ll propose bringing in a new vendor to handle integration of the new system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to inform the public what\u2019s happened, what\u2019s occurred, what we\u2019re doing to fix it,\u201d Commissioner Caban said. \u201cI\u2019ve completely lost trust in our existing vendor. This is their job. We hired them on behalf of our taxpayers to make sure these issues don\u2019t happen. And it\u2019s completely failing.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue taking the necessary actions until we restore the full operability of the system and make sure that all of our judicial partners are confident in its reliability,\u201d Leon County Administrator Vince Long said in a statement released Friday.<\/p>\n
State Attorney Jack Campbell says changes could come as soon as this weekend, but they will likely have to continue fixing mistakes caused by the new system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re turning the old system back on and turning off the new one. I have every expectation that we\u2019ll be back to reliable on Monday,\u201d Campbell said.<\/p>\n
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