The cities of Dayton and Columbus as well as Everytown For Gun Safety settled a four years-long court battle this week with the state of Ohio over the criminal background check system. The program is a well-known protection to ensure people with serious criminal convictions aren’t able to purchase a firearm, but it’s also used to ensure they aren’t hired to a position of trust, like a teacher or police officer.
But that database is only as useful as its data.
In court, the cities argued Ohio’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation was failing to meet its obligation to collect information and maintain the database. State law requires BCI to collect information for the system “from wherever procurable,” and designates the agency as the clearinghouse for Ohio’s criminal records.
The cities’ initial complaint allows that court clerks have a role, too. After all, who else knows better when a case has been adjudicated? But attorneys for the cities argued “many (clerks) complain that BCI rejects that information on technical grounds; and, for the clerks that simply do not report or fail to do so in a timely manner, they do so with apparent impunity from BCI.”