Authorities are investigating a charge that Gordon Brock, police chief in the St. Louis suburb of Bel-Ridge, inappropriately deleted the arrest record of another chief’s grandson from an areawide computer database, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Regional Justice Information Service (REJIS), suspended Brock’s access after checking out an anonymous tip.
“If they decide that I need to resign because this makes the city look bad, I don’t have a problem with that,” Brock said. “I’m pretty depressed over this.” Chief Thomas O’Connor of another suburb, Maryland Heights, said officers depend on the completeness of REJIS data. If “an officer making a traffic stop doesn’t have accurate information, you may have just allowed that guy to be murdered,” he said. “It’s like a sacred covenant, requiring honesty and integrity. If you go messing around with those things, you should pay the price.” David Klinger, a professor of criminology and a former Los Angeles police officer, said: “In our society, we have decided that we want accurate records when people are taken into custody.”
Link: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/F18D524D248CFA6F86