The little things.

[bella]

Not you could. You will. <3

[Shay]

Aww.. I'm glad I could help without even realizing it.

[Froot Loop]

Getting to sleep next to Chex!

[chex]

I woke up and checked the board from my phone before getting out of bed, and saw that a bunch of spammers shared a birthday with me. I was going to delete those smurf after I had my coffee and got on my laptop. When I did, bells had beaten me to it.

[Shay]

Midday naps.

[sizz]

I set a price alert thing for a flight to Girona at the end of June, so now I get reminded like every day that I get to go abroad in the summer

[chex]

You've misspelled New York.

[sizz]

I wish!

[chex]

One of the workers at Corn Pop's school just called me to check in and see how I'm enjoying my new job.

[Shay]

Through my superb investigative skills and strong desire to solve puzzles, today I stopped a convicted felon in his tracks who had been getting away with being a felon scott free for the last 25 years. I wish I could put into words the awesomeness that today was. Huge huge win!

[chex]

Dude, that sounds awesome! Are we allowed details?

[Shay]

I can't give any names or details about our databases, but I'll try to explain a bit. I apologize in advance as this may get quite long to explain.

I'm not sure how other state databases work, but in Nebraska the State Patrol is the central repository for all of the criminal fingerprint arrest cards in Nebraska. Regardless of what agency arrested the individual, any fingerprints get sent to us to verify their identity, compare with the FBI to attach any additional national criminal history information, and plug into the database so that when other agencies throughout the US do a criminal history check, they'll have all the information on our criminals.

Downside to this process/database is it is only fingerprint based arrests and only reflects activity if we've gotten a fingerprint card. If someone commits a crime but is not fingerprinted, or the fingerprint card does not get sent to us, we have "no record" of the offense... sorta.

Thankfully for those of us in the Permits department, we have the luxury of using the court system databases. So we can see/use criminal cases even where an individual did not get fingerprinted or we did not receive a card. Sadly, we're the only subdivision in my building that is allowed to use these court systems in our background checks. Foster care, emergency placement, state name checks, etc... are only allowed to use the fingerprint database.

So while conducting my normal background check on my applicant, I found a very strange case which showed he was charged with burglary which is a class 3 felony, but it didn't list any kind of conviction information, nor whether it was disposed as dismissed or prosecutors declined to file. That is typically something you can see in every case if it shows up under the individual. It just said it was closed and that was it. Typically if there is no conviction, we can't use it or write it down, so it gets ignored. But this didn't sit right with me and I had to know what was going on with this case. Since it's a felony charge, I should be able to check our central repository as all serious offenses should be fingerprinted. However, we had no record of this arrest. So I checked the FBI's database as arrest cards back in the day were sometimes sent directly to the FBI. They didn't have any record of it either. So this is super strange now. I did a bunch of researching and contacting people, and eventually I found someone at the District court who was able to locate the old case from 1989. I asked her to send it to me digitally and it turned out to be 35 pages long.

I was able to discern from it that my applicant was charged and plead guilty to class 3 felony burglary, meaning he's a felon and has been a felon since then. This is great for me in the permits department, but it still doesn't solve our problem how we get this guy to be flagged as a felon if we don't have any arrest card to plug him into our central repository. As I'm going through the 35 page case record, I came across an insert where the court takes the fingerprints of their four right fingers after being sentenced. I was able to take these fingerprints to our AFIS team who was able to get a clear copy of them and positively match them to our applicant. Even though the fingerprints in the court case was only four fingers, because we require our applicants to be fingerprinted at the time of applying for a concealed carry permit, we were able to take all ten of his fingerprints and create a new arrest card with all of the old arrest data. This means we were able to get him put into our central repository and now he is correctly flagged as a felon.

I have also contacted the FBI and the ATF as this individual is clearly living outside of his rights.

Needless to say, this guy is in for a rude awakening.

[chex]

Alex Cross has nothing on our Shay!

[Shay]

I maaaaaaay have had to Google Alex Cross...

Though, truth be told.. My friend Crystal and I are currently in the works of trying to become Private Investigators. To me this is extremely exciting and also not a field I ever thought I would see myself exploring. But it just makes perfect sense. Out of every job I've ever had, there's always been one underlying common denominator and it was always the part I loved the most about each job - solving problems. It's not going to happen overnight, obviously. But we have a lot of study materials and some connections to get us in the door. I'm pretty hopeful for the future.

[chex]

It wasn't exactly the most obvious of pop culture references.

And that sounds like an awesome job for you!

[Moe]

Was trying to play cars with my nephew, but he didn't want to share his cars, so he yelled at me and said "you're naughty uncle moemoe!!"

[Clarence]

You should get a toy tow truck and tow away all his cars and show him how the real world works.

[LaLou]

My daughter invited me to a live concert of The Common Linnets. Yay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2r3FcEiS-g

[chex]

Telling a friend to go sit in his ball sweat before hanging up the phone.

[Wesley]

I was driving a big ol' box truck yesterday, and shortly after a friend of mine told me to stew in my own ball sweat, a car with a bunch of kids around eight to ten years old drove past, the kids waving frantically and doing the arm-pumping motion that means,"Blow Your Horn!" I obliged them by giving the air horn a couple of blasts and they extatically smiled and kept freaking out as they drove off into the evening. That totally made my day!