WI Sex Offender GPS Tracking System Fails
The global positioning system the state Corrections Department uses to track released sex offenders failed Tuesday morning. BI Inc., headquartered in Boulder, Colo., told the Corrections Department that its nationwide GPS tracking system for 16,000 offenders, including approximately 300 in Wisconsin, was down due to a system malfunction. Story from WISN.
Staff at the Corrections Department’s monitoring center discovered the system was down and immediately contacted BI, Inc.
Wisconsin Corrections Department spokeswoman Linda Eggert said Wisconsin prison officials had local police and probation agents detain about 140 offenders until the system was back up and their whereabouts during the outage could be confirmed.
In southeastern Wisconsin, that meant the various police and sheriff’s departments had to help track down at least 20 offenders in Waukesha County, seven in Walworth County six in the city of Milwaukee and a handful in others.
The state Department of Corrections told 12 News the offenders themselves wouldn’t have realized the system was even down.
They system was back up Tuesday evening.
“Thanks to our center’s emergency response plan and great cooperation from local law enforcement agencies across the state and our field staff, the situation was managed safely and efficiently with the number one priority being public safety,” Department of Corrections Secretary Rick Raemisch said in a news release.
The state is still investigating the cause, saying the first priority was getting a handle on where the offenders were located.
“Let’s get these individuals rounded up, make sure that our community is safe, get the system back online, and then look at what happened and determine how to prevent it from happening again,” said Tim LeMond of the Department of Corrections.
WISN 12 News was told the electronic bracelets themselves continued to record the locations of the offender even when the system was down, so if any of them were in violation during that period, they could still be punished.
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