Sheriff's office cuts daily arrest log, citing scam: Editorial

In the past week, a key resource for tracking local arrests has gone away, making it that much harder to report on police activity and public safety in Alameda County.

For decades, the Alameda County Sheriff's Office provided an on-demand online arrest log showing all arrests in the county within 24 hours of the search.

This month, that tool disappeared. The Scanner set out to find out why.

First: Why does it matter?

Daily arrest logs help reporters know what police are doing and what cases to ask about. It doesn't cover all police activity, but it's a start.

Being able to review a list of inmates, and see their charges, within hours of an arrest helps us understand what crimes are happening when people want to know about them most.

The decision to remove the daily arrest log is especially challenging now that many local agencies have privatized police radio traffic, which Americans had used since the 1940s to know what police were doing and where they were doing it.

Without radio traffic, there continues to be no way to consistently and reliably know what police are doing fast enough to see it for ourselves. That makes it much harder to determine what actually happened.

The county's online arrest log was the primary way to learn about Berkeley arrests quickly enough for them to be timely. As it stands, this information is now delayed for several days — when, for most people, the news cycle has moved on.

The arrest log also helped fill in gaps, providing basic details that are public but not always available from police, particularly as short staffing means fewer resources to handle media inquiries as officers juggle more work on the street.

So why did the online arrest log go away?

The Alameda County Sheriff's Office (ACSO) let us know that scammers had begun targeting family members of inmates and asking them to send money to a fraudulent program that claimed to get them out of jail on an ankle monitor.

How were they finding inmate names? Through the online log.

As a result, ACSO removed the longstanding 24-hour lookup tool to "reduce the potential for misuse," said Sgt. Roberto Morales, sheriff's office spokesman.

The department has now launched an investigation into the scam and hopes to hear from anyone who has been affected.

In a notice earlier this month, the sheriff's office emphasized that no legitimate law enforcement agency will ever call to demand payment for ankle monitors, payment in lieu of arrest or compensation for related services.

Anyone who believes they are being targeted should hang up immediately and call the Alameda County Sheriff's Office non-emergency line at 510-667-7721, authorities said.

They can also report fraudulent activity to the Federal Trade Commission.

One red flag is to be asked for payment via Bitcoin, Western Union or other electronic transfers, MoneyPak/Green Dot, Vanilla Reload or gift cards, the sheriff's office said.

To make matters worse, scammers are using "increasingly sophisticated tactics," including spoofing local phone numbers and using the names of actual sheriff's office personnel, authorities said.

"Even if the caller sounds convincing because they (1) call from a local number, (2) refer to you by name, or (3) have other personal information about you, it is a scam!" the sheriff's office said in the recent alert. "Play it safe and never agree to send money or meet up with someone from an unsolicited contact."

It should go without saying: The Berkeley Scanner does not want anyone to fall victim to a scam.

And we understand there are often competing needs that guide these decisions.

But we do advocate for a solution that preserves timely access to dwindling public information while also protecting the public from being targeted by bad actors.

Fortunately, we are in touch with local authorities to see what solutions might still be available. Those conversations are ongoing.

But this change has not come in a vacuum.

Alameda County already has some of the most onerous access requirements in the region for online court records, and some of the stricter rules about media coverage in our courthouses.

And last year's police radio encryption continues to restrict what the public knows about local police activity. Many things we used to know have disappeared into a black box, never to be seen again. This impacts Bay Area reporting on a daily basis.

In case you haven't heard, journalism is struggling. The industry has repeatedly tried to reinvent itself to meet shifting reader demands. That, too, is a work in progress.

But the less useful we are to readers, the less incentive there is to support the local reporting that's left.

We hope to avoid losing yet another tool for providing timely information, particularly when it comes to public safety, if there is any viable alternative.