Category Archives: Public Records

Interesting criminal records research today. A customer called us after running a nationwide criminal search through our Premium service. She wanted to know why her ex-husband Richie’s (not his real name) multiple convictions did not appear.

We asked her for the regions where she expected to find records. They included San Diego, CA, and Miami, FL.

First we checked the San Diego County Superior Court online database. Our Premium database also includes this resource, but it helps to double-check directly at the source. This is one reason our website is so helpful for criminal records research. Both free and fee-based databases are available from the same interface.

No records appeared for San Diego County.

Next we checked for Miami-Dade County, Florida criminal records and infractions using this database. Two cases appeared.  Unfortunately the date of birth listed in the Miami records did not match the DOB that our customer ran in her search.  And though the name and middle initial matched the record, we still didn’t know if these records were for the correct person.

We then took a look at federal district court records nationwide through the PACER service. This proved to be the lynchpin in solving the matter. We located a filing in San Diego County relating to an immigration board appeal case. It wasn’t a criminal case, but it did list one party as Richie. And the clincher? The exact name matched the records we found in Miami-Dade County and our customer’s name appeared on one of the docket entries, as the (then) wife of the subject.  So even though the birth date for the Miami record was different than what we’d been given, we knew it was the right person.  What’s likely is that this person either lied to his wife about his true birth date or lied to the police.

We ran another nationwide search using our own Premium database, but this time we input a partial first name as a non-exact name search (e.g., entering “RIC will give you results for Rick, Ricky, Richie, Richard, etc.).  We also input the new birth year we’d found. We received 15 records, all from Miami-Dade County, showing a long criminal history of drug sales, resisting arrest, felony weapons use, and other charges. The new date of birth we found linked the name to additional AKA’s, each with alternate birth dates, and each with convictions.

It seems this person is something of a chameleon, which explains why our customer was not able to get the full picture by doing a Premium search on his exact name and (incorrect) date of birth.  By using both the Premium and the free databases, we got to the bottom of the matter.

On Monday, October 29th, 2012 our site was hit by a major wave… of visitors!

Recent improvements made to our public records site have boosted our Google rankings.  This is great news for Search Systems, but the sudden influx of traffic on our site did have a down side.  Our servers are not accustomed to so many visitors on the site at once, which has resulted in a slowdown the last few days.

We are addressing the issue by bringing on more servers, which will increase our capacity and redistribute the load. If you experience delays while navigating the site, please accept our apologies.  We are working as fast as we can to optimize the site to accommodate all of our new friends.

Also, if you notice that any of the database resources from the Northeast are down, it could be due to the hurricane.

Please have patience and we’re sure these issues will be resolved shortly.

Most researchers who use Search Systems to find court records know that we provide links to court databases at the municipal, county, and state levels. While those are key databases, don’t overlook the federal court system. Federal civil and criminal cases are handled by the U.S. District Courts.

So how does one research federal cases?  There is only one resource – the PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) system.  PACER is a service of the United States Judiciary, and operated by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.  The information found on PACER is not available anywhere else. This is why we provide helpful links to many PACER access points, such as on our main Court Records page.

If you pay for a nationwide criminal record search from any online service, you’ll find that the results will not include any convictions for federal crimes.  This is because federal cases will ONLY appear on the PACER system.  It is well worth your time to set up a PACER account and run the names of your subjects through this system.  Not only will you find federal civil and criminal cases… PACER includes ALL bankruptcy filings in the U.S.

So how much does PACER cost and how does it work?

Fortunately, PACER does not charge a sign-up fee, but you do need to establish an account.  Their search and download charges are quite reasonable at 10 cents per page.  You can obtain dockets and documents within the same search. So if your name search brings back 3 pages of results, you will be charged 30 cents. If you open the case details for one particular name, and the docket is 2 pages long, you will be charged another 20 cents.  Then if you want to open the document for one item, and it is 10 pages long, you will be charged another $1.00.  You total thus far would be $1.50.  Hardly breaking the bank.

What’s more, PACER will cap your billing for single documents and case-specific reports.  So if one document was written by a long-winded attorney and came out at 75 pages, you will only be charged the cap of $3.00 for the document.  Basically they charge you for the first 30 pages but you get the entire document.

PACER invoices customers quarterly. You can set up your account with a credit card for faster registration and automatic billing.  PACER includes a field on the search page where you can input a client code.  This is helpful if you need to conduct research on a number of matters and you need to track the expenses for each of your clients or projects.

There are a few different ways to search the PACER system.  You can search all of their courts at once, using the PACER Case Locator or you can search at individual court PACER websites. Many states are divided into federal districts. For example, Alabama has a Middle District, Northern District, and Southern District U.S. District Court.

For U.S. Bankruptcy Courts, you can search by name, case number, Social Security number, or tax identification number. For the U.S. District Courts, you can search by name, case number, or filing date range. For the U.S. Courts of Appeals, you can search by name or case number.

If you’ve used our public records site, you’re probably aware that we offer over 55,000 links to free online databases.

How did they all get there?  One at a time.

Since 1997 we’ve looked for available public record databases on the Internet at the national, state, county, and city levels.  When we find a database, we test it and write a description for that link explaining what you can input and what the database provides.  Then we put that up on our directory at SearchSystems.net.

Along with accumulating databases for our directory, we also regularly test the existing database links using special software that detects broken and redirected links.  On average, about 250 links in our directory go bad each week.

This isn’t our fault – this is due to the government agencies that control these databases.  They often change their URL structures or redesign their sites and interior pages.  Sometimes their databases go offline for maintenance or other reasons.

So fixing broken and redirected links is a full-time job here at Search Systems, and a natural part of URL database management.  We rely not only on our link-checking software, but also on users like you to report problems with the databases.  This is why you’ll see a small blue link titled “Report Broken Link” after every database description in our directory.  Click on that and you’ll arrive at a page like this one where you can report to us any problems, such as a link that goes to an error page or non-useful page, a database listed under the wrong category, or a database that simply doesn’t produce results.

While we test the URLs, we don’t have the resources to run test searches on all the databases in our directory.  So if a link gets you to the right search page, but you are not able to get any results from that database, please let us know.  Use the Report Broken Link feature, or send us an email using the Contact Us feature.  We can’t fix an outside website’s database, but we can try to contact them.  If we conclude that their database is not functioning properly, we might remove that resource from our directory and place it on a temporary hold until the database is functioning again.

There are instances where a user reports a broken link to us and we find that it works.  This may indicate that the link was down temporarily and came back online by the time we tested.  Or it could indicate that the database works better with certain web browsers.  We encourage users who submit broken link reports to include their email address so we can check back with them to find out which operating system they are using, and which web browser.  Sometimes that can help us troubleshoot the problem if the database itself is not really broken.

So if you stumble across a broken link while using our directory, don’t despair.  Send us a notice and typically we can fix it quickly.