FINDER® exists because of a specific gap in law enforcement information sharing, identified after a specific failure. Twenty years later we are still working on the same problem: the records that would tell an officer who they are talking to are usually sitting in somebody else’s system.
This is the documented sequence that led to FINDER being founded.
A Broward County Sheriff’s deputy stopped Mohamed Atta and cited him for driving without a license, with an order to appear in court. The deputy had no access to the federal watch list Atta was on.
Atta obtained a Florida driver’s license, then failed to appear. A criminal bench warrant was issued for his arrest.
Atta was stopped again for a traffic violation in Delray Beach, a few miles over the county line. Because low-level warrant information was not shared between Florida counties, those officers did not know he was wanted, and had no access to his watch list status.
With the warrant still outstanding, Atta boarded a flight in Portland, Maine, using the Florida license. Authorities believe he was at the controls of American Airlines Flight 11.
Federal intelligence sharing gets the attention. The gap that mattered here was lower down: traffic stops, crime reports, calls for service, administrative reports, field contacts with people who were never arrested or were charged with something minor.
That is the bulk of what a police department generates, it is where patterns actually live, and in 2001 almost none of it moved between agencies. The failure to share it from everyday operations has been identified as a contributing factor in the September 11 attacks.
Two decades on, the underlying problem has not gone away. Systems were bought at different times from different vendors with no expectation they would ever need to talk to each other.
FINDER began as LETTR, a 501(c)(3) funded with budget money from Florida sheriffs’ departments and federal grant dollars. The people who needed it paid to build it.
FINDER was founded by law enforcement officers, and we work exclusively for the public safety sector. Nothing here is a commercial product retrofitted for policing.
Value comes from agencies contributing to a shared pool. What your agency adds sharpens every other agency’s results, and what they add sharpens yours.
Two decades of writing integrations for systems other people built. That library is the reason a new agency can join without replacing anything.
Records your agency contributes remain your agency’s records. Sharing runs through agreements your agency signs, not through default settings. Every search is attributable to a named user with a stated purpose.
We do not sell your data, and we are not trying to become the system of record. Your RMS is your system of record. Our job is making the information in it useful to the officer working the case, including the officer in the next county.
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Supporting law enforcement for over 20 years.
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