Free Talk Live

Eighteen months after the Patrick administration planned to launch a computer database that would identify street-gang members across the state, not a single local police department has contributed information to the $1.2 million federally funded intelligence system, according to a high-ranking public safety official. The reason, said John A. Grossman, the undersecretary of forensic science and technology, is simple: Cash-strapped police departments are so short-handed that they cannot spare officers to verify their gang data and enter it on computers.