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Sex offenders won't wear Texas ankle monitor

After winning a bid for half of Florida, a Houston company withdraws from contract consideration.

By STEVE BOUSQUET
Published September 8, 2005

TALLAHASSEE - In a surprise twist to Florida's fast-growing sex offender tracking system, a Texas firm tentatively hired to help run the program has quit.

The withdrawal by Satellite Tracking of People of Houston came after more than two weeks of field tests of its new one-piece ankle bracelet, known as BluTag. A contract with the state Department of Corrections was contingent on successful testing of the global positioning system devices.

The state declined to say whether problems arose in the tests. STOP declined to comment.

STOP's vice president for business development, Greg Utterback, sent the state a terse letter Tuesday stating only that the company "is requesting to withdraw from contract consideration." STOP's chief executive, Steve Logan, declined to comment.

STOP was one of two companies that submitted low bids to expand electronic tracking of sex offenders under the Jessica Lunsford Act, which includes a three-year, $3.9-million project to track up to 1,200 offenders. The law, which took effect one week ago, was passed in memory of the 9-year-old Homosassa girl who was abducted and killed in February.

STOP withdrew from the nation's most ambitious electronic monitoring program after winning the support of Jessica Lunsford's father, Mark Lunsford. He endorsed STOP's BluTag device as "the latest and best technology."

But STOP claimed Florida's bid specifications for ankle bracelet devices were worded in such a way as to require two-piece devices that could favor rival vendors, including a Pasco County company, Pro Tech Monitoring of Odessa.

Angry at the bid language, STOP filed a protest in July and briefly brought the program to a halt. After the state removed the words STOP did not like, the company dropped its protest and made the lowest bid of seven firms.

The Corrections Department split the state into two regions, north and south. STOP was the low bidder for the northern half, including Pasco, Hernando and Citrus, the county that was home to Jessica Lunsford and to John Couey, a 46-year-old sex offender charged with her death.

G4S Justice Services, a subsidiary of London's Group 4 Securicor, has been hired to provide tracking in the southern half, which includes Pinellas and Hillsborough counties.

Corrections Department spokesman Robby Cunningham said STOP's exit would not disrupt the venture, which has thrust Florida to the forefront of a growing national movement by states to use GPS tracking devices to watch sex offenders and sexual predators.

"We're ready to go no matter what," Cunningham said. "We do have technology on the shelf to be able to handle this."

Cunningham said the available equipment will come from Pro Tech Monitoring, which is in the first year of a three-year contract that will pay $2.4-million this year. But Pro Tech's price was the second-highest of the seven firms competing for the GPS expansion.

Pro Tech already has a contract to provide tracking devices to the state prison system. The state will buy from that contract while it tests the equipment offered by the north region's next-lowest bidder, iSecuretrac of Omaha, Neb.

STOP has contracts in Tennessee and Georgia, and was recently chosen to provide BluTags for 180 high-risk sex offenders in Orange County, Calif. But Pro Tech president Steve Chapin raised questions about STOP's one-piece device in an interview in July.

"They have a brand new device . . . It's really an unproven device," Chapin said.

State bid documents state: "Final contract execution pending field test acceptance." The tests began on Aug. 9, followed by a 10-day "cure period" in which a low-bid vendor had the opportunity to fix any bugs that are discovered.

- Steve Bousquet can be reached at 850 224-7263 or at bousquet@sptimes.com

[Last modified September 8, 2005, 08:08:02]