Had it been up and running as intended, a statewide data-sharing system could have alerted authorities to concerns about a Bedford teen's driving record before the young man was at the wheel when a car crash killed his passenger three weeks ago in Manchester.

But the system — J-ONE, for Justice-One Network Environment, which will enable law enforcement, the courts and corrections to share instant, real-time offender information from arrest to parole — isn't close to completion after more than a decade of work and millions of dollars spent, officials said.

Last week, Goffstown police Capt. Kerry Steckowych said he wouldn't have allowed the dismissal of a speeding charge against Ian Bolser, 19, the driver in the July 28 fatality, to be finalized had he known Bolser was also driving a car that crashed June 10 in Manchester and had faced charges related to traffic stops in Hooksett and Bedford in March and April.

“I would have filed a motion to bring the (speeding) case forward ... for trial,” Steckowych told the Sunday News. Then he could have sought a fine, license suspension and community service for Bolser, Steckowych said.

“It's sad that somebody ended up dying in this particular incident,” Steckowych said. “Who knows how any of these other cases could have impacted that if we had been able to effectively share the information.”

None of the charges in Hooksett and Bedford had resulted in a conviction, so they didn't appear on Bolser's record, Steckowych said. Had the J-ONE system been operating, those charges would have likely been immediately available to law enforcement regardless.

The Goffstown speeding charge was dismissed on July 17, 11 days before the fatal crash, Steckowych said, when it appeared Bolser had been of good behavior for six months as required to drop the charge. Instead, Bolser had been arrested in Hooksett and Bedford during that period.

Bedford police had arrested Bolser on April 29 on a charge of transportation of alcohol by a minor. Police reported he had cash and drug paraphernalia in his possession at the time. That charge was dropped at trial July 24, four days before the fatal crash, according to court records.

In Hooksett, Bolser was scheduled for trial on June 18 on charges of possession of a controlled drug, transporting a controlled drug and speeding stemming from a March 31 traffic stop, Sunday News reported last week. The newspaper said a court clerk said a bench warrant was issued for Bolser when he failed to show up for the court date.

“We were not aware of anything pending in Bedford or Hooksett or anything that happened in Manchester,” Steckowych said.

Andrew Roy killed

Bolser didn't return calls Friday or Saturday, but a week earlier told the New Hampshire Sunday News he had not been drinking before the 6:45 a.m. crash on Interstate 293 July 28 that killed Andrew Roy, 19, of Bedford. Bolser told police he was driving friends home from Hampton Beach, where they had gone the night before. Roy died at the crash scene.

Bolser told the newspaper he fell asleep at the wheel and that police told him his blood tested negative for alcohol and drugs after the crash. State police Sgt. Paul Hunt, who previously said the investigation would be finished last week, didn't return repeated calls.

Although the state started work on the J-ONE system in 2001, it is a long way from being fully operational, according to Deputy Attorney General Ann Rice.

Someone can still be arrested and post bail in the North Country, and that information will not be immediately available to police in southern New Hampshire, Rice said.

If someone is on probation or parole, that is also not always readily available, she said.

Complex project

So far, only little pieces of J-ONE are working, she said. It has taken a long time because it is an extremely complex project, Rice said.

“They are trying to create an integrated communications system and connect all sorts of different hardware and software in an integrated network,” Rice said.

The project has different phases, she said. “A couple have come online, but there is a whole long way to go,” Rice said.

State Rep. John Tholl, R-Whitefield, a retired state trooper, acknowledged that police sometimes operate in the dark during police stops because J-ONE isn't online.

“Now a guy can be convicted of DWI, walk out of the courtroom, get stopped, and if it is within 30 days, it will still show he has a valid license,” he said.

Last September, the U.S. Department of Justice provided a $985,000 grant to expand the J-ONE system to include a notification process for victims, but that's not up and running yet, according to Keith Lohmann, J-ONE's program manager.

The project was allocated a total of about $10 million in federal funds, and so far roughly $2.5 million has been spent, he said. Lohmann said $5 million is under contract, and he expects the entire system will be operational sometime in fiscal year 2014 or 2015.

In 2008, the New Hampshire Union Leader reported that J-ONE got a $2.9 million federal grant in 2004, but the money sat around so long that the grant was set to expire when the Executive Council approved two big contracts, $1.5 million for the police end of the system and $868,000 more for work at the court system. Lohmann said he didn't know what caused that delay. “That was before my time,” Lohmann said.

Assistant Safety Commissioner Earl Sweeney said the delay has mostly been due to the complexity of the effort and the limited resources that could be applied to it.

“The (Department of Information Technology) has been doing its best, but while all of this is going on, other state agencies have had their own priorities,” Sweeney said.

The information processing world changes so rapidly and is in such a constant state of flux with so many disparate players that it causes fits and starts in any program that tries to interconnect them all, Sweeney said.

“Courts and corrections had to modernize their information systems to meet their own needs and priorities and cope with budget crises, and while these were ongoing, J-ONE has had to work around them,” Sweeney said.

Local and county agencies have also made changes to their information systems for similar reasons, Sweeney said.

“People scoffed when told that J-ONE might prove to be a decades-long effort, but it is turning into just that,” he said.

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Nancy West may be reached at nwest@unionleader.com.