Adoption Blog

Bureaucracy - Ugh!

And so it begins. Today at lunch I went to the courthouse to get a criminal background check/police clearance report for Naomi and I. Naomi's came back clean. But mine, well let's just say I almost fell over when I read it. There were two charges listed. One for assault on a government official and another one for intoxicated and disruptive behavior. I quickly realized that they gave me the wrong report. It turns out it was someone else that had two names, and one of them matched mine.

I informed the gentleman at the counter that there was a mistake and asked him to please retrieve my record. He said he already did so I pointed out the mistake and he said, "all we do is pull records by name and not by any other identifying characteristics." So when they put a name in the computer they just take the first name that comes up. We went round and round over this. I said surely you can scroll through the list of matching names until you find mine. He looked right at me and said "we don't have a scroll feature." Huh? Hello... This isn't rocket science.

The guy tried to convince me that the adoption agency would accept this as clearance. He said that they would see that the birth date didn't match mine and they would know that the person on the report wasn't me. And so I said great, we're making progress here. We both agree that this report is not mine. So now I just need to know how to get my report. He said.... this is your report. Doh! Unbelievable! I actually started looking around for cameras because I thought that maybe this was some kind of sick candid camera joke.

Well, I kept my cool and walked away. When I got out of the office I called CCAI and explained the situation. CCAI was very helpful. They said I shouldn't have gone to the courthouse and told me to go to the Sheriff's Department instead. Fortunately the Sheriff's Department was right around the corner. I walked in, told them what I needed, and they pulled the correct records. Piece of cake. The records were both accurate and clean.

So this is the beginning of the red tape huh? Bureaucracy at it's worst. I just wonder how many other processes are broken over at the courthouse.

Posted by Mark at October 23, 2003 11:02 PM