On the morning of September 16, 2013, contractor Aaron Alexis, operating with a Secret Clearance, used his facility badge to access the grounds of the Navy Yard in Washington DC, shoot 15 people and kill 12 in a tragic mass shooting. On his clearance application he claimed to never have been arrested or convicted of a felony. In reality, he was arrested three times in six years in different states: in 2004 in Washington State for shooting out car tires, in 2008 in Georgia for disorderly conduct, and in 2010 in Texas for discharging a weapon inside city limits. While the 2004 arrest was for shooting out car tires with a high-powered weapon, that charge was pleaded down to misdemeanor criminal mischief, thus highlighting the importance of arrest vs conviction information in an investigation.
ClearForce could have alerted on the multi-state arrests in real time, enabling an investigation that would have allowed them to withdraw his access to the Navy Yard and possibly avert a tragedy. Additionally, ClearForce archives all alerts and outcomes of investigations. This could have allowed an investigator to see previous alerts and a holistic view of the pattern of behavior.