When Brian Golsby raped and murdered 21-year-old Ohio State University student Reagan Tokes on February 8, 2017, he was wearing a GPS ankle bracelet. The device recorded his movements with sub-minute precision — tracking him as he circled her workplace, followed her to her car, and drove her to Scioto Grove Metro Park where he shot her. Every data point was captured. None of it was monitored in real time.

Eight years later, Mordecia Black cut off his GPS ankle bracelet in February 2025 and vanished. Despite a warrant and multiple police encounters over the following months, no one tracked him down. On June 4, he broke into Patrick Heringer’s Over-the-Rhine home and fatally stabbed the 46-year-old gym owner in front of his wife.

These two cases — separated by eight years but connected by the same systemic failure — finally forced Ohio’s hand. On June 10, 2026, the Ohio House passed House Bill 667 in a 96-2 vote, mandating real-time, 24/7 GPS monitoring for violent offenders on post-release control. The bill now sits in the Ohio Senate.

What Went Wrong: GPS Data Without Real-Time Eyes

The Golsby case laid bare a fundamental gap in how Ohio used GPS ankle bracelets. According to court filings from Estate of Tokes v. Dept. of Rehab. & Corr., the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC) outfitted Golsby with an ankle monitor as a condition of his post-release control after serving six years for robbery and attempted rape. The device could provide DRC with his exact location “contemporaneously with his movements.” DRC also imposed a curfew — but never programmed the monitor for automatic curfew violation alerts.

Between December 2016 and January 2017, Golsby violated his post-release conditions three separate times. DRC did not arrest him or impose more restrictive conditions for any of those violations. His GPS data went unreviewed until after Tokes was dead.

The Columbus Dispatch reported at the time that Ohio’s GPS monitors were “mainly used after the act” — to retroactively place offenders near crime scenes, not to prevent crimes in progress. Parole officers weren’t watching in real time, and even when violations occurred, alerts weren’t always immediate.

The Heringer Case: Cut Off, Disappeared, Killed Again

Patrick Heringer’s murder exposed a different but equally lethal failure mode. Mordecia Black had served over eight years in prison and was released in January 2025 under post-release control with an ankle monitor. After six contacts with parole officers between January 10 and February 11, Black left his halfway house and cut off his GPS ankle bracelet on or around February 19, 2025.

A warrant was issued within 24 hours. But according to a WCPO investigative report, local police discovered Black’s parole violations during a domestic disturbance call in April — but did not arrest him. A second warrant was issued in May for a burglary. Still no arrest. On June 3, the night before Heringer’s murder, a hotel employee called 911 about Black; officers made contact but he gave a false name and left.

“My husband was murdered by a man who cut off his ankle monitor in February, committed another burglary in May, and was still walking free in June,” Sarah Heringer wrote on Facebook. “Cincinnati’s systems knew — and did nothing.”

Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval acknowledged the failure publicly: “When he cut his ankle monitor, law enforcement should have been notified immediately, and he should have been tracked down. That this didn’t happen is unacceptable.”

What Ohio HB 667 Requires

House Bill 667, sponsored by State Rep. Cindy Abrams (R-Harrison), targets the specific failures that enabled both murders. The legislation mandates:

• Single-vendor real-time GPS monitoring — Ohio DRC must contract with one vendor for 24/7 real-time GPS ankle bracelet monitoring of violent offenders, replacing the fragmented system where eight different companies provided 133 monitors with inconsistent monitoring standards
• Crime-scene correlation capability — The GPS system must interface with a statewide database, enabling automatic cross-referencing of offender locations with reported crimes
• Exclusion zone enforcement — Automated alerts when offenders enter prohibited areas (something DRC failed to configure for Golsby)
• Curfew monitoring — Real-time curfew compliance tracking with immediate violation alerts
• 48-hour warrant entry — Post-release control violation warrants must be entered into law enforcement databases (LEADS) within 48 hours
• 911 center notification — Local dispatch must be notified when warrants are issued for absconders
• Greater judicial discretion — Judges can send repeat or noncompliant offenders back to prison

“This legislation will save lives,” Abrams stated after the 96-2 House vote. “Without public safety, nothing else matters.”

Why “Real-Time” GPS Monitoring Is the Central Issue

The distinction between retrospective GPS tracking and real-time GPS monitoring is not a minor technical detail — it is the difference between a surveillance tool and a public safety system.

Retrospective tracking records location data that someone reviews later, typically after a crime has already occurred. This was the model Ohio used with Golsby — his GPS ankle bracelet tracked everything, but no one was watching. Real-time monitoring triggers immediate alerts when pre-set conditions are violated: exclusion zones, curfew times, tamper events, or loss of connectivity.

The FBI’s CJIS Security Policy and NIST frameworks emphasize that electronic monitoring devices must maintain continuous chain-of-custody integrity — not just log data, but actively enforce supervision conditions. HB 667’s single-vendor mandate addresses this directly by eliminating the accountability gaps that arise when eight different companies operate under different standards.

A large NIJ-funded study of Florida offenders found that GPS monitoring reduces the risk of failure under community supervision by approximately 31% (NIJ, 2011). But that reduction depends on active supervision — officers responding to alerts, agencies enforcing conditions, and systems that flag tamper events the moment they happen.

The International Parallel: Moldova’s GPS Failure and a Father’s Murder

Ohio’s legislative response arrived against the backdrop of an even more stark GPS monitoring failure 6,000 miles away. In August 2026, a man in Măgdăcești, Moldova, under court-ordered GPS ankle bracelet monitoring for domestic violence, traveled to his estranged wife’s parents’ home and murdered her father. The GPS system recorded his movement toward the prohibited address but generated no real-time intervention.

The case exposed identical gaps: a GPS device that tracked location without triggering immediate response, a monitoring framework that treated data collection as synonymous with public safety, and a victim protection order that existed on paper but not in practice.

The pattern is consistent across jurisdictions: GPS ankle bracelets prevent nothing on their own. They are sensors — and sensors without real-time response protocols are evidence-collection devices, not safety measures.

What Real-Time GPS Ankle Bracelet Monitoring Actually Requires

Meeting the standard Ohio HB 667 envisions — and that the Reagan Tokes and Heringer cases demand — requires GPS ankle bracelet technology that goes beyond basic location tracking:

• Continuous connectivity — The device must maintain communication with monitoring servers at all times, not just during periodic location uploads. Gaps in connectivity must themselves trigger alerts.
• Multi-mode resilience — Sole reliance on cellular connectivity means the system fails wherever cell coverage fails. Indoor environments, basements, and rural areas create monitoring blind spots unless the device supports backup connectivity modes such as WiFi or BLE.
• Tamper detection with zero false alarms — If every tamper alert requires manual verification, the system trains officers to ignore them. Fiber optic tamper detection produces binary results — the circuit is intact or it isn’t — eliminating the false-alarm fatigue that undermined Black’s case.
• Battery endurance — Dead batteries generate false “lost signal” alerts. Devices requiring daily charging create 50-100 low-battery alerts per day in a 500-person program, consuming officer attention that should go to genuine violations.
• Crime-scene correlation — As HB 667 specifies, the system must automatically cross-reference offender locations against reported crimes, generating investigative leads in near-real-time.

The 2016 NIJ Market Survey documented 17 GPS ankle bracelet vendors operating in the U.S. market. Many of those systems were designed for the retrospective model — periodic uploads, manual review, limited exclusion zone capabilities. The legislative trend HB 667 represents is forcing a technological transition toward continuous, proactive monitoring architectures.

The Broader Trend: States Are Done Waiting

Ohio is not acting in isolation. Louisiana convicted a GPS monitoring company in 2024 after it failed to report exclusion zone violations that preceded a murder — the first criminal conviction of a monitoring vendor in U.S. history. Oklahoma passed SB 1325 mandating real-time GPS monitoring for domestic violence cases. Multiple states have introduced or are considering legislation that moves from passive tracking to active supervision requirements.

This legislative wave reflects a fundamental shift in how policymakers view GPS ankle bracelets. The devices were originally adopted as cost-effective alternatives to incarceration — at roughly $16 per day versus $70 per day for imprisonment, according to Ohio DRC figures. But that cost calculation assumed the devices were preventing crimes, not just recording them. When Tokes and Heringer died despite GPS monitoring, the cost argument collapsed.

The 254,700 people on electronic monitoring in the United States as of 2021 (Vera Institute, 2024) are supervised under systems of wildly varying quality, technology, and oversight standards. HB 667’s single-vendor, real-time mandate represents one state’s attempt to impose minimum standards on a market that has operated largely without them.

What Happens Next

HB 667 now sits in the Ohio Senate. If passed and signed by Governor Mike DeWine, it would fundamentally reshape how the state monitors approximately 3,500 offenders on post-release control with GPS ankle bracelets. The single-vendor requirement would consolidate Ohio’s fragmented monitoring landscape and create one of the nation’s most comprehensive real-time GPS monitoring mandates.

For Reagan Tokes’ mother, Lisa McCrary-Tokes, who testified before the House committee, the stakes are personal and permanent: “Reagan was three months shy of graduating from the Ohio State University with a degree in psychology and 33 days from turning 22. Those next phases of life never happened for her as the laws and legislation at the time of her death failed Reagan and countless other victims.”

Sarah Heringer testified alongside her: “Nothing this body does today will bring Patrick back. Nothing will bring Reagan Tokes back. But the decisions made in this room today will determine whether another family has to sit where we are sitting.”

See also: China’s parallel reform creating the world’s largest electronic monitoring market.