"Sex-Offender Database Falls Short" [from the Press Enterprise newspaper]

MEGAN'S LAW: A Web site listing the location of ex-convicts is often outdated or incomplete.


12:05 AM PDT on Tuesday, May 31, 2005



By SARAH BURGE / The Press-Enterprise
ADDRESS: www.meganslaw.ca.gov

What's on the site:

Name, age, photo, sex, race, physical description

Exact home addresses available for sexually violent predators and those convicted of two or more sex offenses in separate trials

Search by address, city, county, ZIP code or name

Searches proximity to schools and parks

What's not on the site:

About 25 percent of sex offenders not subject to public disclosure

When the offense was committed

Some sex offenders can apply to be removed from the site




Some Californians rely on the Megan's Law Web site to protect them from the more than 63,000 registered sex offenders living in the state.

They type in the cite address and it creates maps with blue squares indicating where the "most serious" sex offenders reside.

Since it was launched in December, the site has received more than 135 million hits, said Mariam Bedrosian, a spokeswoman for the California Attorney General's Office, which runs the database.

But most people don't realize that information on at least 20 percent of the offenders is outdated or incomplete.

In Riverside and San Bernardino counties, about 1,000 sex offenders out of 5,008 are in violation of their registration requirements.

The law requires registered sex offenders to check in with the local police department annually, transients every 30 days, and "sexually violent predators" every 90 days.

Some have registered but the information has not been updated; others have moved out of state; and others have died.

If a registered sex offender is not on parole or probation, and is intent on defying the law, it becomes very difficult to keep tabs on him or her, said Riverside County Supervising Deputy District Attorney Allison Nelson, who heads the child abuse and sexual-assault unit.

'Some Fall Through Cracks'

Tracking down unregistered sex offenders falls to police departments, many of which lack the money or the manpower to do the job.

Fontana police Sgt. William Megenney said his department joins in a multi-agency sweep every six months. During the last sweep, in March, police checked on about 60 sex offenders.

Megenney said the goal of the sweeps isn't to arrest people who aren't in compliance, but to motivate sex offenders to update their registrations.

Inevitably, Megenney said, "Some of them fall through the cracks. Then we go out and look for them."

The Fontana department has two detectives who keep track of the 223 registered sex offenders in the city. They also investigate child abuse and sexual-assault cases.

Fontana police Detective Tom Yarrington said, "What everyone needs to keep in mind is it's not meant to be a punishment." Sex-offender registration is "a way to monitor them and protect the citizenry," he said.

Yarrington said the department gets frequent phone calls from people who are frightened about sex offenders in their neighborhoods.

"As long as they seem to be compliant," Yarrington said, "there's not much we can do."

Yarrington said arrests made as a result of tips from the public have quadrupled since the site was launched.

Occasionally police do random checks on registered sex offenders who are in compliance. It depends on the offender, Yarrington said.

"We know the ones who are the real threat. There's very few of them that we actually need to strictly monitor."

Lt. Cynthia Wait of the Temecula Police Department said registered sex offenders are such a "hot topic" that the department devotes a full-time officer to oversee the 43 that live in the city.

Outraged Mead Valley residents have been protesting the release of a paroled rapist in their community earlier this month.

Emergency Law Passed

The Riverside County Board of Supervisors last Tuesday passed an emergency law that restricts paroled sex offenders in unincorporated areas from living within 1½ miles of where children gather.

Janet Neeley, legal adviser for the Megan's Law Web site, said the site was not intended to drive people out of town and underground.

That, she said, would defeat the purpose of having a registry.

Nelson, a Riverside County deputy district attorney, agreed.

"When (neighbors) manage to drive one of these sex offenders away, they feel that they've won," she said.

The risk is that sex offenders will end up homeless if neighbors continue to drive them away and that will make it even more difficult to keep track of them, she said.

Jackie Flores, 43, a kindergarten teacher at Grant Elementary School in Riverside, which is near where a sex offender was arrested recently, said, "That was very scary for us."

Flores said she knows about the Megan's Law Web site, but doesn't look at it.

"There are weirdos everywhere. We live in a big metropolitan area. I would really rather not know," said Flores, who has two teenage daughters. "I feel, as a parent -- I talk to my own children -- I don't think I need to go on a Web site."

"I would be upset if I knew someone was living down the street," Flores said. "But they have to live somewhere.

"Some people say they should all be castrated," Flores said. "Other countries do that. But we're not supposed to do that kind of thing," she said, and shrugged. "Right?"

Reach Sarah Burge at (951) 368-9642 or sburge@pe.com