Sex Offenders Often Become Tough to Track

By JEFF LEEDS and NICHOLAS RICCARDI

Jan. 30, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

Authorities cannot locate an estimated 20% of the nearly 68,000 rapists, child molesters and other California sex offenders who are required under state law to register with local law enforcement, casting doubts on the effectiveness of the recently-enacted Megan’s Law, officials say.

State law requires convicted sex offenders to register annually with local police departments, but police across the state say they have no mechanism for ensuring these criminals obey that requirement. And even if a sex offender registers, there is no foolproof way to track him, officials say.

In Orange County, where state records show there are 3,511 registered sex offenders, law enforcement officials say they can do little other than rely on parole and probation officers to refer the offenders to local police.

“When the [offenders] move, they are supposed to notify the agency they are leaving and then the agency they are going to,” said Lt. Ron Wilkerson of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. “But we don’t have anyone to go out and check to make sure people are where they say they are. There would be no way we could do it.”

Take the Los Angeles case of James Steven Turner.

A former television installer and exterminator, Turner has three convictions of child molestation. He is 47 years old, standing 5-foot 10 and weighing 145 pounds, with blond hair and brown eyes, and in 1990 he was paroled from state prison after serving six years of his latest sentence for child molestation, according to state Department of Justice.

Turner ranks as one of the 900 so-called high-risk sex offenders in California--felons with multiple convictions of sex crimes against minors--and so police are very interested in watching him.

Authorities say Turner registered with Los Angeles police, giving his address as an apartment in Granada Hills. He was on parole for three apparently uneventful years. In 1995, the state Department of Justice sent post cards to the addresses it had for all registered sex offenders, reminding them of new registration requirements.

The card sent to Turner’s listed address came back stamped “undeliverable.”

Officials say 20% of all the cards statewide came back stamped undeliverable, leading them to conclude one-fifth of their sex offenders were missing.

But that is only the tip of the iceberg, authorities say. The system for monitoring sex offenders, in an effort to make them easy to track and control, is fraying, officials concede.

“People like this, they don’t think like law-abiding citizens, [who] tell DMV when they move,” said Jay Johnston, who manages the state Department of Justice’s database. “They don’t necessarily want people to know where they are, especially policemen.”

And, now that Megan’s Law has taken effect, some authorities fear that its strongest provision--allowing police to notify the public about the whereabouts of sex offenders--may make it even harder to get them to register and keep authorities advised of their movements.

The first Southern California target of Megan’s Law was Sid Landau, a convicted child molester who recently moved to Placentia.

Placentia knew of Landau through his parole officer, and the police were able to notify his neighbors of his whereabouts, according to Placentia Police Lt. Chuck Babcock. Without a parole officer’s tip-off, local police lack the personnel to keep track of offenders within their borders, he said.

“We are in the same situation as L.A.,” Babcock said. “We don’t have the manpower to go through on a regular basis to confirm an offender’s residency requirements, to see if these people have moved and re-registered. That’s not happening. The only true way to do it is if they are currently on parole, that parole officer should be requiring them to show proof of that registration.”

Some police departments are better equipped than others to keep tabs on molesters.

The Anaheim Police Department has the luxury of employing a part-time detective whose sole responsibility is monitoring the whereabouts of sex offenders, Lt. Ted Labahn said.

“Part of the problem is there is no one repository for this information. The data we get is usually tremendously out of date,” Labahn said.

Tracking offenders requires “a huge commitment of time,” he said.

The two known Southern California uses of the law certainly give sex offenders incentives to lie low.

Landau had his new home in Placentia picketed and lost his job. In South Pasadena, a convicted child rapist has been hospitalized due to “pressure” he faced after his address was disseminated by a local church, parole officials say.

But even before Megan’s Law went into effect, authorities had experienced problems.

Existing figures compiled by the state’s Department of Justice on sex offenders do not match those maintained by local authorities.

And many police departments say they have too few officers to regularly check on sex offenders.

In San Francisco, police take no steps to check up on the 1,800 sex offenders registered there. Only when police stop a suspect on the street who happens to be a sex offender do they occasionally discover that he has moved.

In Long Beach, the police have other worries. They’re looking for 500 new registrants state officials told them to expect, but who never showed up. A handful of patrol officers have taken matters into their own hands, and voluntarily check on the whereabouts of the city’s known sex offenders.

The LAPD has 3,200 sex offenders on its books, but according to the state Department of Justice there are an additional 4,900 believed to be within Los Angeles city limits.

“It’s a huge nightmare,” says Bill Russell, who is in charge of the LAPD’s database. “They [sex offenders] can pretty much go wherever the heck they want.”

Many had hoped Megan’s Law would change things.

Named after a New Jersey girl who was allegedly slain by a paroled molester, Megan’s Law calls for a CD-ROM to be available to the public by July 1 of this year listing the names, photographs and ZIP Codes of 57,000 of the state’s sex offenders. (About 11,000 other registered sex offenders were convicted of crimes, such as spousal battery, that do not fall under Megan’s Law.)

But police caution that the Megan’s Law CD-ROM database will be woefully incomplete and inaccurate.

“I know a lot of people think Megan’s Law is a good law, and I think it has a lot of merit,” said Inspector Angela Martin of the San Francisco Police Department. “But I don’t like it when it gives you a false sense of security.”

Advocates of Megan’s Law agree. They say that the statute gives parents another way to educate themselves about possible perils to their children and, although it may not be perfect, it is a step in the right direction.

“Things are not as bad as they seem,” said Jayne Murphy Shapiro, president of KIDSAFE, a San Fernando Valley-based group that argued for Megan’s Law. She said that a state 900-number allows parents to check names of registered sex offenders. If Megan’s Law prevents one sex crime against a child it will be worthwhile, she added.

But, she said, parents should not let their guards down. “Nothing in life is foolproof.”

For example, Rich Ward, a special agent with the state’s Department of Justice who heads a team that tracks delinquent sex offenders, said James Steven Turner will probably be listed in the database as still living at his old Granada Hills ZIP Code.

“It’s up to each agency to maintain their sex registration files,” Ward said. “The state’s records are only as good as those records sent to it by local agencies.”

That means the records aren’t that good, adds Ward, who is based in the city of Commerce and combs public records to track down sex offenders who have ditched Los Angeles County police departments.

“From agency to agency, it’s basically a crapshoot,” said Ward, recalling one local department--which he would not identify--that told him it purged its records of registered sex offenders every two years, resulting in the loss of dozens of files.

It’s not just a local problem. Federal officials are busy compiling a database of all the sex offenders in the nation, which would enable authorities to track offenders who move from state to state. But that database will be compiled from the incomplete state data, federal officials say.

Some agencies are making efforts to improve their data.

The San Francisco Police Department is waiting to receive a computer system that will enable the agency to automatically send notices to sex offenders reminding them to re-register. If those notices are returned, as was the card in the Turner case, police will know a sex offender has gone AWOL.

In the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, there is a two-person team that checks the estimated 5,000 registered child molesters in the sheriff’s jurisdiction. But building a case against delinquent sex offenders requires intensive investigation and paperwork, said Sgt. Paul Crick, who supervises that unit. In it’s first year of operation, the unit’s efforts have only led to 15 prosecutions. Crick said he does not know the outcome of any of those cases.

Crick said he’s hoping to get additional staff from the state under Megan’s Law and other statutes. He says his force will soon start systematically checking sex offenders in each station area. He guesses that, like the state average, about 20% of them are delinquent.

The LAPD has it worse. Officials there say they have about 3,200 registered sex offenders on the books, while the state believes there should be about 8,000, based on prison release information and other public records.

“Our ability to follow up is quite limited, simply because of the time and resources,” said Cmdr. Eric Lillo, who head’s the LAPD juvenile group. “I don’t know of any department that is [prepared] to make sure these people register, and register every year. You go out to a location and they’re gone; where do you go from there?”

In San Diego, each police division since 1995 has sent from six to 12 officers to check in with every registered sex offender in its area. Only one division, with 600 registered offenders, remains unchecked, said Lt. Jim Barker. San Diego police say 80 to 90% of the registrants they checked on were in compliance.

Long Beach has similar problems. The state lists an estimated 1,300 sex offenders who should live in Long Beach, but police only have 800 registered.

Experts say tracking sex offenders is the cornerstone of any attempt to cut down on child abuse.

“[Megan’s Law] is not the answer,” said Dan Armagh, director of The National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse and a former Pennsylvania prosecutor. “There has to be some agency at some point that has the responsibility of keeping this information current.”

Mark Cavins, an assistant state’s attorney in Cook County, Ill.,agrees. Cavins runs the sex crimes unit, and says that, of 28,000 sex offenders in Illinois, only 18,000 have registered.

“You really need to commit manpower to verify these addresses,” Cavins said. “It’s a time bomb waiting to go off. One of these guys is going to assault a little kid, and we’re going to find out he’s not registered.”

That’s not just a worry in Illinois. Cavins said many of the missing sex offenders have left the state.

“A lot of them moved to California,” he said. “That now becomes your problem.”

Times staff writer Len Hall contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Offenders Trend

The number of sex offenders registered in Orange County has remained steady over the past five years. The decrease in 1996 was due to purging old files from the police system. County sex offenders registered:

1993: 3,361

1994: 3,487

1995: 3,549

1996: 3,387

1997*: 3,511

* As of Jan. 2

****

In the Cities

More than 3,500 sex offenders are registered with 23 city police departments or the county Sheriff’s Department. Here’s the breakdown as of Jan. 2:

Anaheim: 586

Brea: 63

Buena Park: 119