Questions Raised Over Firm’s Monitoring of Criminals

More than two dozen angry residents and Police Chief Joseph Santoro demanded Tuesday that the City Council reject an operating permit for a Monrovia firm that monitors the electronic “bracelets” of low-risk criminal offenders.

Linda Connelly & Associates Inc. has been operating at 1000 S. Magnolia Ave. since October without the required conditional-use permit. The city Planning Commission has recommended that the council grant the permit, saying the firm was unaware of the permit requirement.

During a raucous, three-hour hearing, residents said they worried that about 75 offenders who must report to the LCA office periodically will target residences and nearby schools for crime.

LCA contracts with the Los Angeles County Department of Probation to electronically monitor the whereabouts of offenders who are sentenced to home detention from 40 Los Angeles County cities and all of San Bernardino County. At its peak, it will monitor up to 500 clients.

“I cannot accept criminals coming into my town,” said resident Alfredo Mejia, 29. “Every felon probably committed a low-risk misdemeanor first. We don’t know these people’s potential.”

Simon Gonzales, a disabled senior citizen who lives two blocks from the LCA office, said children and senior citizens walk by the site frequently. “We’re probably going to end up getting rolled before this thing’s over,” Gonzales said.

But Thomas Sawyer, a county probation official who supervises the electronic monitoring program, said residents’ fears of detention are wildly exaggerated.

“This is a slap on the wrist for (drunk driving) offenders and people who don’t pay traffic citations. There are no muggers, rapists or murderers on this program. It’s not for people with long histories of criminality,” Sawyer said.

The council deadlocked 2-2 on whether to let LCA operate, and the issue was continued to a special meeting at 7:30 p.m. March 30.

LCA, which also operates a monitoring service in San Francisco, is one of a number of private firms approved by the county to monitor home detention cases.

As technology has advanced over the past several years, more defendants have been sentenced to home detention. They must wear electronic transmitters attached to their bodies so that officials know if they are leaving home and violating their sentence.

Probation officials and Municipal Judge Frank Gately of Rio Hondo Court praised the electronic monitoring system as a valuable alternative for sentencing offenders who do not deserve jail time.

“I would never put anyone in a program like this who is a risk or a physical threat,” Gately said.

The people sentenced to home detention have both psychological and financial investments in staying out of trouble with the law, Sawyer added, since they must pay to be monitored by LCA.

But the police chief said he has serious concerns about the monitoring program and Monrovia’s lack of control over who is involved in it.

“We don’t know what ‘low-risk’ means,” Santoro complained. “Clearly, it’s not just low-grade misdemeanors. Under their rules, it could include burglars, petty thieves, people convicted of weapons violations or convicted of being under the influence of narcotics.”

Santoro has also expressed fears that people accused of serious crimes who plead guilty to lesser crimes under plea bargains could be included in the program. He has asked LCA to give him the names of clients and the crimes of which they have been convicted.

But Connelly said she is legally unable to provide that information. Her attorney told the council Tuesday that if LCA is required to provide that information in order to operate in Monrovia, it will sue the city.

Probation officials also refused to give Santoro a list of clients, saying that would violate privacy rights. But Santoro insisted that the information he wants is public record and said he needs it to monitor whether LCA’s presence is increasing the crime rate in Monrovia.