Many Sex Offenders Not at Registered Addresses

An estimated two-thirds of the approximately 90 high-risk sex offenders listed as living in the Los Angeles County sheriff’s jurisdiction are not at their registered addresses, as required under Megan’s Law, according to sheriff’s officials who are conducting a survey of the sexual predators.

Some are long dead, some are in prison, and some, most disturbingly, seem to have vanished into thin air.

“You go to the listed address and the people who live there say they’ve never heard of them,” said Sgt. Greg Ahn, who had 10 high-risk sex offenders registered in his area near South Los Angeles but found only one living at his listed address. “They could be just a block over; they could live out of state.”

The survey comes as the department is preparing fliers identifying the area’s most dangerous sex offenders, whose identities and areas of residence are on a CD-ROM made available to the public last week. Of the 64,000 criminals on the database, 1,600 are labeled “high risk” because they have multiple felony convictions, including at least one violent sexual offense.

People convicted of sex offenses in California since 1944 must register their addresses annually with local police. Failure to register is considered a felony. Megan’s Law, named for a 7-year-old New Jersey girl who was slain by a paroled molester, compiles the identities and whereabouts of the worst of these offenders on a CD-ROM that will be updated four times each year. State officials have acknowledged that the first edition, released last week, is about 40% inaccurate.

But the Sheriff’s Department has found a far worse error rate in its survey. Deputies at most of the 21 sheriff’s stations have fanned out to check on their high-risk sex offenders. Capt. Roy Pugh said that of the roughly 90 in that category, only about 25--or fewer than one-third--have been located at their registered addresses. A handful of addresses have not yet been checked.

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The vast discrepancy between the number of listed high-risk offenders and the number deputies can find raises fundamental questions about what some law enforcement officials say is a false sense of security provided by Megan’s Law. Although the statute attempts to create a system for letting the public know the whereabouts of all sex offenders, the criminals are notoriously mobile and elusive.

“Many of these people in the database are here today and gone tomorrow,” said Sheriff’s Lt. Ron Mills. “They’re transients, living in their cars. Keeping track of these individuals is a difficult task.”

Added Steve Utter, a state Department of Justice agent on a task force that tracks sex offenders who go on the lam: “[Police] don’t really have control over those numbers. They don’t have any control over whether those people choose to disobey the registration requirement.”

State officials concede that the information is far from perfect, but call it the best resource they have.

“It’s the best information available for public use,” said Rob Stutzman, a spokesman for Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren. “It’ll never be 100%. It changes daily. Bad guys are always going to circumvent the law. The good news is, now the [Sheriff’s Department] knows.”

All Los Angeles County sheriff’s stations are to verify the residences of their high-risk offenders and the thousands of other offenders in their jurisdiction. While many have been doing this for weeks, some stations, such as Lancaster, have yet to check their offenders. Others say it is not worth the enormous effort.

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“The CD-ROM that we got . . . is so terrible that all we can do is give you our best guess,” said Capt. Garry Leonard of the Altadena station, which has no listed high-risk offenders in its area. “Our [department] budget’s been cut $200 million in the past five years. It would be nice if we had the people to do this sort of thing.”

The stations that are checking have reported varied results, but most come up short.

At the Lennox station, Ahn’s team has spent more than a week checking on the 10 high-risk sex offenders the CD-ROM lists as living in their area. Only one lives at his listed address. Two others are apparently in prison and the other seven are unaccounted for.

In East Los Angeles, one of the five listed high-risk offenders has moved to Tijuana. Another has moved elsewhere in the state. The other three remain at their listed addresses, said Mills, but two said they may move if their identities are publicized, as the department plans to do.

Critics have warned that Megan’s Law, by its very nature, will drive the worst offenders underground because the criminals fear the consequences of being publicly identified. Indeed, three days after sheriff’s deputies confirmed the address of a Covina man who was a high-risk offender, his neighbors discovered his past and his van was firebombed.

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“If you look at the track record just from the news,” said Sgt. Ahn, “I would be antsy, too, if I were [a high-risk offender].”

Some sheriff’s officials are hopeful that after this round of checking, the accuracy of the database will improve significantly, and state officials have insisted that future editions will be more accurate.

Other stations were more successful in locating offenders. For example, the Century station had eight high-risk offenders listed in its area on the CD-ROM. Only one still lived there, and the rest were found to be in prison.

Other officials remain concerned by the release of the potentially incendiary information, noting that erroneously high numbers can feed public fears, and correcting those numbers eats up valuable law enforcement time.

“There’s nothing worse than inaccurate data,” said Leonard. “It’s worse than no data at all.”