Ventura Police Check Sex-Offender Database’s Accuracy

Police said Monday that a preliminary review has found that many of the registered sex offenders living in the city of Ventura have provided their correct addresses to authorities as required under state law.

Of the 100 offenders they have checked, police say more than half are living at their registered addresses.

“So far we have 64% compliance,” said Lt. Carl Handy.

Other jurisdictions, such as Los Angeles County, have had problems tracking some offenders, Handy said. Earlier this year, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reported that nearly two-thirds of the county’s registered high-risk offenders were not living where they said they were.

Handy said Ventura police are still checking records on 169 other serious offenders registered with the department. He said police are also trying to verify the whereabouts of two others classified as high-risk sex offenders whose crimes are of a more violent nature.

On Monday, police unveiled five computers equipped with the so-called Megan’s Law sex-offender database, which lists the names and whereabouts of the estimated 64,000 serious sex offenders statewide.

The new computers were purchased with a $9,000 donation from a group of Ventura mobile-home-park owners and should be available for the public’s use in the four police storefronts and the department’s headquarters by Friday, Handy said.

Officers will continue to verify the information in the database through the end of the year and report any discrepancies to the state Department of Justice.

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Megan’s Law was enacted in 1996 in honor of Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old New Jersey girl who was slain by a paroled child molester. The CD-ROM database lists the identities, aliases and physical characteristics of the most serious offenders. The database will be updated four times a year.

Anyone over 18 who is not a sex offender can view the database so long as the intention is not to harass or commit a crime against a registered offender.

The law requires county sheriffs’ departments and cities with a population over 200,000 to provide the database, and on July 1 the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department launched two computers, one in Thousand Oaks and the other at sheriff’s headquarters in Ventura, through which the public may access the database.

Although not required to do so, Ventura Police Chief Richard Thomas decided his department would be the first agency in the county to voluntarily provide the public with access to the database, because “parents are scared to death” of their children coming in contact with serious sex offenders, Thomas said.

“I travel in a lot of circles, and just about everywhere that I go, Megan’s Law and the database always come up as topics of conversation,” Thomas said.

From employers to day-care center operators, to those in charge of youth groups, anyone who works with young people will find the database useful in determining if an employee or volunteer is a registered sex offender, Thomas said.

“I can think of no better use than parents being able to safeguard their children from sexual predators,” Thomas said.

Although some sex offenders have been harassed by neighbors in other areas, Thomas said the intent of the database is not to promote vigilantism.

“I do not believe these individuals should be tormented or tortured,” Thomas said. “On the other hand, they better behave themselves.”

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John Broome, whose father, Jack, owns the Las Posadas and Patrician mobile home parks, said the group was looking for a way to assist the Police Department. He said that, after discussions with Thomas, the group decided the Megan’s Law database was the best project.

“The safety of our youth is becoming more and more important as time goes on,” said Broome, 44, of Camarillo.

In addition to offering access to the database at police headquarters on Dowell Drive, computers will be available for the public’s use without appointment at the four police storefronts--6368 Bristol Road, 110 N. Olive St., 1575 Spinnaker Ave. and 309 W. Main St.