County Plans More Notice on Sex Offenders

If you think it’s unsettling to get a letter from the Internal Revenue Service, imagine opening an envelope and reading that a violent sexual predator is living down the street from you and your children.

In the coming weeks, the county Board of Supervisors has decided, that is exactly what is going to happen to thousands of Los Angeles County residents who live on the same block as a “high-risk,” violent sex offender.

The supervisors have directed Sheriff Sherman Block to make such formal notifications in the county’s unincorporated areas, home to about 1 million people.

The board and Block are also considering having sheriff’s Explorer Scouts or other civilian personnel go door to door, personally notifying people that a convicted child molester lives nearby. Two percent of the state’s convicted sex offenders are considered high-risk violent sexual predators; 27 of them live in the parts of the county patrolled by the Sheriff’s Department.

If those high-risk offenders live near a school or a park, Supervisor Gloria Molina wants her colleagues to consider notifying all the parents in those areas, too, when the board takes up the issue again in four months.

Even without such an expansion, supporters and critics say that Los Angeles County’s new policy is among the nation’s most aggressive applications of Megan’s Law, named after a New Jersey girl killed by a repeat sex offender.

Law Enacted 2 Years Ago

California law has long required about 65,000 sex offenders to register with their local law enforcement agencies. The state’s version of Megan’s Law, enacted two years ago, allows the public access to information about whether convicted child molesters are living nearby.

There is, however, no nationwide or even statewide policy on how to implement Megan’s Law. In recent months, some smaller police departments have distributed fliers with molesters’ pictures and names in certain neighborhoods. San Diego even held a news conference to publicize the whereabouts of its worst offenders.

Few, if any, large police departments actively notify all residents living near such high-risk offenders, according to Mike Van Winkle, the Megan’s Law specialist for the state attorney general’s office. He said he does not know of any city or county that does targeted mailings, as Los Angeles plans to do.

The board voted 4 to 0 last Tuesday to approve the notification motion, made by Molina. She says she hopes the 88 cities in the county, including Los Angeles, follow the county’s lead, as well as the rest of the state. The board also instructed the county counsel and the sheriff to begin networking with other law enforcement agencies to achieve that.

“We are talking about . . . a very high-risk kind of individual, someone with multiple convictions, who really has a problem,” Molina said. “There’s no doubt this is aggressive, it is proactive.”

“But as a mom,” she added, “I don’t consider it bold. I consider it the least I should get from law enforcement and the county supervisors.”

In fact, some have hailed the board’s action as bold leadership on a critical and controversial issue of public safety.

Block, who is locked in a tough battle for reelection, is especially pleased, calling the change “an enhancement to our approach to the law” that costs little in the way of effort or money.

His departmental point man on Megan’s Law, Cmdr. William Mangan, says the letters will go out within a month to everyone on the same block as a high-risk offender, encouraging them to go to their local sheriff’s station for more information. At the station, a high-risk offender’s name, photo and sexual criminal history will be available, as they have been for two years, but not their address.

Even so, “it won’t take too many neighbors talking to each other to figure out who it is,” Van Winkle said.

That’s one reason critics are already beginning to describe the board’s vote as politically motivated and, ultimately, counterproductive.

By notifying communities of child molesters’ whereabouts, critics predict, authorities are creating a situation in which most sex offenders--as history has shown--will seek cover elsewhere rather than risk vigilantism and harassment.

One such offender, Sidney Landau, shuttled from town to town recently as his identity and past were repeatedly exposed. An offender in Santa Rosa hanged himself from a tree after his background was exposed. Another, Russell Charles Markvardsen, filed a federal lawsuit after being hounded in his neighborhood. He is seeking to have the state law overturned.

“By giving people an opportunity to harass these offenders, the Board of Supervisors’ actions are truly counterproductive,” said Elizabeth Schroeder of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “These ex-offenders are lost not only to the public, but also to the police.”

LAPD Decides Against Such Disclosures

The Los Angeles Police Department and some other police forces have decided not to participate in such targeted disclosures. “Eventually, if they’re forced to move from city to city, they will not register, and we won’t know where they are,” said Capt. Stuart Maislin, commanding officer of the LAPD’s Juvenile Division.

Schroeder, who has followed the implementation of Megan’s Law in California more closely than perhaps anyone, says that the unintended consequence of community notification has become so common that police chiefs have coined a phrase for it: “Megan’s Flight.”

Schroeder and Dr. Fred Berlin, founder of the Sexual Disorders Clinic at Johns Hopkins University, said sex offenders--even the violent repeaters--can become productive members of society, but only if they are allowed to hold down a job, get a place to live and obtain the other accouterments of a stable life as they try to rehabilitate themselves.

Berlin said one large study recently showed that 600 men treated at the clinic had a low rate of recidivism, or return to their criminal sexual behavior, if allowed to have a “fresh start.”

“These were people who seemed to be doing well, who were accepted by their neighbors, were working and had some self-esteem,” Berlin said. “Had there been public notification, and public scorn, the outcome might have been otherwise.”

Indeed, if humiliated and forced out of their homes, jobs and circle of friends, Berlin said, “the reaction could be to feel angry, disenfranchised and to not have any respect for others,” which could prompt some to commit more sex crimes.

Block acknowledges that the new policy undoubtedly will expose some sexual predators within their communities and lead them to seek cover elsewhere. And he agrees that they might not register there. But he says the penalties for not registering could send many offenders back to prison, and that the threat of further incarceration will keep the number of such scofflaws to a minimum.

“It’s one of the unknowns of this whole thing,” Block said. “But I don’t think it will have a backfire effect, really.”

Molina says the time to debate the merits of Megan’s Law has long since past.

What is at issue now, she says, is making sure it is implemented properly. In the first few months after the law was put on the books, parents flocked to Los Angeles County sheriff’s stations to see if an offender was in their neighborhood. But now the computer terminals are idle, according to Block.

Molina pushed for the new policy because she believes her constituents aren’t getting the information, saying many were not even aware it was available. She says the need for such an outreach program was illustrated in January, when a 19-year-old girl from her district was kidnapped, along with her younger brother, and raped. When the teenager went to the local sheriff’s station to report the rape, she saw her alleged attacker on a Megan’s Law poster.

“This is probably something that could have been prevented, had she been informed,” said Molina, adding that the man has been arrested.

But critics say that simply notifying neighbors of a sex offender’s whereabouts does not significantly protect anyone, particularly young children.

Many experts on molestation say the vast majority of assaults against children are committed not by strangers, but by parents, relatives, friends, acquaintances and teachers. And Schroeder of the Civil Liberties Union says no study has ever documented a decline in sexual assaults or molestations as the result of any version of Megan’s Law.

“It does, however, make people feel more safe and thus is popular with voters and politicians,” she said. “It’s an easy and inexpensive way to appear to address the very real problem of sex offenses against children.”

“In fact,” Schroeder added, “treatment programs are far more effective in ensuring that ex-offenders do not re-offend. But there are no treatment programs in California prisons, and woefully few once someone is released. The notion of rehabilitation in this country is completely ignored when it comes to sex offenders.”

But as those larger arguments continue to be debated, the county supervisors say they intend to press ahead as quickly as possible with their enhanced notification effort. They have given Block 120 days to report back on how efforts to network with other local law enforcement agencies are faring.