Neighbors Fight State’s Plan for Retarded Suspects

Behind high mesh fences and security posts, Lou Lygett broke a proud, toothless smile when he showed visitors the poppies he planted. The frail man in his 60s, with a paralyzed arm and a neck as corded as an old rope, looked harmless, but admitted that he used to molest children.

In a building next door, a dapper 18-year-old named Miguel Alvarez struggled to understand the word “felony” in a court competency class. He landed here after allegedly helping fellow gang members burglarize a home.

Michael Smallridge, 31, a quiet Madonna fanatic accused of molesting two boys, explained how one counselor is “like a mother” to him but said he can’t wait to get out of this “prison.”

These three mentally retarded men, who live in a state treatment center in the rocky Sierra foothills north of Bakersfield, are among a group of inmates embroiled in a controversy 150 miles to the south in the Pomona Valley.

Called forensic patients, they were deemed incompetent to stand trial for crimes because of mental retardation. They were committed to locked wings of state treatment centers for initial terms of at least three years. Their crimes range from petty theft to sexual assault to murder.

Of the 330 forensic patients in California, the state wants to move 75 to the Lanterman Developmental Center in Pomona because of a space shortage elsewhere.

Neighbors of Lanterman are furious about the plan, saying that such patients are dangerous and should not be kept in a facility that abuts homes and a Little League field. Lanterman now treats only mentally retarded noncriminals, and even the promise of high fences and guard towers does not allay neighborhood fears about escapes.

“As someone whose child is in Little League, my concern is that one of these people will walk away by mistake and they’d walk right into groups of children,” said Jerry Jansen, a Little League volunteer. “Why stick them in the middle of such a populated area?”

The controversial plan drew almost 1,000 angry residents to a recent public meeting in Walnut, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and several state legislators have vowed to fight it.

The forensic patients have been moved around in the last three years, after closures of state hospitals in Stockton and Camarillo. Those closures came during an oft-criticized trend toward deinstitutionalization so noncriminal patients could receive care in their own communities.

The state’s population of court-committed patients has been increasing by 10% annually in recent years, according to the state Department of Developmental Services. Some say that this growth results from law enforcement doing a better job of identifying the mentally retarded, thus keeping them out of prison. Others suggest it is an inevitable outcome of deinstitutionalization: With less supervision, outpatients are more able to commit crimes.

Currently, 232 forensic patients and about 600 noncriminal patients live at the Porterville Developmental Center, set among orange groves and pastures on the sloping outskirts of town. The center’s low buildings and winding streets look like a college campus except for the high fences around the forensic wing.

Counselors in that unit say they sometimes forget that the patients have committed crimes because they often act like children, bickering one moment, gushing emotion the next.

Last week, Lygett, the patient in his 60s, could not wait to show visitors a drawing that won him first prize at the Tulare County Fair. It was a child’s impression of a family vacation he took long ago: lollipop-shaped trees, rolling hills and smoking chimneys. He spoke of his youth excitedly, as if his family, girlfriend and home in the country were still waiting beyond the fences.

But when asked what he did to be locked up, Lygett mumbled: “Child molestation.” When asked why that is wrong or if he would do it again, his rheumy eyes searched in vain for an answer.

Next door, while eating lunch in the cafeteria, Smallridge, 31, spun a past of movie acting and hard living on the streets. He mentioned his friends’ full names as if they were celebrities, and talked about standing often at the front gate of Madonna’s Los Angeles home.

But he stumbled over questions about his alleged crimes. He said he doesn’t want to talk about it, that it’s too embarrassing.

Richard Ceballos, a prosecutor in Los Angeles County, said Smallridge molested two young boys whom he was taking care of in his apartment in Hollywood. But he said Smallridge was clearly developmentally disabled and did not seem a danger to society.

“One of the victims threatened to beat him up, and he stopped,” Ceballos said. “He was scared of a 6-year-old. Do we send a guy like this to prison where he’d get killed? He’s so frail and meek he wouldn’t last a minute.”

Mental retardation is a developmental disability categorized separately from such mental illnesses as paranoid schizophrenia, which is treated in state hospitals.

Many experts say that forensic patients are often manipulated into committing crimes or taking the fall for others. “They are the last to leave the scene and the first to confess, even to things they didn’t do,” said Joan Petersilia, a UC Irvine professor of criminology. Thousands slip through the cracks and end up in prison, she said.

Generally, the forensic patients have a mental age of under 12, state officials say.

But security remains a major concern. In October 1995, a man escaped from the Stockton Developmental Center and allegedly raped a teenage girl at knifepoint in a high school restroom. The escape prompted a local state legislator to write a law tightening security for forensic clients.

At Lanterman, the clients would stay in three existing buildings behind double 16-foot fences and 26-foot observation towers that would be added soon, according to state officials.

Neighbors say that will look like a prison and hurt housing prices. They also say it just doesn’t make sense to put the patients at Lanterman, rather than more rural facilities like Porterville.

Porterville’s executive director, Harold Pitchford, conceded that there was anger in town when three forensic patients escaped shortly after the group arrived in 1997. He said the level of security has since been increased and the neighbors have calmed down.

“We learned a lot in the first six months,” said Pitchford. “Hopefully, Lanterman won’t have the same learning curve.”

But residents around Diamond Bar and Pomona cite serious problems with Lanterman’s staffing, treatment and client oversight that almost caused it to lose its Medi-Cal certification last year. They believe Lanterman will fail to uphold safety promises.

In Porterville, the forensic clients live behind a locked 16-foot fence but can go on supervised visits in the surrounding facility and the community if their behavior is good. They can be ordered to stay longer than their three-year terms if they still pose a danger.

Those with lesser retardation must take court competency classes to learn the rudiments of a courtroom so they can eventually stand trial.

In Alvarez’s class, some patients didn’t understand what witnesses or judges or lawyers were. Handed a card with the word “evidence,” two men struggled to pronounce it.

Alvarez, of Pasadena, is the closest to competent, although he looked blankly at the word “felony.” He wants to go to court, strike a plea, and then finish high school and go to college.

His mother, Amalia Garcia, said he fell in with gang members in high school and started using cocaine. Then he was arrested and sent to Porterville. She hopes he can go to Lanterman, so she can visit him more often. He was always a loving child, she said, but was ridiculed for his disability.

“His friends always called him crazy, loco,” she said. “People laughed at him, even his family.”