Nevada, Monrovia Feud Over Parolee

Nevada parole officials accused police in Monrovia on Wednesday of shirking their responsibility by shipping a convicted child molester back to Reno with a one-way plane ticket.

“Why dump a sex offender on a sister state that has citizens and kids that also need to be protected?” said parole board Chairman Richard Wyatt. “Nevada has its own problems. We’ve enough sex offenders. We didn’t want this kind of help.”

Armis Dominguez Linares, 49, left his sister’s Monrovia home last week after angry neighbors protested. When he became homeless, Monrovia Police Chief Joseph Santoro said, the city tried unsuccessfully to get him into shelters or programs in California. City officials then raised $700 from an anonymous donor for a plane ticket and expenses to fulfill Linares’ wish to return to Nevada, Santoro said.

Nevada officials, Wyatt said, could easily raise $700 to return the favor but won’t.

“Because he served his sentence in Nevada doesn’t make him Nevada’s property for life,” Wyatt said. “If they didn’t want him in Monrovia, they could have sent him back to Cuba,” his native country.

Linares, Wyatt said, was freed from custody in that state by a federal judge--not Nevada authorities.

Responding to the criticism, Santoro said Nevada did nothing at the time of Linares’ release from prison to classify him as a high-risk sex offender and made no effort to get the federal judge to restrict where he could go in the future.

“This guy was released onto a Nevada street from a prison without any type control or notification,” Santoro said.

His department acted responsibly by notifying residents when it learned that Linares was living in Monrovia, the chief said.

After Linares’ departure, Santoro told reporters: “We say to the people of Nevada: Mr. Linares is your problem. He came from your state. He did the crimes in your state.”

But David Smyth, a Nevada parole board analyst, agreed with Wyatt.

“It’s upsetting that a community can pool their money and law enforcement can send a sex offender to another state because they don’t want the responsibility of having to protect their community,” he said.

In 1992, Linares was sent to prison in Nevada for molesting a girl younger than 14. That crime occurred while he was on parole from a prison term for kidnapping and molesting another Nevada girl in 1979.

Linares was discharged after completing his sentence in May 1997. But he was taken into immediate custody by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, which ordered his deportation because of his criminal convictions, officials said.

But the United States does not have an agreement with Cuba to return citizens to that country so Linares remained in U.S. custody, officials said.

Then in April, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the INS could no longer indefinitely detain criminal immigrants, said Lois Chappell, head of the INS office in Reno.

Based on that ruling, Linares filed a petition for release, which was granted by a federal judge. He left prison Aug. 10.

Linares is now registered as a sex offender in Reno as required by Nevada law and has notified the INS of his whereabouts, Reno Police Det. Adam Wygananski said.

Wygananski said information about Linares will not be released to the public until the Nevada Department of Parole and Probation completes an assessment of his risk level as a repeat offender.