Gilroy
– Nearly 100 Gilroyans are registered sex offenders. In less
than a year’s time, anyone will be able find out who they are from
the comfort of home, using a state Web site.
Gilroy – Nearly 100 Gilroyans are registered sex offenders. In less than a year’s time, anyone will be able find out who they are from the comfort of home, using a state Web site.
State legislators have predicted that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will sign a bill that would put the names, photos, convictions, personal descriptions and ZIP codes of convicted serious sex offenders on a public-access Web site by July 1, 2005. Schwarzenegger’s office hasn’t yet taken a position on the bill.
This information has been on the Web since 2002, but the site is restricted. A member of the public can only view it at a police station, under staff supervision.
That makes it inconvenient for many. In Gilroy, the sex-offender registry can only be viewed on Tuesdays from 9 to 11am and on Fridays from 6 to 8pm, by appointment only, for 15 minutes at a time. Other cities have
similarly limited viewing hours.
“It’s all a staffing issue,” Gilroy police spokesman Sgt. Kurt Svardal said. Records staff and officers have many things to do, he said, and spending 15 minutes one-on-one with a member of the public takes them away from other duties.
Svardal said police administrators would like to expand the hours, perhaps allowing someone to schedule a viewing appointment at any time agreeable to both the staff and the citizen, but they have yet to do so.
The strict hours, combined with the potential awkwardness of viewing the information in the presence of police, may explain why only nine people have viewed the information so far this year. That’s already tied with the number of people who viewed it in all of 2003. In 2002, however, interest was apparently stronger; 26 viewed the database.
The Assembly bill, as amended by the Senate, would also make public the exact addresses of “high-risk” sex offenders, meaning those with convictions for violent sexual assaults, such as rape. At present, Megan’s Law only requires that people be shown an offender’s ZIP code.
Megan’s Law is the term used to cover a set of laws that allows the public to access information about sex offender registries and requires residents to be informed of neighbors with violent sex-crime convictions. It is named for Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old New Jersey girl murdered by a known sex offender who lived across the street from her, unbeknownst to her parents.
More than 30 states already provide sex offender information on the Internet, according to the state’s legislative Web site.
The potential impact
Svardal didn’t comment on whether Gilroy police favor the bill or not, but said that it could have both good and bad consequences.
On one hand, Svardal said sex offenders could become less inclined to register with police if they know their information will be available from any computer. That means police would either lose track of more sex offenders than ever, or else be forced to add staff to track them down.
On the other hand, Svardal noted that a Web registry would make it harder for a fugitive sex offender to hide, since more people would be looking at his name and photo and could report him to police.
Gilroy’s registry out of date
Gilroy police detective Michael Beebe admits the city’s sex-offender database is not as updated as it could be, but his investigative duties allow him little time to follow up on those who have failed to register.
“We don’t have the manpower to go and check on them as much as we would like,” Svardal added.
For more than 50 years, California has required convicted sex offenders to register with their local police departments for the rest of their lives. Each is required to reregister every year, within 10 days of his birthday, and any time he changes his address.
Not all of them do this, however, and some police departments dedicate more staff than others to tracking down the ones who fail to comply. The Gilroy Police Department has Beebe, one of the two sex-crime detectives, assigned to update the registry in his spare time, when he is not investigating new cases.
Cpl. Wes Stanford, who handled the registry before Beebe, said in March that this job could completely occupy a full-time officer. Svardal agreed, saying that getting a better handle on non-compliant sex offenders is an “ongoing project.”
Some progress has already been made, Svardal noted. A few months ago, Gilroy’s sex offender registry contained more than 120 people. Beebe has whittled it down to 97, finding that many of the registrants have moved or died.
The GPD must track any sex offender not on active parole or probation. If an offender is on parole, state parole officers are good about checking up on them, Svardal said. Most registered sex offenders are not on probation.
Checking the data
At the police department, one can view each offender’s electronic file, which contains a photo, full name, list of aliases, list of charges, ethnicity, and full description, including hair and eye colors, height, weight and scars/marks/tattoos.
Two of Gilroy’s 97 sex offenders are classified as high-risk. One, aged 69, was convicted on charges including three counts of rape. The other, aged 43, had offenses including forcible sex with someone under the age of 14.
Both of these men have been registering faithfully with the GPD, according to Beebe: one for eight years and the other for four.
Megan’s Law prohibits anyone from using public information about a convicted sex offender to harass that person.
