BAD TOUCH

Fearing unintended consequences, Pasadena policymakers have shelved a proposed ordinance that would have banished paroled sex offenders from most of the city.

The Public Safety Commission decided last week that concerns about severely limiting where offenders can live, coupled with worries from police that enacting stiffer restrictions would only make it harder to track transient offenders, are reason enough to keep the current rules as they are — prohibiting residence within 2,000 feet of schools, parks, libraries and child care centers.

The ordinance, under consideration for months, would have prohibited paroled sex offenders who aren’t related from living in the same home, apartment building or motel to prevent offenders from clustering, following the lead of the county and surrounding cities that have beefed up restrictions since voters in 2006 passed Jessica’s Law, which allowed cities to go beyond the state’s basic restrictions. Jessica’s Law, known as Proposition 83, also required GPS monitoring for all felon sex offenders.

Councilwoman Margaret McAustin, one of four council members on the committee, was concerned that tougher restrictions would too drastically limit where sex offenders paroled into the community can live. “We basically say you can’t live anywhere, even if that might be a stable environment,” McAustin said.

But the committee’s decision not to pursue even more stringent restrictions — an arguably counterproductive method — now leaves the Crown City with its pants down, critics say. Nearly every city that borders Pasadena, even unincorporated Altadena, has greatly enhanced residency restrictions this year to make it almost impossible for new offenders to move in without breaking the law, virtually placing a welcome mat for those offenders at Pasadena’s doorstep.

“There is no reason not to expect an increase in the number of violent child predators in Pasadena,” said Rene Amy, a longtime schools activist and critic of local sex offender management. “I’ve said for years that folks need to be careful and watch their kid. The bottom line is Pasadena is not doing all that it can to protect children.”

South Pasadena, Sierra Madre, Arcadia and San Marino have all enhanced offender residency restrictions, with Arcadia taking it a step further by adding golf courses to the list of protected places. As a result, sex offenders are banned from living in up to 85 percent of those cities. “The question is, if you implement restrictions, where are these people going to go?” asked Amy, suggesting city leaders have made Pasadena an inviting place for offenders.

Damned if you do …

The Public Safety Committee’s decision comes on the heels of two scathing reports suggesting the get-tough approach on sex offenders pays lip service to public safety and is replete with unintended consequences that undermine its intent.

Between November 2006 and June 2008, roughly two years after voters overwhelmingly approved Jessica’s Law, the number of paroled transient sex offenders shot up more than 800 percent to 1,056, according to a study released this month by the state’s Sex Offender Management Board, which is tasked with assessing policies. The board’s study concluded that the dramatic rise in transiency among parolees, who make up 15 percent of all registered sex offenders, shows an “unmistakable correlation” between tougher restrictions and sex offender homelessness. This puts the public at greater risk, as homelessness is among the many factors that can lead to a new offense, according to the study.

Last week, the state Office of the Inspector General released its investigation into the state’s supervision of convicted rapist Phillip Garrido, who allegedly kidnapped and raped Jaycee Lee Dugard over the course of 18 years despite being a high-risk paroled sex offender on passive GPS monitoring. The OIG report exposed serious flaws in parole oversight of Garrido, finding that parole officials’ mishandling of the GPS monitoring system provides the public only a false sense of security and raises serious questions about expanding monitoring to even more inmates, as the state plans as part of its court-ordered prison population reduction effort. In fact, Garrido’s parole officers failed to act on obvious parole violations about 90 percent of the time, ignored even the most basic guidelines for supervising an ex-con of his caliber and even recommended multiple times that he be released from parole, according to the OIG report, which also said Garrido should have been under much more intense GPS monitoring.

“It cannot be overstated: the passive GPS monitoring program, as currently applied, provides a false sense of security to the public, who have been told that the department uses GPS to monitor parolees,” Inspector General David R. Shaw wrote in the report.

In response, Matthew Cate, the state prisons chief, said corrections officials will begin focusing more supervision and resources on high-risk parolees under a new risk-based system to begin in January.

But such failures raise serious questions about how the state will monitor and control sex offenders in the future, said Tom Tobin, vice chair of the sex offender board, adding that the board will release recommendations on revamping the management system in January. “I think the big question is, these seem to make people feel better and believe they’re safer, but is there any reason to think that is really true?” asked Tobin, who operates a treatment center for offenders. Studies in other states have shown residency restrictions do nothing to keep offenders from committing new crimes, Tobin said.

A place to call home

Pasadena is home to 176 registered sex offenders, 25 of whom are parolees and considered high-risk offenders, and 16 probationers considered lower risk, according to Cmdr. John Perez of the Pasadena Police Department.

But a chief concern is the population of transient offenders, which could grow if the city adopted more stringent regulations, Perez said. “Start mapping it out and you run out of land really quick,” said Perez.

The transient offender population likely increased when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors acted in September to shut down the seedy Lucky Star Motel in East Pasadena that housed nine offenders, according to Pasadena Chief Prosecutor Connie Orozco. What’s more, tougher restrictions could lead offenders to claim homelessness in order to escape prosecution, Orozco said. Police have already encountered one offender who registered as a transient with Pasadena police but who was actually living and working near Los Angeles, Perez said. Transient offenders are only required to check in with police every 30 days, making them less subject to law enforcement oversight.

A recent history lesson

Three words embody Pasadena’s most recent — and perhaps most embarrassing — encounter with a sex offender: John Laurence Whitaker.

A convicted rapist and child molester now suspected in two cold-case murders, Whitaker, posing as a garrulous decorated Vietnam vet, schmoozed his way to the helm of a school volunteer group in 2001 and ran for the Pasadena City College Board of Trustees that same year. His smooth-talking persona helped him mask the fact that he was a registered sex offender who spent upwards of a dozen years in prison for his crimes, and even earned him keys to a school district office before he suddenly skipped town and was arrested in Oregon in 2004.

It will be a year before the Public Safety Committee revisits the restrictions; members asked city staff to return then with an update on how the limits are working in neighboring cities.

Councilman Steve Haderlein, chair of the committee, said he sees the potential of Pasadena’s lesser restrictions creating a concentration of offenders here, but he’s betting that won’t happen. “But in a year we might find out that’s true, in which case we would take action,” Haderlein said.

Consider the Whitaker debacle reason enough to keep closer tabs on sex offenders in Pasadena, Amy said.

“There was a lot of egg on the faces of people in town with John Whitaker, and he didn’t molest anybody,” he said. “The last thing we need is that scenario playing out again with something awful and horrible happening.”