 |
| NEWS
of the Day
- August 31, 2009 |
|
on
some issues of interest to the community policing and neighborhood
activist
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following group of articles from local
newspapers and other sources constitutes but a small percentage
of the information available to the community policing and neighborhood
activist public. It is by no means meant to cover every possible
issue of interest, nor is it meant to convey any particular
point of view ...
We present this simply as a convenience to our readership ...
|
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From the LA Times
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sex offenders move to Antioch area 'because they can'
A small, scruffy, unincorporated area largely surrounded by the city of Antioch is home to more than 100 sex offenders. It's also where Phillip Garrido allegedly held Jaycee Lee Dugard for 18 years.
by Maria L. La Ganga, Maura Dolan and Molly Hennessy-Fiske
August 31, 2009
Reporting from Antioch, Calif.
Dawn Cordy always knew her neighborhood was an easy place to hide -- a semirural San Francisco suburb where housing is cheap, sheriff's cruisers rarely appear, residents don't snoop and registered sex offenders have found a refuge.
It's a small, scruffy, unincorporated island largely surrounded by the hard-knock city of Antioch, a region synonymous with the foreclosure crisis in the Bay Area but now linked to yet another outrage.
This is where Phillip Garrido, who was charged last week with rape and kidnapping, allegedly held Jaycee Lee Dugard for 18 years and fathered her two children in a warren of tents and soundproofed outbuildings behind his gray cinder-block house on Walnut Avenue.
Garrido's and Cordy's 94509 ZIP Code is home to more than 100 registered sex offenders, according to the Megan's Law website, and officials say the region has a higher concentration of offenders than other areas.
At least four sex offenders, including Garrido, live within easy walking distance of Cordy's house; they move to the area "because they can," said Cordy, 52. "We're mostly an older bunch, and we don't pay that much attention. This is Boonieville."
Besides, she said of her unwelcome neighbors, "Honey, I collect knives. I wouldn't mind doing them harm."
On Sunday, Dugard remained secluded with her mother, daughters and half sister in Northern California, where her stepfather said the family is working with counselors to overcome the last 18 years.
"They are doing fine -- not fine, but fine for the situation," Carl Probyn said. "My wife says that Jaycee is an excellent mother, and they are bonding, playing little games like checkers. They are doing OK for the situation."
Law enforcement officers with saws and cadaver dogs swarmed Walnut Avenue on Sunday looking for clues that might link Garrido with a host of unsolved crimes in the region, including four slayings in Pittsburg in the late 1990s.
The main focus was the house next to Garrido's, where Damon Robinson, a 38-year-old driving instructor, now lives. Garrido cared for the property before Robinson moved in and lived for a time in a wooden shed behind it, according to sheriff's spokesman Jimmy Lee.
Three of the people whose killings remain unsolved were prostitutes. The fourth was a 15-year-old girl named Lisa Norrell, whose body was discovered a week after she left a dance alone on Nov. 6, 1998, and disappeared.
Capt. Daniel Terry of the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department said Friday that investigators were looking at Garrido because "several bodies were dumped at an industrial location where the suspect supposedly worked."
Minnie Norrell, 66, said a Pittsburg homicide detective contacted her Saturday about her daughter's slaying and called Garrido a person of interest.
"They said they didn't want to get my hopes up, but this guy was of interest," said Norrell, who lives in Pittsburg, where she spends her days on oxygen and in a wheelchair because of advanced emphysema. "He said they were going to be [in Garrido's neighborhood] for days. . . . I am hopeful."
Under recently passed laws, sex offenders' movements are severely circumscribed.
They generally must stay away from schools, parks, churches and places where children congregate, said Joan Petersilia, a law professor and co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center.
Such laws, combined with the high price of housing in California, "push sex offenders to less populated and more rural areas," Petersilia said. "They want a place where they can remain anonymous and people leave them alone."
Terry, who heads the Sheriff's Department's investigative division, said Contra Costa County has about 1,700 registered sex offenders. His station is responsible for about 350, "349 more than the number of detectives I have dedicated to monitoring these people."
He called the region's concentration "significantly higher" than other areas and rued that "this is the reality. These people are walking amongst us everywhere."
Antioch, with a population just over 100,000, has struggled in recent years with crime, rampant growth and foreclosures. One San Francisco Chronicle columnist dubbed the city "the finest slum this side of Stockton."
According to RealtyTrac .com, the median home price has plummeted more than 40% in the last year and the foreclosure rate is still rising. There were 699 new foreclosures filed in July.
Mayor Jim Davis acknowledged the economic pressures his city has faced. But he was quick to note that Garrido's neighborhood is not part of Antioch proper, although the city would like to annex it and "be able to get out there and police it properly."
"There's a lot of building out there violating code," he said. "If the city were out there, all the sheds and tents out there would not have been tolerated. . . . There are lower-priced rents out there. It allows those who are on probation and can't find good employment to congregate."
Betty Unpingo, a mother of 10, always knew her neighborhood was "an easy area to get lost in for a while." But until her family threw a backyard party two years ago, Unpingo didn't know exactly who was taking advantage of that anonymity.
As the party ended, Garrido stood in front of his house across the street and motioned for the teenage girls leaving the event to come on over, she said. Unpingo's daughter was so suspicious that she checked his name on the Megan's Law list.
On the list were Garrido and several others nearby, including two living in one home. Since then, Unpingo has instituted the "buddy sys- tem." None of her children are allowed to leave the house alone.
Sex offenders have "got to have someplace to go," acknowledged the 52-year-old retired businesswoman, "but not here."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-kidnapped31-2009aug31,0,4875175,print.story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
500 groups urge Obama to halt immigration police program
A letter to the president says local enforcement of federal immigration laws has led to racial profiling and civil rights violations.
by Anna Gorman
August 31, 2009
A coalition of advocacy groups sent a letter to President Obama last week demanding that the administration end a program that allows local police to enforce federal immigration law.
The program, known as 287(g), deputizes police to turn over suspects or criminals to immigration authorities for possible deportation.
Immigrant rights groups said the program has led to civil rights violations and racial profiling.
"Racial profiling and other civil rights abuses by the local law enforcement agencies that have sought out 287(g) powers have compromised public safety, while doing nothing to solve the immigration crisis," the letter states. "The program has worked counter to community policing goals by eroding the trust and cooperation of immigrant communities and diverted already reduced law enforcement resources from their core mission."
The letter was sent by the National Immigration Law Center and includes signatures by more than 500 local and national groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
Organizations have planned vigils, marches and news conferences this week to raise awareness about their criticisms.
In July, the Department of Homeland Security announced an expansion of 287(g) and some changes, including a new agreement that all participating agencies must sign. The agreement requires that police agencies focus their efforts on criminals who pose a threat to public safety, with less emphasis on those who commit minor crimes.
Since the announcement, administration officials have repeatedly defended 287(g), saying the cooperation between local and federal law enforcement improves public safety by resulting in the detention and deportation of illegal immigrants with criminal records. They have said the changes make the program more uniform and fair.
"There are many instances in which close coordination and cooperation between federal and state law enforcement agencies to address serious immigration enforcement issues makes a ton of sense," Homeland Security Assistant Secretary John Morton said recently. "That is why we are making important changes to the 287(g) program to recognize and address some of the concerns."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-policeimmig31-2009aug31,0,6375655,print.story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From the Daily News
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Police expand search in Dugard kidnapping
INVESTIGATION: Cadaver dogs used in property adjoining suspects' residence.
by Paul Elias and Lisa Leff
The Associated Press
August 30, 2009
ANTIOCH, Calif. - Armed with rakes, shovels and chain saws, about 20 officers on Sunday combed the backyard of a couple charged with kidnapping and raping Jaycee Lee Dugard and used cadaver dogs to search an adjoining property where neighbors say one of the suspects once served as a caretaker.
Sheriff's deputies and prosecutors from two counties and officers from two city police departments were examining a neighboring yard, which sits behind a off-white house with a chain link fence.
"We do consider it a crime scene," said Jimmy Lee, a spokesman for the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department.
Lee would not elaborate on what kind of evidence investigators were seeking or the nature of the possible crimes involving the second property. The link to the kidnapping case is that Phillip Garrido, the man charged with holding Dugard in captivity for 18 years in his own backyard, had access to the neighboring land when the house that sits on it was vacant three years ago.
"It looks like Garrido lived on the property in a shed," Lee said.
Damon Robinson, who moved into the vacant house in 2006, and another neighbor say Phillip Garrido served as caretaker of the home before Robinson took occupancy. That same year Robinson's then-girlfriend called police after she saw tents and children in the backyard, but the responding deputy did not uncover the backyard compound.
A third neighbor, Janice Deitrich, 66, said that Phillip Garrido visited and helped to feed an elderly neighbor who lived in the house before Robinson.
Police in Pittsburg, a Bay Area city near where the Garridos lived, have said they are investigating whether Phillip Garrido may be linked to several unsolved murders of prostitutes in the early 1990s. Antioch police are also looking into unsolved cases but declined further details.
Investigators also continued clearing brush from the scruffy backyard compound of tents and sheds where Garrido and his wife, Nancy, allegedly took Dugard after abducting her from her family's street 170 miles away in South Lake Tahoe.
Dugard was 11 when she was kidnapped and no trace had been seen of her until last week, when she showed up with Phillip Garrido at his parole agent's office in the San Francisco Bay area. Authorities allege she was held as a prisoner in the backyard encampment all these years and gave birth to two daughters, ages 11 and 15, who were fathered by Phillip Garrido.
The series of events that led to Dugard's rescue quickly unfolded following a visit by Phillip Garrido to the University of California at Berkeley. He wanted to distribute leaflets and hold an event on the campus, but the events coordinator and a campus police officer thought that he behaved strangely and were concerned about the robotic behavior of the daughters he sired with Dugard. When the officer found that Garrido was a registered sex offender with a rape conviction in Nevada three decades ago, she contacted his parole officer.
At a meeting with his parole officer, Garrido brought along his wife, Dugard and the two girls. Authorities say he confessed to the kidnapping and was arrested along with his wife.
Phillip and Nancy Garrido pleaded not guilty Friday to a total of 29 counts, including forcible abduction, rape and false imprisonment.
http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_13236561
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OPINION
Injunctions might not be best tool to fight taggers
August 30, 2009
NEW City Attorney Carmen Trutanich wasted no time jumping into the middle of complex and protracted city problems - sometimes ill-advisedly but always with enthusiasm.
He spoke out when the city looked the other way at millions in costs related to the Michael Jackson memorial at Staples Center, hinting mysteriously at possible criminality.
He mixed it up with City Controller Wendy Greuel who wanted Trutanich to make good on a campaign promise to kill a lawsuit to stop her office from conducting performance review on government offices run by elected officials. He balked, which earned him scathing reviews from people who had just weeks before supported his candidacy. Now he's set to uncover his first major crime-fighting undertaking - all this in less than two months on the job.
But perhaps Trutanich's enthusiasm has led him a bit astray. So far, his public actions haven't cast him in the best light. And now he's planning on taking a smart law enforcement tool used (to somewhat excess) by his predecessor, Rocky Delgadillo, and using it in a way that seems suspect.
Gang injunctions, developed by former Mayor James Hahn when he was city attorney, made sense. The court orders made it a crime for gangs to, well, gang up. In certain areas identified as gang turf, people who fit specific criteria of being gang members or gang-affiliated were not allowed to congregate within that area (A gang injunction is the reason that about 400 members of a South Los Angeles gang rented a Studio City nightclub in June to celebrate the gang's birthday; they can't gather for parties in their own neighborhoods. Police raided the club anyhow and made arrests. Gang injunctions, it turns out, can be good for the Valley economy in a way no one anticipated.) Delgadillo, however, thoroughly embraced the injunction concept, blanketing the city with more and more - 66 in all now - successively larger geographic locations.
Now Trutanich wants to focus his attention on taggers, the vandals who mark up every possible flat surface in the city they can get away with and drive all upstanding Angelenos a little crazy. Anyone who isn't a tagger should support his curb of this activity.
It's unfortunate, however, that rather than developing a program or law enforcement tool especially designed for fighting taggers, he's simply trying use the formula for gang injunctions with "gang" crossed out and "tagger" inserted. Square peg, round hole.
Gang injunctions make sense for restricting the main activity of gangs, which is congregating and causing trouble, intimidating neighborhoods, running drug sales and shooting or beating people up. Taggers and gangsters do overlap, but not always. And it's unclear how making it hard for taggers to hang out in groups in a small area will stop them from individually marking up walls, building and signs.
This is not to say that Trutanich ought to drop his plan to go after taggers. Indeed, there's no one single thing that uglifies Los Angeles more than graffiti, though billboards come a close second. Tagging might be considered a minor crime in the whole range of violent crimes, but its effect on the city's appearance and psyche is nothing less than abusive.
But Trutanich will imperil the entire concept of injunctions if he misapplies them to a group of criminals who operate in a completely different manner and gets challenged - and loses - in court. People have the essential right to get together - it's called freedom of assembly. In certain extreme situations, like fighting violence and death from gangs, people do look the other way in the interest of public safety. Tagging is not one of them.
Anyone who cares about Los Angeles wants Trutanich to succeed with cleaning up the town. That may mean stiffer penalties or creative punishment for those caught (graffiti-cleaning chain gangs). We just want it done in the right way.
We urge Trutanich to take the time he needs to craft a multifaceted approach to this seeming intractable urban problem that will both stand up to court challenges and work. Tagger injunctions don't seem to fit that bill. http://www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_13235043 |
|
