Jessica's Law makes life difficult for parole agents

10-25-2007 California

Wearing a black shirt and a badge on a chain, parole agent Jerry Ramirez pulled his state-issued hybrid into a San Leandro apartment complex Tuesday to check on a few men.
The sprawling, two-story complex at the elbow of Interstates 880 and 238 is billed as a "quiet, resort-like setting" where "your home blends into the lush landscape of curving pathways, manicured lawns, shady trees and shimmering waterways."

The sales pitch fails to mention this: More and more, the neighbors are registered sex offenders fresh out of prison.

As state officials reckon with one of the nation's toughest new anti-predator laws, Ramirez and other agents who oversee Alameda County's paroled sex offenders say the 840-unit complex is one of few places they've found that their cash-strapped charges can call home.

Agents in Bay Area counties face a similar dilemma from Proposition 83, a 2006 ballot measure that forever bans newly released sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a

school or park where kids "regularly gather."

Prop. 83, or Jessica's Law, also requires them to wear GPS anklets for life, though the state has yet to buy the 9,000 devices needed to fully enforce the law with parolees. Still unsettled is how they will be tracked, and by whom, once they leave parole, as hundreds already have.

In Alameda County, parole agents point to a handful of eligible motels in Newark, Hayward and Oakland. Ramirez said he discovered the San Leandro apartment complex when a parolee who lived there asked him to check if it complied with Jessica's Law.
GPS device in hand, Ramirez found that it did, and passed word to other parolees who received 45-day notices to move or face a possible return to prison. Or at least parts of it did. As the crow flies, two schools across the freeway sit too close to some of the complex.

"I kind of drew a line," said Ramirez, who supervises 20 of the county's high-risk sex offenders. "It gets a little crazy. You can live there, but only in these certain buildings."

For parole agents and policy-makers across the state, some devilish details are beginning to emerge from a law that 70 percent of voters passed in November.

Agents in the East Bay say the law has complicated their work, uprooting some sex offenders from stable housing, turning some transient and slowly concentrating many into a handful of spots.

Parole agents check potential housing by GPS and mark off nearby schools, parks, and "obvious day cares," said Ramirez. Prop. 83 does not define a school or a park. Would ballparks such as the Oakland Coliseum count?

"Politically, at this point, if the city tells us it's a park, we're not going to touch that," said Guillermo Viera-Rosa, who supervises sex offender parole officers in the county. "The areas that tend to be compliant are really devoid of anything like that. They're industrial areas, rural areas . . . You can't underestimate the limitations."

In Alameda and Contra Costa counties, more than 150 sex convicts now fall under Jessica's Law, state officials said.

Statewide, about 3,500 parolees must comply with the law, with 400 to 700 new parolees each month.

Earlier this month, the state Supreme Court blocked the state from forcing four parolees to move and agreed to consider constitutional objections to the ballot measure.

A federal judge this spring ruled that the 2,000-foot rule could not apply retroactively to about 90,000 registered sex offenders who were living freely in communities before the law passed. But if they land back behind bars, for whatever reason, the state says they fall under the new restrictions.

Jason Beasley, released in 2004 after 14 months in prison on a conviction for rape of a minor, was on parole, living at his mother's house in San Lorenzo when police stopped him for driving under the influence. He spent three months in jail.

When he got out, his parole officer fitted him with a GPS anklet and ordered him to move. He packed up his guitar and settled into the complex with the manicured lawns and shady trees.

"I was living good, with family . . . I was saving up money," said Beasley, 28. "I think it's a good law.

"Some people need it, but . . . it doesn't make sense to apply it to every sex offender."

Beasley's mother, Kathy Berry, said she spent a month scouring the East Bay for compliant housing until Ramirez suggested the San Leandro complex.

"It was totally insane. You cannot turn around without a school or a park or a preschool," she said.

"He can still come to my house and visit, but he can't live there. So what's the difference?"

Ramirez said those paroled for non-sex crimes make up about a third of his Jessica's Law cases.

State officials said last week that about 500 offenders have since left parole with no one to track them. Local officials have nothing in place — no GPS units, no system, no money — to do the job.

"The issue of who would take responsibility for sex offenders when they were no longer under our authority is something everyone anticipated would have to be resolved," said corrections spokesman Bill Sessa. "I don't think anyone anticipated it would come to a head so quickly."

State and local officials are just starting those discussions, said Suzanne Brown-McBride, chairwoman of the state Sex Offender Management Board. "Clearly there is pressure for people to get some clarity on this. It cuts to the heart of where state control ends and where local control begins," she said.

Viera-Rosa said he thinks Californians never understood the impact of their vote.

"The voters really did something spectacular here," he said. "These are heavy, heavy laws that control liberties and behaviors that would have been fought in the Legislature for decades, and in one fell swoop, it's done."

One indication of what local jurisdictions could face arose Tuesday, when agents visited a motel along Interstate 880 in Hayward where one parolee told them he had found a place. He paid for a room but there were no signs that he actually stayed there.


"He did come into compliance, but the story doesn't end there. If it was as simple as getting them into compliance, we'd win every time," said Viera-Rosa. "They have to stay in compliance for the rest of their natural lives."

In tracking a small population of sex offenders, the GPS devices help.

On Tuesday morning, Ramirez curbed the hybrid in downtown Oakland, settled a laptop on his knee and pulled up a map with blue dots and a red "X." The dots tracked where "KMJ" was all morning.

The red X showed where he stood.

Ramirez found him basking in the sun below a Chinatown archway in gray sweats, a sport bag across his shoulder and a GPS anklet bulging under a white sock. Fresh out of prison after 10 years on an arson conviction, KMJ fell under Jessica's Law from an earlier rap for what he called "basically copping a feel."

With a week to leave a downtown shelter that fell within one of the banned zones, he was struggling to find a place to stay.

"I didn't see it coming. I didn't know about it," he said of the new law. "Downtown Oakland is the center of resources. It's dotted with schools." Ramirez offered a suggestion.

"We've got a hotel we can put you in. It's way out in Newark," he said.

"I can commute. That's fine," the parolee replied.

It wouldn't matter. Ramirez searched the convicted arsonist's bag and found a small Bic lighter, violating a condition of his parole.

That night he was back in jail, leaving a room free at the Newark motel. ..more.. by John Simerman, STAFF WRITER