CA- Long Beach's revised sex offender law will gather dust

11-20-2008 California:

LONG BEACH - The City Council approved a watered-down version of a sex offender residency law Tuesday night, but City Prosecutor Thomas Reeves said he won't prosecute violators.

The council voted 8-0, with Councilwoman Bonnie Lowenthal absent, to approve the revised ordinance, which will strictly limit where future registered sex offenders may live in Long Beach.

City Attorney Robert Shannon said the ordinance was rewritten after police officials and City Prosecutor Thomas Reeves raised concerns about the law, and after a lawsuit was filed last month challenging its constitutionality.

Reeves told the council Tuesday that a similar state law, known as Jessica's Law, has been facing legal challenges and that Long Beach should wait until those issues are resolved to move forward with its ordinance.

"I have continuing serious concerns about criminal enforcement of this amended ordinance," Reeves said. "The attorney general of this state and 58 district attorneys in this state are not prosecuting the residential restrictions of Jessica's Law because it remains uncertain and ambiguous as to whether they are constitutional."

Deputy City Attorney Cristyl Meyers said the city attorney's office will still be able to take civil legal action, such as asking a court to prohibit a property owner from violating the ordinance and possibly seeking monetary damages.

The primary constitutional issue addressed in the lawsuit, which was filed by 35 registered sex offenders, was that the original ordinance was a retroactive penalty that applied to all current registered sex offenders living in Long Beach.
The revised law now no longer applies to current offenders, but only to anyone convicted of a sex crime and who must register as a sex offender after the law goes into effect.

The council will have a second reading of the law and the mayor must approve it before it goes into effect 31 days later.

The revised ordinance also eliminates an anti-loitering provision that created "child safety zones" of 300feet around places where children gather.

Furthermore, the law limits to one the number of sex offenders that can live in a residential unit, rather than one per multi-unit building as originally written.

This seems to fly in the face of the sex offender "clustering" issue that the law originally was designed to battle.

Last winter, neighbors of 1149 E. First St. in Alamitos Beach called for city action when they learned that more than a dozen registered sex offenders were living in the apartment building.

Unchanged in the ordinance is the creation of "residential exclusion zones" - a 2,000-foot radius around child-care centers, parks and schools - where sex offenders aren't allowed to live.

The law also restricts property owners from knowingly renting to sex offenders in violation of the law.

With Reeves determined not to prosecute the law, Police Dep. Chief Bill Blair said officers could help the city attorney's office in its civil enforcement, but wouldn't write criminal citations.

"It would put the department in a very awkward position to try to enforce a law that we would have no one to file a case with," Blair said.

Councilwoman Tonia Reyes Uranga said the criminal enforcement provisions in the law should be left out, but ultimately she supported it as-is.

"I still believe that if it's not going to be enforced, we shouldn't pass meaningless legislation," Uranga said.

Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal disagreed and said the ordinance is just Long Beach's first step against sex offenders.

"Whether we pursue criminally today or not, that option should remain," Lowenthal said. "I think it's long from over." ..News Source.. by Paul Eakins, Staff Writer