VA- Fairfax County budget cuts would nix sex-predator monitoring team

3-6-2009 Virginia:

A team of four detectives that closely monitors nearly 400 registered sexual predators in Fairfax County would be dissolved under County Executive Anthony Griffin’s proposed budget.

The Sexual Predator Enforcement and Detection team is one of the many potential casualties in a brutal round of budget cuts to public safety, the hardest-hit sector in the fiscal 2010 spending proposal. Reassigning the team to other duties would shave $330,000 off a $648 million shortfall.

The loss of the team would shift its responsibilities to the Virginia State Police, which is stretched even thinner than Fairfax County in its ability to track offenders.

The bulk of the team’s time is spent going door to door and checking whether predators live where they say they live and work where they say they work. The team also performs computer checks, stakeouts and has other investigative responsibilities.

And they’ve steadily made progress, sharply cutting rates of noncompliance — which occurs when an offender fails to notify police of changes in relevant information, even a new e-mail address. That rate fell from 35 percent in 2005 to 11 percent in 2008, according to 2nd Lt. Lance Schaible, who heads the team.

“We attribute that more than anything to the fact that our people are going out there and physically checking on these people,” he said. “It encourages them to stay up to date, because they know they’re going to be monitored more closely than they have in the past.”

The detectives were closely involved in the February 2008 arrest of David Lee Foltz, a registered sex offender who police had tracked with a GPS device on his vehicle and caught as he allegedly attacked a woman in Falls Church.

At least two county supervisors are troubled by the cut, as part of a larger dissatisfaction with the extent of reductions to police and fire departments in the fiscal 2010 budget, which they will vote on in late April.

“I think it’s a bad policy decision,” said Jeff McKay, who represents the Lee District. “I think honestly the cuts to public safety that have been proposed globally are a bad decision.”

Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity said the cut reflected a failure to set priorities at a time when the board is setting aside cash to “build a government housing bureaucracy,” a reference to the county’s multimillion-dollar affordable housing program.

“I can’t believe that with the troubles that the county’s having with Internet sexual predators that we’d be cutting that particular area of law enforcement,” Herrity said. ..News Source.. by William C. Flook, Examiner Staff Writer