CA- Corrections officials reverse themselves: Sex offenders can return to camp on creek

6-2-2009 California:

Reversing course, California corrections officials said Monday that homeless sex offenders on parole may once again live along Black Rascal Creek.

The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation had ordered that by Friday the camp in west Merced be cleared after it heard complaints about trespassing.

A handful of the homeless people moved beneath a Highway 99 bridge about a mile away for the weekend before learning they could return to their old camp.

The land, by the creek and train tracks, was thought to be owned by Union Pacific, though it's now believed to be owned by the Merced Irrigation District.

Assistant Regional Administrator Bobby Haase said parole has never been in the housing business. The department's role is to enforce what parolees can't do, not tell them what they can.

"Our job is to help these guys to reintegrate, not to put up barriers," Haase said.

Paroled sex offenders may live along the creek as long as the landowner doesn't object.

Merced Mayor Pro Tem John Carlisle appealed to Corrections' undersecretary of operations Scott Kernan to halt the plans. Carlisle said it was the departments' director who approved rescinding the order.

"We're right back where we were before," he said.

In time, he hopes some solution will be found for the homeless encampments around Merced. The city's eligible for about $515,000 in economic stimulus money to help the homeless.

Merced Irrigation District has implied it wouldn't try to move the homeless unless there were problems, Carlisle said. For example, one man who carved his campsite into the levee's side was kicked out.

"They don't want to be the boogeyman," he said.

MID officials were unavailable for comment.

Renee Davenport, who was advocating for the parolees, said the bridge where they had moved was unsafe and did nothing but move the men from one area to another.

"They're going home," she said, "and I'm glad." ..Source.. by Scott Jason