SACRAMENTO—
There's a plan in the works designed to alert the public when sex offenders run from supervision. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an order after two men cut off their satellite tracking devices and committed new crimes.Back in May Leonard Scroggins molested a niece in Napa, ditched his GPS ankle bracelet and fled to San Diego. This sex offender on parole then allegedly stole a woman's purse, tried to kidnap another and held a knife at the throat of a 13 year old girl he also tried to abduct.
"It's a matter of public safety. We already alert law enforcement," Terry Thornton of the State Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says a system is currently in the works that will alert that will now alert the public as well as cops, "There are a lot of ways to make alerts. There's social media, there's the web site, there's RSS feeds, there's a lot of mechanisms. We're looking at all of them."
Parolees ditch their ankle bracelets as many as 60 times a month; and most of them are sex offenders. There was a similar attack in Bakersfield about a month ago; but the 32 year old Scroggins represents the worst kind of nightmare. "This subjects criminal history, he was a dangerous individual" says Sgt. Dennis Leach of the National City Police Department.
To be effective this new alert system is going to have to cover a number of platforms: Smart Phones, Roadside Billboard's and Social Networking sights. That might be information overload for some, but Colleen Eckery---the mother of 3 year old Stella--wants to know, "I think we should know if there's somebody who's not following the law. So, we know if we need to keep an extra eye out on our children on the playground."
More than 7,000 prison parolees wear satellite tracking bracelets as mandated by Jessica's Law. But this represents just a fraction of the more than 80,000 registered sex offenders in California. A public alert system is on the fast track says the CDCR's Thornton, "We intend to make this happen very soon, within a couple of weeks."
