Sex Offender List Unavailable at SMPD

Elizabeth Schneider

Oct. 1 -- Santa Monica is one of 400 California cities with a population of less than 200,000 that by federal law has the option to make the list of the state's registered sex offenders available for public viewing. However, it has chosen to provide information on only one of the 51 registered offenders.

Like most cities in the state -- including such Westside municipalities as Beverly Hills and Culver City -- Santa Monica has chosen not to equip its station with a computer to access the names on the Megan's law CD-ROM.

Burbank, Glendale, Newport Beach and Pasadena are among the 108 cities surveyed by the State Department of Justice that provide the information. There could be more that were not surveyed, state officials said.

Police Chief James T. Butts, Jr. made the decision not to make the information available because the police station lacks the space and resources, said Lt. Frank Fabrega, the department's spokesman.

"We just don't have the space or the resources," Fabrega said. "You need to assign someone to sign up users, monitor and assist people, check the persons who comes in" to make sure they are over 18 and not registered sex offenders.

"There are several logistics that need to be determined before you can just put up a computer," Fabrega said.

According to Fabrega, Redondo Beach is the only agency in the South Bay equipped with a viewing station. "We refer everyone out to sheriff stations or LAPD offices," he said.

Since the 1997 passage of Megan's Law, California residents have been able to access information on sex offenders registered in their communities from computer terminals located at certain Sheriff's offices and police departments throughout the state.

According to the California Attorney General's Office, the state has required dangerous sex offenders to register with their local law enforcement agencies for more than 50 years. But specific information regarding the whereabouts of these offenders was not made available to the public until July 1995 with the implementation of the Child Molester Identification Line.

In 1996 the federal government took a further step with Megan's Law, named after seven-year-old New Jersey resident Megan Kanka, who was raped and murdered by a twice-convicted sex offender living across the street.

The law requires released sex offenders to register their names as well as their addresses with their local law enforcement agencies. The federal law required all states to enact their own Megan's Laws by September 1997.

By law, California's 15 cities with populations of more than 200,000 must provide computer stations for public use, said California Department of Justice information officer Mike Van Winkle.

However Federal law stipulates that police departments serving less than 200,000 residents can opt out of providing this service, as is the case in Santa Monica.

The situation in Santa Monica is not unusual, even though the California Department of Justice "encourages all agencies to make it (the sex offender registry) available," Van Winkle said.