Lake Forest became the first Orange County city to repeal its ban on sex offenders in parks Tuesday, a move closely watched by community leaders around the county.
Citing the high cost of defending the measure in court, the Lake Forest City Council ended its ban on sex offenders in city parks. Cities such as Mission Viejo, Seal Beach, Fountain Valley, Los Alamitos and Laguna Niguel have similar bans that could be subject to legal challenges by convicted sex offenders. San Juan Capistrano discussed and ultimately rejected a ban out of liability and legal concerns.
It would cost at least $200,000 to defend the law on constitutional grounds, said City Attorney Scott C. Smith. And that's only if the city won, a prospect that seems increasingly questionable. Losing could add penalty costs, including paying the legal fees of the sex offenders who challenge the ban.
The city knew it had a legal battle on its hands when the law passed unanimously last December, said Susan Kang Schroeder, chief of staff for the Orange County district attorney's office.
"When we were here last year, we told them we would be sued," she said.
Mayor Kathryn McCullough asked if the D.A. would pay the city's legal costs if opponents made good on a promise to sue.
The question set off an argument between her and D.A. Tony Rackauckas. Read a transcript of that argument here.
Rackauckas said neither he nor the county could be expected to pay the city's fees.
One activist lawyer said she had two clients ready to sue the city if the repeal did not go forward.
"If that ordinance is not repealed, that lawsuit will be filed," said Janice Bellucci, state organizer with California Reform Sex Offender Laws.
Bellucci said only 1.9 percent of California's sex offenders are arrested again for sex crimes. "They are people who have already been in prison, already paid their debt to society," she said.
"They are people who have already been in prison, already paid their debt to society," she said.
Lake Forest resident Mary Axelrod said the ban was needed to protect the city's children from molestation.
"This is a sickness, and the only way to stop this is for them to stay away and avoid the temptation, which is going into a group of children," she said. "I would think the safety of the children would outweigh lawsuits because the people come first in all occasions."
Robert Curtis, a Lake Forest hairdresser convicted 12 years ago of a misdemeanor sex crime, said the ban keeps him from watching over his son in city parks.
Rackauckas said he was unsure if the city's repeal would be repeated around the county, saying "it's pretty hard to call." Currently about half of Orange County's cities have enacted similar laws.
A county law along the same lines is no longer being enforced following the overturned conviction of Hugo Godinez.
Keeping the law on the books but not enforcing it would still leave Lake Forest with "some vulnerability" to lawsuits, Smith said.
The council tentatively reversed the measure on a 4-0 vote with one abstention. The reversal will return later for final approval.
TELL US WHAT YOU THINK IN THE COMMENTS
Should cities defend the ban despite the risk of court challenges?
Uncle Tony and Aunt Cathy are a bigger risk to your kids. Who the heck do you think the vast majority of molesters are? Tony Rackauckas scurried around Orange County pressing for these laws to be passed. He should be the one to pay if there are suits. We can add Cathy Schlicht to that list here in MV. After all, if she's rich enough to fund her own council races she should be able to afford it. And the law here was solely her idea, or so she claimed. If our council is smart they will repeal.
That way they cannot say they were discriminated against!!
"I supported it because the people of Mission Viejo wanted it. I understand that it might be unconstitutional, and we'll deal with it if it so turns out" was the gist of the response. a. was there really a citizen's demand for this feel-safe ban that was the essential handiwork of just one member? Were there as many people who demanded it as the ones who wanted a dog park? Did we debate it as long as we did the dog park? The others likely went along because no one wants to look as if they want sex offenses (no one does) in their city. b. shouldn't a council member be supposed to be doing what's best for the city *legally* as well as responsibly? If tomorrow, the people of Mission Viejo want all bipolar adults over 27 to be quarantined, would we take the same stance? That is, "I realize it could be unconstitutional, but the people wanted it" It is the silliness of this faux measures for safety that lead to basically unenforceable laws, which end up costing the taxpayers for outrage. Sex crimes are horrific, no one wants them, but using SPF 50 makes no difference on preventing them. Please, city council, repeal this, before it costs us. We get it, you want our residents to be safe from sexual predators and really really care. This is not the way to go about it
The one we have in RSM is so toothless it'll probably stand, since the City of RSM doesn't own the parks and the private corporation that does realizes they don't want to be on the hook to defend it in court, so they're not enforcing/endorsing it. I guess we'll have to keep being responsible parents and actively supervising our young children at the park, instead of being deluded into thinking they're 'safe' at the park and don't need to be supervised... One meaningful reform of sex offender laws I would like to see is a better explanation or way to look up what your neighbors on the Megan's Law website have actually done to deserve to be a registered sex offender. Right now they usually have listed some cryptically-named offense like 'lewd or lascivious acts with a minor under 14 years of age'. There's no case number or anyway to look up what I would think would be public record as far as what they actually did, which I think would be helpful for parents who want to better gauge for themselves how dangerous the RSOs living next to them are, and whether they should run away when they see them or just not be friends with them.
To put it simply Cathy Schlicht needed an actual accomplishment rather than just negativity, lies, and roundabouts that erase Churches... But you're right about people's readiness to flush their liberties and it's not just south county. Witness the Patriot Act...
I really don't like the idea of paying for these criminals housing and feeding, and I don't think execution is warranted, but if they're going to be considered an increased danger to the public after being released from prison, extra measures that they pay for but doesn't require us to fence off the parks and put ugly signage at the playgrounds about sex offenders is a better option. That guy in Lake Forest who was stalking that kid at the grocery store until her Mom found him on Megan's Law and turned him in definitely needed some extra monitoring. The RSM library guy probably shouldn't have been allowed near the library or anywhere kids usually gather with his criminal history, but categorically banning a whole class of people because of the ones who really need it is unnecessary (and un-Constitutional) in this day and age. If there was a way to find out more about the RSO's on Megan's Law and see what they've done that supposedly warrants them as such an extreme threat to everyone that many think they still should be locked up would help further the debate in a constructive way...
It has never sat right with me the way we say that someone has paid their debt to society. We clearly don't mean that, and it doesn't matter what the person's crime was. We aren't very honest, our society. Not by a long shot. And it's pretty clear the problems we have are not going away no matter how many people we lock up. The social problems we have will stay entrenched until we get honest with ourselves about the causes and more appropriate ways to deal with each problem.
Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution makes this clear: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. (See, now you get to find out what "Attainder" means. Your curiosity has been piqued such that at least a "I already knew that" is warranted) The punishment we as a society seek for one incident is often directly proportional to the rage caused by another incident.
They love to quote recidivism (sp?) statistics, but they won't let Joe Citizen know if their neighbor had just a one-time incident, or was thought to be a serial criminal who was finally caught, or attacked a relative versus a stranger off the street, or what their exact mode of attack was. Why isn't all of that available to the public? It would be very useful to people living near Registered Sex Offenders!! Who's hiding that information? Who thinks that should be privileged information due to some warped sense of protecting criminals' right to privacy about the crimes they've committed?? Funny you should mention the Scarlet Letter, but if you're a convicted molester, you've lost all right to live in society and pretend you're not a monster. You want to start over with a clean slate?? Emigrate outside the U.S...
In case you didn't notice above, I started on my comments on this article by saying I thought these parks-ban laws for registered sex offenders are stupid. I don't think it should be illegal for every one of the RSOs to walk their dog in the park. For me, if their disease (HI Dan!) is so great that they are that much of a threat to children in the park (or anywhere else in public for that matter), then they should still be locked up, or monitored more than the rest of us, but on an individual basis based on their individual threat level. The case of the grocery-store stalker in Lake Forest who was identified on Megan's Law by the Mom and re-arrested is a textbook case of what the website was meant for, and it's effective, legal use. These parks-ban laws are too general, based on recidivism stats that are way lower than Drunk Drivers (you're right about that, BTW), and the perceived threat for a certain type of area and then is applied to a large class of people fairly arbitrarily. They're all going to be challenged in court and repealed by Court Order, probably...
Seriously, look up the story on the Lake Forest grocery store creeper and tell me that guy shouldn't have still been locked up or with a GPS monitor on so they could bring him in faster after being ID'd on Megan's Law and make it harder for him to refute he hadn't been in the store(s) he was stalking that girl in at that time...
linking park restrictions to a reduction in sex crimes, and no way that park restrictions will do anything about the bulk of the sex-offender problem, which is the abuse of children by relatives and other people they know. The laws are simplistic, emotion-based formulas that cloak politicians in an aura of decisiveness. while doing nothing to tackle a ferociously difficult problem. The second thing is that they are a dangerous waste of law-enforcement time and resources. Police departments are already obliged under a welter of federal and state laws to register and monitor sex. offenders. Prosecutors and sheriffs around the country have complained that adding park enforcement to their large and growing offender-management portfolios only hampers their ability to fight crime. The final and most important point is that park bans send offenders underground. You may imagine these men fearsome and creepy, but if communities systematically banish them, denying them the chance to find housing and to lead stable lives under close supervision, they end up doing the logical thing. They congregate in unincorporated poor areas. Or they disappear. The sickness your DA and his sidekick have is passing unnecesary, unconstitutional and ineffective laws turning sex offenders into unstable, rootless individuals, harder to track and arguably more dangerous.
In other words, the "Scarlet Letter" approach you keep pitching doesn't work, it has never worked, and it will never work because it's simplistic, hollow and cruel.