Gaps in local online data about sex offenders includes inaccurate, missing information
Lack of adequate staffing and changing laws make it hard to maintain up-to-date records, police officials say.
By Joshunda Sanders
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, December 16, 2006
The Austin Police Department's online sex offender registry contains outdated or inaccurate data on dozens of sex offenders, an Austin American-Statesman analysis has found, and the department says it has lost track of an estimated 200 of the roughly 1,000 registered sex offenders who are believed to live in Austin.
Although the police site says the information is updated as "close to real time as possible," the registry is littered with outdated addresses for offenders who have disappeared either by failing to register with the department or providing false information aftermoving to Austin or by changing addresses without informing police.
Often, they have "gone underground" to avoid the social stigma that some of them say comes from having their names, crimes and addresses available to the public.
An American-Statesman review of 100 sex offender records from the police site also shows that it is often in conflict with the statewide Web site maintained by the Texas Department of Public Safety, which contains information about 48,063 sex offenders in Texas.
Texas began making information about sex offenders available to the public in 1991, when lawmakers passed the Texas Sex Offender Registration Law; the public Web site made its debut in 1999 and listed 7,925 offenders. The intent was to "help parents protect their families from possible sexual predators" and make the public safer, according to DPS.
But people using Austin's site to learn where sex offenders live can't be sure which information is correct.
"We're not looking for excuses. We screwed up, and we're looking at the process to look at how it happened," Assistant Chief David Carter said. "This was a foul-up on the part of the Police Department, and our goal is to correct the mistakes and figure out where we go from here."
The discrepancies include:
•Photos of two people both identified as Andrew Beegle, a 33-year-old sex offender convicted in 1995 for sexually assaulting a 21-year-old woman in Greene County, Ohio. On Nov. 28, after the newspaper questioned the discrepancy, Austin police posted a new photo that matches the one on the DPS site. Police said they have not determined the identity of the man in their original photo, who they admit was not Beegle.
•The whereabouts of 39-year-old Maurilio Pena of Austin, who is required to register because of a 1998 conviction for indecency with a 13-year-old girl. The DPS site says he lives at an address in San Antonio, but he is not listed on the Bexar County sheriff's department's online sex offender registration list. Austin police have listed him as being incarcerated in the Travis County Jail since November 2005, but the jail had no record of him being there when a reporter checked Dec. 7.
•The location of 28-year-old Winfrey Eugene Brown, convicted of indecency with a child by exposure in 1997. The DPS Web site says Brown has been registered as a sex offender in San Antonio since May 2006. The Austin police site says he has been in a state prison since November 2005. According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Brown is not in prison.
The Austin department says it is one of only a handful of police departments in the state that maintains its own sex offender Web site.
Spokesman Kevin Buchman said the site, which receives about 20,000 hits a month, was created as a public service.
Buchman said the old information on the department's public site was the result of a computer problem that prevented the department's internal database — the one that only officers can see — from automatically updating the public Web site. The problem has persisted for at least a year.
Cmdr. Duane McNeill, who oversees the department's Sex Offender Apprehension and Registration Unit, said the agency delays making updates while police pursue accurate information on missing offenders.
Falling through cracks
The information gaps on Internet sex offender databases aren't the only problems in the system. Ever-changing laws on sex offenders and poor communication create confusion among law enforcement agencies over who is responsible for sharing what information with whom.
Changes to state and federal laws have expanded the registries by adding new crimes that require registration, such as online solicitation of a child, and requiring all sex offenders in Texas convicted on or after Sept. 1, 1970, to register.
The result is a system in which sex offenders can avoid registering with police with little fear of being caught. When sex offenders fail to register on a regular basis, as required, police are responsible for serving warrants for their arrest.
Offenders are often caught only after committing another crime — in some cases, another sex crime.
That's what happened in the case of 18-year-old registered sex offender Manuel Nathan Mendoza, who was accused in October of trying to sexually assault a Reagan High School teacher by threatening her with a pair of scissors. Mendoza, who had been living in an Austin halfway house after serving his sentence for indecency with a 4-year-old girl in San Antonio in 2002, was arrested at a Dallas homeless shelter Nov. 3.
The school said it didn't know that a sex offender had registered at Reagan. Texas Youth Commission officials had enrolled Mendoza at Reagan but didn't tell the school about his criminal history; the agency said that is their policy.
Before the incident, Austin police gave the Austin school district monthly reports about registered juvenile sex offenders, but it was up to the schools to determine whether any of those offenders were students.
Police have since changed their policy and now alert school officials as soon as they learn that a registered sex offender is enrolled at a school.
McNeill said that when sex offenders disappear, the department's online information may not change for months as police try to find them by first checking their last known addresses and then moving on to hospitals, the jail and relatives. The Web site does not indicate which offenders are missing.
"The last thing I want to do is create unnecessary alarm" because all of the information is not current, McNeill said.
McNeill said that the sex offender unit, which is staffed by three detectives and an administrative employee, does the best it can with limited staff and that the department plans to apply for more grants to add more people.
"Do I believe we have the staffing we need to do this job the way it needs to be done?" he said. "No."
Constantly moving
Austin authorities are not the only ones challenged by tracking sex offenders.The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says an estimated 100,000 sex offenders are unaccounted for nationwide.
This is how sex offender registration is supposed to work: Before convicted sex offenders are released from prison, jail or the Texas Youth Commission, they sign paperwork that details where they plan to live. It is supposed to be forwarded to the local police or sheriff's office.
Seven days after a sex offender is released, he or she is required to report to local authorities in person. After that, offenders have to register once a month, every three months or once a year, depending on the conditions of their probation or parole.
Often, they don't.
Kristy Whitley, a former law enforcement specialist at the Travis County sheriff's department, was the sole person in charge of registering sex offenders who live outside of Austin's city limits. She said sex offenders are constantly moving to and from the county and routinely don't tell county officials where they're living.
"As far as offenders doing what they're supposed to do? That doesn't happen often," she said.
Whitley left the job in October, a sheriff's department spokesman said. She has been replaced.
Richard Tewksbury, a professor at the University of Louisville who has studied sex offender registration, said neither online registries nor the prospect of going to jail for not registering is very effective at compelling offenders to comply.
"What we see is a strong marginalization of sex offenders to the outskirts of society," Tewksbury said. "The registration process causes lifelong stress, which leads to registered sex offenders going underground, absconding and disappearing."
To duck the registration requirement, some offenders give officials phony addresses after their release and then head for another place altogether, sex offender treatment providers say. To avoid law enforcement, they often use aliases when they want to rent an apartment or apply for a job.
At a September group therapy session for sex offenders in Travis County, Roberto, who has been convicted of molesting young boys, said the current system of registration offers "no incentive to do the hard work (of getting treatment) and to have a life again."
Failure to register is a third-degree felony that carries a maximum punishment of 10 years in prison. Repeat convictions can increase the penalties, McNeill said.
As of Nov. 29, McNeill said, police had filed 71 warrants this year for sex offenders who had failed to register. In 2005, they filed 28. Until recently, McNeill said, the department had not tracked how many offenders were arrested on those warrants. From Nov. 1 to Nov. 29, three sex offenders were arrested, McNeill said.
Texas legislators will soon consider requiring lifetime electronic monitoring for all sex offenders convicted of sexually assaulting children.
State Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, said he plans to introduce a bill during the 2007 legislative session based on the Jessica Lunsford Act, named for a Florida girl who was abducted and murdered in 2005.
Florida, Louisiana and Arizona have adopted the law. Currently, only the most dangerous Texas sex offenders are required to wear the devices.
"If you do something that's not as rigid," Deuell said, "you're easing up on the sex offender. There's a political minefield to walk through if you appear lenient on sex offenders."
More laws are on the way. In July, Congress passed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which establishes a national sex offender database and gives local police departments money and help from federal marshals to find offenders who move across state lines.
Texas has until 2009 to comply with the Walsh Act. States that don't comply risk losing federal grant money.
In November, McNeill said the sex offender unit would begin comparing its data with what is on the DPS site to ensure that the police have the most up-to-date and accurate information. If an offender has disappeared, he said, they will now indicate on the Web site that the offender is wanted for failure to register.
joshundasanders@statesman.com; 445-3630
Community Watch comments:
Sex offender registries do not create the strong marginalization of sex offenders to the outskirts of society - the sex offenders actions do this to them.
Superintendent Charlotte Placide said the district would look at increasing security at every school.
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