Posted on 07/31/2002 12:15:35 PM PDT by Conagher
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - With national nerves raw after a series of high-profile child kidnappings, Los Angeles County officials on Tuesday approved a plan to post the general locations of sex offenders' homes on the Internet.
The Internet map would follow the design of San Diego County's "Regional Sex Offender Pin Map," which designates within about a half-block the areas where convicted sex offenders are living after being freed from prison.
As in the San Diego model, Los Angeles County residents would have to go to sheriff's stations to get addresses, photos and criminal histories of offenders because state law prohibits such information from being disseminated over the Internet.
"Putting general information on the county web site is a step toward assisting the public in identifying individuals that may pose a threat to their families or children," the motion by Supervisor Mike Antonovich stated.
The Los Angeles map will appear on the county's web site in about a month.
San Diego County's map became available online on July 1, in the midst of the trial of David Westerfield, a self-employed design engineer who is accused of kidnapping and murdering his 7-year-old neighbor, Danielle Van Dam.
Westerfield was not a convicted sex offender, nor was Alejandro Avila, a 27-year-old factory worker who is charged with kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering 5-year-old Samantha Runnion of Orange County, California.
A Riverside County, Calif. jury acquitted Avila in 2000 of charges of molesting two 9-year-old girls.
Although raw statistics show no rise in the number of children being kidnapped, a series of brazen and high-profile abductions over the past year have touched a nerve with parents across the nation.
In addition to Samantha and Danielle, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was taken at gunpoint in June from the bedroom she shared with her sister in their Salt Lake City, Utah, home and has not been seen since.
This only panders to the crowd who, for whatever misguided reason, feels that a sex offense is WORSE than murder.
Michael
First, they should publish the exact addresses of registered sex offenders. Then they should announce that at a certain date and time, the police will be holding a ticket-writing party on the exact opposite side of town from the addresses in question.
Sometimes rough justice works better than the official kind.
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