4-9-2003 California Legislature: ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SAFETY: AB 1184 (Spitzer) - As Amended: April 9, 2003
Consider the recent case of an offender who spent 21 years in custody after molesting a four-year-old child. In September 2003, David Phillips was released from Patton State Hospital after the Court of Appeal ruled that the trial court lacked jurisdiction when it committed him in 1982. After moving to Riverside and registering as a sex offender, the police distributed fliers to area residents. According to a September 26, 2003 article in a local newspaper, ". . . Phillips has moved three times in the week since he was released from Patton State Hospital near Highland. Each time, authorities have alerted his neighbors that a high-risk sex offender has moved into the area. Each time, Phillips said, the news has prompted his landlord to ask him to move out." After moving into his second residence, there was a public protest involving a group of approximately 100 citizens. Because the residence was less than one mile from an elementary and middle school, school officials issued thousands of letters to parents whose children attended public schools within a five-mile radius. After moving to a third residence, a sober-living 12 step residential program, the owner asked Phillips to leave "because she did not want his presence to create problems for the other people living there." A group of citizens had begun planning a further protest. Two weeks after being released and attempting to find housing in Riverside, Phillips moved to San Bernardino and registered as a 'transient' sex offender.
In October 2000, more than 100 residents of Norco, California gathered to protest the presence of a convicted sex offender who had been released to the community. According to press reports, upon his release in May 2000, members of the community began to "galvanize efforts to force him out." For several months, residents in the neighborhood had posted signs in front of their homes and collected petitions. Some of the signs pointed to the home where the person was living with his mother and identified him as a child molester. One sign read, "child molesters are a dying breed". On the day of the community meeting, a person had spray-painted 'fagit' on the driveway of the convicted offender. According to his mother, she was attempting to raise money through a garage sale he move him out of the neighborhood. Residents of the neighborhood defaced the garage sale signs with anti-child molester slogans and the sale was a failure.
In November 2000, Assemblyman George Runner (Sponsor of Prop 83) and city officials in Lancaster picketed outside an apartment where a registered sex offender had moved in with relatives. In addition, more than one dozen residents passed out fliers alerting members of the public that that he had moved there and demanding his eviction.
Assemblyman George Runner and city officials in Lancaster including Mayor Frank Roberts and Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford have picketed outside an apartment where Andre Bradford, 41, a registered sex offender, has moved in with relatives. ..more.. : by California Legislature
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